After absolutely killing myself on day two of the Gathering I tried to take it easy a bit on day three. I went out to lunch with a friend who lives in Columbus, Ohio and got down there around 6pm. My back was killing me so I just sort of sat on a rock for a minute, chugged an energy drink and began the day. 

Most of the stuff I have to say about day three is about the bands that played, but we will get to all that in the next update. I will also talk later about the insane Queen of the Cheeks event aka the butthole contest, which absolutely broke me, but in the meantime I uploaded all that VERY NSFW content to Girls of Driven By Boredom. You have been warned. Other than that, I just did the normal thing, walked around and photographed juggalos. I did have a good conversation with April O’Neil’s boyfriend who was there working. April is one of my favorite humans and it was great to meet her partner. Also shout out to Wicked Clowns Harm Reduction who gave me Narcan to keep on me during the event and were helping people test their drugs. I did an article for Vice about harm reduction at the Gathering years ago, and it’s great to see a new group continue the practice. 

Day four was not a very productive day photographically, but I did a lot of work. I finally came up with an idea for my Daily Beast article and I interviewed Sean Barrett aka Uncle Juff and Psychopathic Record’s artist Ouija Macc for the article. After that I walked around and tried to look for young hip looking juggalos to interview for the article about Gen Z. It was a ton of work, but I hope people enjoyed the article. I was proud of it. 

The last day also featured a pretty tame Miss Juggalette Pageant which I will talk about later and of course a bunch of bands. I should at least mention ICP’s set because I got completely soaked and my Gathering ended when I had to run to the car when it started pouring rain. It cleaned the Faygo off me a bit, but had the potential to mess up my camera gear and I had already thrown away my poncho. 

Last thing I want to say, is that I minted five new Juggalo NFTs. My plan is to do 17 drops and this was drop number 14 so not too many to go. I know people don’t love NFTs but I thought it would be a good way to raise money for a future juggalo book. It hasn’t really ended up that way, but I still love putting out these things, and I think it’s a good record. Also I have been able to send some juggalos some money in the process which is always nice. In fact, while I was at the Gathering I saw someone who I had sold and NFT of and had no way of contacting. I ran over to him and just gave him all the cash that was in my wallet. He was psyched about it and it felt great to be able to do that. So if for some reason, you are still into NFTs and want to buy one you are supporting me and hopefully getting some juggalos paid. If nothing else, it is a good overview of my 14 years photographing juggalos… and you can always right click save. 

Now click here to see all the photos from day three and four of the 2023 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH. 

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!

I starting taking photos in the mid 90s because when I was 15 I started a punk record label and I wanted to photograph the bands on that label. I pretty much photographed nothing but bands for a decade. It was all I wanted to shoot. But at some point it started feeling like work and I would shoot the same photos everyone else would have because everything was “three songs, no flash” photo pit bullshit. I just felt like 99% of music photography was so fucking boring and I just didn’t want to do it unless I was getting paid, but on Friday I went out and shot some bands just for the fun of it. 

I was actually curious the last time I shot a band just for fun and I had to scroll back 49 pages on this website until I found a Ho99o9 record release show I shot in LA in 2015 just for the pure enjoyment of it. More recently I shot an ICP show in Brooklyn in 2017 which I might have not been paid for but was for my larger juggalo book project that I swear I will finish one day. The interesting thing about those two shows is that if ICP and Ho9909 had a baby, that baby would probably be Nü Godd.

The other night my buddy Suitcase Joe sent me a text. “My friends band are playing NY in a few days and I’m giving you a heads up because you might want to shoot them. They’re a bunch of sex crazed anarchist punks who dress like clowns.” My curiosity was sparked and after he sent me a link to the IG accounts of Nü Godd & Fusion Babies I knew I was gonna have to do it. In my career I am best known for shooting punk bands, subcultures, insane clowns and sex workers and suddenly you are gonna combine all that shit and bring them to a venue that’s 15 minutes from my apartment? Fuck it. I’m in.

When I got to TV Eye Zacazama was just getting on stage. He was playing an Oscar the Grouch sample and wearing a trash bag over his head that was decorated with clown makeup. He was also wearing a high vis jacket that made it impossible to shoot flash which I appreciated but I also only shot a few photos of him and then sort of wandered around looking for clowns for photograph.  After that a clown named Tony Tulips came out and juggled and got naked and then Fusion Babies came on. They were very up my alley musically were a lot of fun to photograph. They shared a couple members with Nü Godd who played after, and were on tour together so it kinda all felt like one performance even though the band were very different. It was all chaotic punk influenced clown madness and it was absolutely a good time. Both bands were great to photograph, and the crowd was just as much fun to photograph as the bands. I think because they were touring together and had a ton of people with them that it really felt like the local punk shows I went to when I was in high school where there wasn’t a huge crowd but everyone knew all the songs because everyone was friends and played with each other over and over again. I really enjoyed it even if I was twenty years older than everyone there. Would 100% stage dived even with my fucked up back if there were a few more people there. Maybe I will get a chance to see them in LA one of these day when I am out hanging out with Suitcase Joe. 

This show was the second time in a week that I was out past 3am and man I kinda miss that shit. It’s nice being real domesticated but I need a little more weird middle of the night madness in my life so I can take photos of it. I don’t wanna be one of those old photographers whose work starts to suck (even if my band shots suck, I honestly need so much practice to get back into it). Happy to feel inspired right now and that my back is a little bit better… Oh and did I mention that the Gathering of the Juggalos is in less than two weeks? More clowns coming soon!

Now click here to see many more higher res photos photos of Nü Godd & Fusion Babies at TV Eye.

Back in 2008 I photographed Fool’s Gold Records 1st anniversary party at Webster Hall, 15 years later they asked me to come back to Webster for their 15th anniversary (no the math doesn’t add up, but don’t worry about it). As you probably notice, I don’t really shoot party photos anymore, and I haven’t been to Webster since it was sold but I couldn’t say no to this one. Ever since I started my throwback party photo Instagram account I’ve really wanted to get back to doing nightlife stuff again and this was the perfect chance.

Being at Webster again felt like a dream. I hadn’t been there since 2017 when I shot the “last” party there for Rolling Stone before it was sold. The building felt so familiar but different and that cognitive dissidence made it feel like I was tripping. The mix of seeing a ton of old friends while also partying with a bunch of kids who are wearing some of the same shit we wore back in the day really added to the head trip. I was also shooting with my old camera but with a slightly different set up and it took me a while to get into a groove but I think I got some decent shots in the end. I absolutely want to do it again. 

The party was on two floors, the top floor and then downstairs in what was previously The Studio, now a neon art installation from FAILE called Deluxx Fluxx which is an offshoot of a club in Detroit. Dwells was playing ending his set when I got there, followed by Treasure Fingers who I last saw at Webster back in 2009. Around midnight they opened the top floor and I went up to see Frost Children perform which was very fun. I saw Club Eat do their thing down in the basement before heading back upstairs to see Uffie which was awesome. She was such a big part of the culture back in the day and I never actually saw her perform, but I did actually meet her, once again at Webster Hall, back in early 2010 for an Ed Banger anniversary party. She came out with Doss and then brought on a drummer who was actually her lawyer and then Blu DeTiger came out and played bass for her. It was really fun.

Because of the Uffie show I think I missed the Hellp’s DJ set downstairs, but I did get down there for Naeem who is another person I have known for 15 years back when he was Spankrock. It was great to see him. After that I ran back upstairs to catch A-Trak headline. He’s the person who hired me for this and it’s so cool to see him and Fool’s Gold do their thing for all these years. He played a bunch of old indie sleaze stuff and I found myself dancing on stage to Justice while taking photos. Speaking of indie sleaze, a highlight of the night was meeting the mysterious person who runs the @indiesleaze Instagram account. She’s been so helpful with my @vintagedbb account and it was awesome to meet her in IRL and get to hang out with her a bit. I also got to hang with Uffie and a bit which was a good time. We even re-shot the photo I took of her ana a friend back in 2010 with her and another friend. Same Webster green room, 13 years apart. While I was doing that I managed to miss surprise DJ Laidback Luke, but fortunately I got shots of him with A-Trak and Uffie and then got a few shots of Bag Raiders before finally escaping around 4am. 

Sorry it took me a couple days to get this stuff up but these are the first party photos I have shot in ages and I didn’t want to dump them on Father’s Day where no one would see em. Huge thanks to A-Trak and Fool’s Gold for having me out. It’s so amazing what you and Nick have done over the last 16 15 years. And of course I gotta say something about one of the original FG founders, Dust LaRock. He was an absolutely brilliant artist, a great dude and it sucks so much that he couldn’t be there last night. We miss you Dust.

Click here to see all the photos from the 15th anniversary of Fool’s Gold Records at Webster Hall.

Ps. Go follow @VintageDBB. 

Another year, another NFL Draft. If you don’t know by now, I run Dolfans NYC a nonprofit that raises money for charity through watch parties and events surrounding the Miami Dolphins. It started out with about 30 of us and has grown to thousands. It’s probably most successful thing I have done with my life and the whole thing is honestly surreal. Through the club I have been able to do some very cool things, like get really, really good tickets to the NFL Draft.

Dolfans NYC started doing group NFL Draft trips in 2008 when we had the first pick. The Draft was in NYC every year back then and we continued going until the Draft moved and started going from city to city. In 2018 the NFL came up with the “Inner Circle”, small groups of die hard fans that would be grouped by team in front of the stage, essentially making it easy for the NFL Network and ESPN camera crews to film sections of excited groups of fans for every team. I am usually not the kinda person who wants to be in any sort of spotlight, but getting on TV during the NYC Drafts got so many local Dolphins fans to google us that we sort of made it our mission to continue using the Draft as a marketing tool and have tried to make it to as many of these as possible. So far I have been to Dallas, Cleveland and Las Vegas for the Draft, and this year I made it to Kansas City.

The Dolphins didn’t have a first round pick this year so I almost didn’t go, but I had never been to KC and it was sort of a bucket list city for me. Dolfans NYC had airline miles and I told my friend Ivan that if he got the hotel room I’d bring him with me. He was down and off we went.

The Kansas City Draft was the biggest one yet. It was absolutely packed with people and over a huge space. Fortunately my back has been doing great recently and while I was in a ton of pain, it was bearable which wouldn’t have been the case a couple months ago. We eventually made our way to the Inner Circle area and joined up with all the other crazy fans. I am as diehard as a Dolphins fan as they come, but I don’t compare to some of these guys. So many of the Inner Circle crew are the costumed lunatics that are always on TV during NFL broadcasts and there’s nothing I love photographing more than passionate fans of anything, especially when they look so photogenic. 

Aside from the fans I also got to photograph some of the draft picks themselves. I didn’t have a press credential (maybe I should actually apply for one next year), so I couldn’t really shoot on stage, but I did get a few shots of the Draft picks coming out before security started cracking down on people near the front. I probably could have gotten away with a lot more if I wasn’t in all Dolphins gear, but what are you gonna do? I also got decent shots of Christian Gonzalez and Jaxon Smith-Njigba when they came out to the crowd because our section was near the Patriots and Seahawks sections. I also got photos of famous YouTubers Ryan Trahan and Donald De La Haye aka Deestroying which you can ask your kids about. 

As far as the Dolphins picks? Well we only had four because we traded a bunch away for some very good players and our owner tried to sign Tom Brady while he was still under contract with the Bucs so we got a pick stolen from us which honestly I didn’t appreciate for a bunch of different reasons. But I think we got a couple exciting players anyway. Oh, and we did make it on TV.

Anyway, let’s look at some photos. These are uploaded to the Dolfans NYC Flickr because why upload them twice and I already did a post over there so let me live. At least this one is way longer because I am fully caffeinated and I don’t have to explain the concept of Dolfans NYC to them. 

Click here to see all my photos from the 2023 NFL Draft in Kansas City, MO. 

When I was on the West Coast last month I was really busy hanging out with family and doing vacation type stuff with my girlfriend and I didn’t take a lot of photos, but I did want to try and do a couple shoots while I was out there. I did one mini shoot with my friend Krystall but we only shot 35mm photos and didn’t do a full set (although there are some photos & a video on my OnlyFans). But I did one proper shoot with my friend Jess who goes by Junkyard Rat on the internet. 

Jess and I have shot a bunch in the past but literally every time we have shot it’s just been some random weirdness in the middle of the night. I have such crazy photos of her but this is the first time we did a proper shoot. The other thing my shoots with Jess have in common is that every time it’s been with one of her friends. For example she introduced me to both Pouty Kitty and Leigh Mercury. So I joked to her that she needed to bring a friend to the shoot and she actually did, her roommate Daria Bank. Daria was a semi retired model who decided to jump into our shoot and she was rad and super photogenic and I feel like we got some really pretty stuff. We also shot some slightly more fucked up stuff but we will save that for a book or something one day. 

I don’t have a lot more to say about this, other than once again the NSFW stuff is behind a paywall because my galleries are still broken. I do have an idea for a new version of Driven By Boredom but I am gonna need to hire someone to build it and I just don’t have that kind of money so we are kinda at a stalemate. Maybe I will relearn how to code websites, it’s only been 20 years since I could do them from scratch. So yeah, photos are on Girls of DBB and the 35mm stuff and some video are up on the OnlyFans. 

Okay, now click here to see all the photos of Junkyard Jess and Daria Bank!

I haven’t photographed an party in ages and when my friend Ellen Stagg hit me up about shooting an event for her the day I came back from two weeks on the West Coast I was a little hesitant for a number of reasons. First one is of course my back injury and doing event work is really tough, the second was that I just don’t really shoot with a flash anymore and I  knew I would need to if I was going to shoot her party and the third was that the event was to celebrate her photo making the cover of a certain magazine that once threw me into a lawsuit that I had almost nothing to do with but still cost me tens of thousands of dollars to get out of. Still, I love Ellen and I wanted to support her and as I have been going through my archives for my Vintage Driven By Boredom instagram I have been really missing shooting parties which is not something I ever expected. So I said yes to the gig and broke out my old DSLR and shot the party like I would have a decade ago. I was worried the shots wouldn’t be great so I actually wouldn’t let Ellen pay me until the end of the night because I wanted to make sure I a) didn’t fuck up and b) was able to shoot the whole thing without my back falling apart, but an hour in I realized that I still kinda knew what I was doing and I was able to take enough breaks to make it through despite some pretty excruciating pain at times. Anyway, this whole paragraph is just me complaining about stuff so let’s get into the actual party!

The party was pretty much a book signing with Ellen and cover model Laura Desiree selling magazines and signing them all night. You’d think that would be a pretty boring thing to shoot, but I knew better than that. The party was at The Museum of Sex’s event area, Super Funland which is a mix between a carnival, an art exhibit and the Korova Milk Bar from A Clockwork Orange. There is a slide from upstairs that people can take that shoots them out of what is essentially a giant vagina into the middle of the party which was honestly delightful. There was also a dancer named Ruby Quinn who absolutely killed it doing killer pole tricks and giving me something to photograph all night. Also Ellen and Laura are tremendous babes and have a lot of fun to photograph friends which made for easy work on my end. Got to see some old friends and finally met Connie Perignon who I have known via the internets for a couple of years, but never actually ran into IRL. Someone did try and fight me for absolutely no reason in the middle of the party, but honestly I kinda miss that kinda thing too. A younger me would have done some stupid shit, but I am an adult now so I just went back to taking photos. 

Anyway, the whole thing was a blast and I really appreciate Ellen and Laura bringing me out and I hope I can shoot some more parties in the future. I didn’t realize I missed it. Also hopefully I met some people that I can photograph in the future, and I only mention this as an excuse to promote my OnlyFans. Listen, a man has gotta eat. I also should mention that this gallery is once again on Flickr because my website is just permanently broken and I haven’t really figured out a good solution for that, but hopefully I will in the not too distant future, especially if I get back into shooting nightlife a little bit. At least the photos are in higher resolution over there… 

Now click here to see all the photos from Ellen Stagg & Laura Desiree magazine signing at the Museum of Sex!

Today is the 22nd anniversary of Driven By Boredom. Before there were blog platforms and YouTube and even reliable image hosting, I wanted a place where I could put all of my projects so I wouldn’t have to email them to my friends individually. I was taking photos, shooting video, doing other random projects and just whatever I could do to keep myself entertained while I was in college.

The site became a very successful early blog until I started managing a band and I barely updated the site for a couple of years. I was still getting a surprising amount of traffic and when I moved to NYC in 2006 people kept asking me where I was putting my photos. I figured I still had my site so I might as well use it. My friend’s Adam and Thadd helped me build a new WordPress template and sometime in 2007 DBB was born again and was updated very consistently until the pandemic and a back injury and the fact that my site is barely functional (as it was last redesigned in 2007) has slowed my updates, but we are still here!

Over the years I have celebrated the anniversary in a lot of different ways, from wild parties, to free tattoos, to NFTs, to completely forgetting about it, but in 2009 I really went overboard. I had just started doing photography full time, my site was popping and I even had an intern (who got arrested for stealing someone’s purse during one of the anniversary parties). When that 8th anniversary showed up I had to do it big. 

I started by offering free Driven By Boredom tattoos, threw three parties, and released a t-shirt that I gave away for free at the events. Two people took me up on the tattoos (if you include myself, 14 people have gotten DBB tattoos over the years), we probably gave out 100 shirts and all three parties were a blast. 

Over the past few months I launched VintageDBB on Instagram. It’s a flashback to these days, primarily from 2007 to 2009 right now, but I am slowly moving forward in my archives and occasionally pulling newer and older stuff. It’s been so much fun to do, and people seem to love it, but I have soooo much stuff on there that I will never get to it all. So I had the idea of doing throwback posts on here where I go pull whole events and post them on this site, in higher resolution and without my old giant MySpace era watermarks. 

I figured today would be a perfect start so I went through all three 8th anniversary parties and pulled some highlights, about 15 photos in total. The parties included were, Disco Down at Happy Ending, Playhouse at Cain and Trash at Webster Hall. All three were pretty insane so I hope you enjoy this flashback.

My site is still broken, and will probably never be fixed so photos are on Flickr until I find a better solution. 

Click here to see the highlights from three parties celebrating the 8th anniversary of DBB in 2009.

Ps. Go follow @VintageDBB!

Last week I shot photos of Aliya Brynn who was visiting NYC for a week. I pretty much immediately edited them and uploaded them in high res to Girls of DBB, but I forgot to do a post about it on here because I hate my website and the gallery system is broken and I honestly just can’t afford to fix it so it will just languish here until one day I win the lottery or something. 

As far as the shoot goes, NY hotel rooms are the worst and it had this tiny window and shit light but we made it work by just taking her photo close to the bed. I actually think we took some really nice 35mm shots but I haven’t developed the film yet so it’s all a mystery. I am actually going to drop most of it off as soon as I finish this post. 

These photos are extra NSFW. You guys know I don’t shoot a lot of overly sexualized images, and I think that’s why some of you enjoy my work, but I also believe when photographing a model it should be collaborative and obviously sex sells and we both got OnlyFans to run. Speaking of which, there’s some video from this shoot on my OnlyFans, and there will be more soon. So yeah, very NSFW photos. 

Okay, now I gotta go drop off some film. Sponsor a roll here and get a cheap print, maybe even one from this shoot.

Click here to see the paywalled photos (sorry) from my shoot with Aliya Brynn.