Last month I did a mini Florida road trip and I shot a bunch of rolls of film and I figured it was a good idea to post a bunch of the shots from the trip. I used to post all my 35mm stuff on Tumblr but since they changed their NSFW settings so that you have to be logged into Tumblr to view my photos I abandoned my Tumblr. I post some 35mm stuff on Twitter but honestly it looks like shit with their compression so I don’t post much.

So about the trip… I had to be in Miami for a Miami Dolphins event. My fan club/ non profit Dolfans NYC was up for some awards at a thing called Web Weekend that the Dolphins throw every year and we make a big donation to the Miami Dolphins Foundation at the same time. We ended up winning Best Community Oriented Site and Best Use Of Social Media and donated $7000 to the MDF and another $1000 to RISE. If I ever have to get a real job maybe this will look good on a resume?

Anyway, since I had to be in Florida anyway I thought it would be a perfect excuse to visit the Sausage Castle, this weird compound near Orlando run by Mike Busey. I met Mike at the Gathering of the Juggalos years ago and he had given me an open invite to visit the castle. Tragically it burned down but they ended up moving to a way better space and now have this mansion with like a hundred acres of land and all this bat shit crazy stuff like a tattoo studio, batting cage and a female pig named Richard Porkins. Mike also told me they might get a giraffe.

Now I could have flown into Orlando and then just taken a train down to Miami but I knew that this girl Magdalene lived not too far from Tampa so I hit her up about doing a little road trip. She seemed like she was down to do a whole week of Florida madness but it ended up just being two days because she is in college and had to do actual things. Still, I decided to fly into Tampa.

I ended up getting a hotel in Clearwater, FL because I am kinda obsessed with Scientology and their headquarters is in Clearwater and I wanted to check it out. The night before we left for our road trip Magda met me at my weird aqua colored motel and we did a photoshoot there before heading over to the Scientology HQ. Unfortunately there was way too much security to shoot some nudes in front of it but at least I got to lurk. After that we got some food and waited for a movie theater to close. Wait, what?

When I posted on Instagram that I was in Clearwater I had a fan reach out to me and offer her movie theater as a shoot location! Seriously. I thought it was going to be a tiny indie theater but it was this massive multiplex. I am not gonna mention the girl’s name or where exactly the theater is just incase she gets in trouble with her new owners, but let’s just she is my hero. We did a quick shoot there but we had to be up super early the next AM so I Ubered back to my hotel and slept for a few hours until Magda picked me up again.

We had this whole plan of shooting on the way to the Sausage Castle but unfortunately it was raining nearly the whole drive. Luckily it let up right about the time we got to the Castle and because it’s Florida immediately got super sunny and gave me incredibly harsh lighting for my photos. Whatever.

The Castle itself was fucking incredible. I talked about it already, but I can’t even explain how insane it is. I only got a few hours there before we went to Universal Studios for their Halloween haunted house madness so I really didn’t get to shoot enough. Mike set up a few shots of him and the Busey Beauties and I did a mini shoot with Kris Kannibal and Sir Richard Porkins the pig. It was cool but honestly I want to spend like a week at the Castle just documenting the weirdness that goes on behind the scenes. I just need to find a client to pay me to do it. It really is fucking nuts.

So right as the sun went down we jumped in a few cars and drove to Universal. They have a ton of haunted houses set up and everyone wanted to go. I kinda hate haunted houses because they aren’t scary and I don’t like being startled but Mike bought my ticket so I wasn’t gonna complain. It seemed like a good chance to get more candid stuff of everyone anyway.

At Universal we met up with WWE wrestler Mojo Rawly and a bunch of his friends for some reason. He is sponsored by Zubaz which is fucking amazing, I own multiple pairs vintage of Miami Dolphins Zubaz so that’s pretty much all I wanted to talk to him about. (Although later I found out we both grew up in the same town and went to the same high school as my first girlfriend and a ton of my good friends.) He had a big crew so we were rolling like 20 people deep through haunted house after haunted house.

Universal closed at like 1am or something like that and it took forever to assemble everyone, get food and get back to the Castle. By the time we made it pretty much everyone was passed out. Unfortunately the keys to Magda’s car were missing (we found them the next day fortunately) and all of my shit was in the car. By the time I realized that her trunk was unlocked it was like 4am and I had to get to the train early the next morning so I ended up sleeping like 3 hours in a bunk bed in a closet (seriously, they have 6 bunk beds for guests built into walk in closet). So unfortunately I didn’t get to shoot any crazy partying or any of the weird giant playground they have on the property.

I took a train to Del Ray, FL where my Dolfans NYC partner lives with her husband Alex. Two of my friends also happen to live close by so I thought I would get to see them but unfortunately one was in Tampa and the other one just straight up blew me off so aside from dinner with Michelle and fam I just hung out in the hotel room. Whatever. The next day Michelle picked me up and we headed to Miami for our Miami Dolphins weekend.

This post is already too long and I know you don’t care about the Dolphins so I will just let you look at the pictures now. I should mention that aside from the normal point and shoot 35mm film I shot there’s also a roll of black and white I shot on my Leica and a roll of 1600 film that expired in the 90’s. That stuff didn’t come out great but it’s still kinda interesting to look at.

And lastly, there’s a gallery of about 30 digital images from the Sausage Castle that I uploaded exclusively to Girls of Driven By Boredom. You can see those and a billion other exclusive high resolution images for like $18 a year or whatever the fuck it costs. Help me pay off my credit card. Now go look at photos already…

Click here to see all the 35mm photos from my weird Florida road trip! NSFW as per usual!

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