Whoop whoop, motherfackos! Once again I journeyed to Ohio to photograph my favorite insane clowns at the Gathering of the Juggalos. I have been documenting this event every year since 2010 and I am afraid I can never stop. I was legitimately bummed to leave. Good news is that I returned with over 900 photos for you guys. 

We will be breaking this down into four posts, probably one a day. Today we are dropping Part One, which includes the first two days of the Gathering minus the bands and events. Part Two will feature days three and four, again, minus the bands and events. Then we will have an all music post and finally the NSFW events post which will mostly just be links to my paysite Girls of Driven By Boredom because we are living in a new era where I gotta make you pay incredibly reasonable prices to see naked juggalettes. Sorry but blame FOTA/SESTA and the cowardice of corporations who host images on the internet, not me. (Ps. There are already some juggalette wet t-shirt photos on there right now.)

But before we get to all that I gotta link some stuff for you guys. First is my article about Gen Z juggalos, who I decided to called Zuggalos even though Zuggalos are already a thing but no one outside of juggalos have ever heard of Zug Izland so like, I am still gonna try and make that a thing. Seriously though, I am super proud of this article. I did actual interviews including ones with Psychopathic Records artist Ouija Macc and comedian Sean Barrett. Please go check it out.

I also did, as I do every year, a HUGE gallery for Brooklyn Vegan. Seriously I think I sent them two hundred photos, including some NSFW ones. I even snuck in a photo of me wearing a clown nose because that seemed hilarious to me. Okay, now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about the first two days of the Gathering!

The day the Gathering started I woke up in North Carolina where my girlfriend was visiting friends for the 4th of July. I had a flight that put me in kinda late but there aren’t any direct flights from Wilmington to Columbus, OH. Problem is my first flight got delayed and I nearly missed my connecting flight. I had to sprint to the gate and made it just in time. I was worried my bag wouldn’t make it but fortunately that flight also got delayed and I made. I spent way too long getting my rental car because there was only one person working for four different rental companies because they are all one rental company because monopolies love giving us the illusion of choice. I finally got to my hotel around 8:30 and I got all my shit together as quickly as possible and ran out the door. When I got to the Gathering I wasn’t on the press list for some reason. Apparently I was on ICP’s publicist list, but not the Gathering list and the person working the night shift had no idea about the other list. I started emailing their publicist while also texting juggalos and about an hour later both the person who was in charge of the list showed up at the exact same time the person in charge of the media showed up and I got in.

At this point it is 10pm and I realize I left my camera battery in the hotel. I could run back and it would only take me about 30 min or I could say fuck it and just go look around, shoot a few photos with my 35mm camera and start again tomorrow. That’s what I decided to do, however I mentioned all this to my photographer friend Nik and he found another photographer who had a battery that worked with my camera and by 11pm I had a working camera. So shout out to both of those guys. I should have just gone home and rested up for the next day but I felt like I had to shoot something since I had my camera so I went over to the Juggalesque juggalette burlesque show and shot a few minutes of that and then walked around said hi to some old friends and then finally called it a night around 1am. I didn’t shoot much, but at least I got something. 

Day two was much more productive, in fact it was by far my most productive day. I got down there just in time to shoot the absolutely insane Juggalette Wet T-shirt contest (see all the NSFW pics here) but more on that later. I spent the next hour or so just shooting juggalo portraits and waiting for the bands to start (again, more on that later) and then shot a ton of portraits in between the bands. I shot more than 1500 pictures on just that one day. ICP played their first set that night so I ended up quite sticky and wet, but I am down with the clown and that gives me the powers to just ignore how gross everything is and have fun anyway. I ended up leaving around 1:30am which is about as late as I can handle as a middle aged man, but I was (kinda) ready to do it all over again the next day.

Click here to see all the photos from Day 1 and Day 2 of the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos.

Ps. I know everyone thinks NFTs are dead but I still have juggalo NFTs and will be releasing 5 new ones this week!

 

 

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