I am gonna make this post super short because I know most of you don’t care and I just posted an update about the #MetLifeTakeover event I throw every year. You can read about it over there if you want to know more but I know most of you could care less about my obsessive Miami Dolphins fandom.

I will just say that I am really proud of this video we made and this event we throw every year. This season already our non profit group Dolfans NYC has donated over $13,000 to charity and we plan to hit $15,000 at a minimum by the end of the year.

And a real quick description. This video is the recap of our #MetLifeTakeover event where we bought over 1100 seats for the Dolphins Vs. Jets game in New Jersey. We had a bunch of former Dolphins show up to the huge tailgate party we threw and most of them did interviews with us for the video. It’s hosted by comedian and Dolphins fan Oscar Collazos and it was directed by RizeOptix. Also have to give out a shout to Sailor Jerry for sponsoring the event like they do every year.

Lastly, the Dolphins got killed at the game in Jersey so the video kinda ends on a down note, but we beat them yesterday in Miami so it seems like an ideal time to post this. Enjoy.

Yesterday was a hell of a day for me. Things actually started the day before when I arrived at Slattery’s Midtown Pub to prepare for two days of football related madness, none of which had to do with the national anthem. I have explained this here before but I kinda feel like every time I do a Miami Dolphins related post I need to do it all over again…

My friend Michelle and I started the NYC Miami Dolphins fan club in 2008. When I moved to NYC I didn’t really have any friends who watched football and so I would watch them at random bars. Eventually I met Michelle and started watching with her and her small group of Dolphins fans. That small group organically grew until after the 2008 season when Michelle and I decided to start using our web and marketing skills to start promoting it. Dolfans NYC was born.

We started doing raffles and selling t-shirts and coming up with other reasons for people to come to the games despite the Dolphins being a mediocre football team. As we started to generate income we decided to give all the money to charity so we wouldn’t be motivated by profit or fight about money. That decision paid off because it attracted the attention of the Miami Dolphins who have given us a ton of support and opted not to sue us for blatant trademark infringement.

We raised so much money over the years that we actually had to become a not for profit corporation. We couldn’t just deal with beer buckets full of one dollar bills anymore. We needed to make it official. Last summer we filed for our 501(c)(3) status and got it and now I have a no limit AmEx card which says Dolfans NYC on it which is absolutely absurd but great for getting into airport lounges.

Anyway, back to this weekend. Sunday was our annual #MetLifeTakeover event where we bring hundreds of Dolphins fans to the Dolphins @ Jets game and throw a massive tailgate party which starts the night before at Slattery’s with our annual #MetLifeTakeover pre-party.

I got there at 5pm to set up for the 7pm party which was supposed to end at 9. I think we left around 1am after organizing and packing up eight huge bins of assorted Dolfans NYC merch. The party was a good time and we raised $500 for hurricane Maria which unfortunately makes nearly $2000 we have already donated to hurricane relief this year. On a more positive note we got to try out our Snapchat filter that my friend Ricardo at Subdrive records made for us.

After I finally got home from the party I packed up all my personal shit from the night before and tried to get a few hours of sleep before I had to be awake again. I might have managed 90 minutes… I had to be back at the bar in midtown by 6:30. The bar manager was still there from the night before.

We loaded up four chartered buses and took them to MetLife Stadium in jersey to meet up with over a thousand Dolphins fans for a party organized by Urban Tailgate. They took a huge amount of stuff off our plate and were already pretty much set up when we got there. Our own DJ Tropic showed up with them and had music blasting before the busses even pulled in. There was so much god damn food and a bar sponsored by my friends at Sailor Jerry and we set up all sorts of games that bros like to play. And of course we brought some inflatable palm trees. It was pretty great.

Around 10am the Miami Dolphins radio show “Cup of Joe” showed up to film before the game. It’s hosted by former Dolphin great Joe Rose who interviewed fellow former Dolphin and current Dolphins Vice President Nat Moore and CEO Tom Garfinkel. We also had another legend (Jim “Crash” Jensen) just show up randomly to the tailgate and party with us.

After that Solo D performed a few songs in the crowd. He is a rapper who mostly writes songs about the Dolphins and unlike most sports themed music is actually really good. I have a weird collection of Miami Dolphins vinyl records and I really want to put out a Solo D record one day.

The tailgate sort of ended with a big raffle we did for a Dolphins helmet signed by one of our best players, Cam Wake. We ended up raising $1800 for charity just with that helmet alone. When you add that to the all the merch we sold and profit we made on the $70,000 worth of tickets we are going to be able to do a lot of great things with that money starting with a pretty sizeable donation to the Miami Dolphins Foundation.

It’s really weird that the thing I have been most successful at in life is running a pro football fan club but here we are. I am actually headed to Florida in just over a week to see the Dolphins play and make that Miami Dolphins Foundation donation but I am gonna fly into Orlando or Tampa and make my way down to Miami with a nude model and shoot a bunch of weird photos and get tattooed and crash with a juggalo sideshow because my life is fucking insane.

Speaking of trips, I am headed to Detroit tomorrow to hang out with my lady friend Gia Paige. Hopefully I shall return with photos of her in abandoned urban ruins and even more photos of her tiny puppies. Gonna try and get an update ready to go before I leave so I can drop at least one more post on you before the weekend, but no promises.

Click here to see all the photos from the 2017 Dolfans NYC #MetLifeTakeover.

Ps. Yes, I know the Dolphins got embarrassed by the Jets and yes, I think it’s bullshit that the President of the United States is using is platform to tell black athletes to shut up, but don’t you think this post is long enough already?

A few times a year I do a post about the Miami Dolphins and you just have to deal with it. On Saturday my Dolfans NYC partner Michelle and I threw a massive event called the #MetLifeTakeover. We run the aforementioned NYC Miami Dolphins fan club Dolfans NYC and over the past 8 or so years we have turned it into the biggest Dolphins fan club in the country and raises tens of thousands of dollars for charity in the process. Our #MetLifeTakeover event has become one of the biggest events on any serious Dolphins fan calendar and we sell around 1000 tickets to the Dolphins @ Jets game every year.

This year the game was on a Saturday night so we did things a little differently. Instead of having a party the day before at our bar Slattery’s Midtown Pub we held a pre-tailgate party starting at noon. We got to Slattery’s around 10am to start setting up and I didn’t get home until around 2am. Long fucking day.

The Dolphins organization has been very supportive of our events and sent broadcaster and former Dolphin Joe Rose to film his show “Cup of Joe” live at our bar. Team vice-president and Dolphins legend Nat Moore came with him to co-host the show. Also one of my favorite players of all time, former CB Sam Madison came up and actually hung out with us all day and even sat in the cheap seats way up top with us. He tried to pay for his tickets but instead we talked him into hosting our #MetLifeTakeover video (coming soon!). It was pretty amazing.

The party was a lot of fun and we did a free raffle and then did a live auction and raised some money for charity. We also raised another $1500 selling raffle tickets to a team signed helmet that the Dolphins sent us. After merch sales all in all we raised close to $3500 not including the money we made throwing the actual event.

The tailgate didn’t go as smoothy as usual. Our normal DJ couldn’t make it and we ended up renting a PA and getting a friend of a friend of a friend to DJ and he apparently didn’t have the right cords and so I spent most of the tailgate trying to figure out how to make that work. Eventually we got some music playing but it was kinda a disaster. On top of that one of the 6 busses we rented broke down so we had to load about 50 people on to the already packed busses. The whole thing sort of killed me but fortunately everyone seemed to have a great time even if Michelle and I were super stressed out.

Thankfully we had some great sponsors again. AQUAHydrate provided a ton of water for the event and we went through a case of Sailor Jerry very quickly as the Sailor and hot apple cider drinks we made were a huge hit. Pabst Blue Ribbon actually came out to the event and passed out gloves that had cup holders in them so you can drink your PBR with incredible style and class. So thanks to all of those guys!

The game itself was fucking amazing. The first half was kinda close but the Dolphins destroyed the Jets in the third quarter scoring 3 TDs in a five minute span. I lost my voice quickly and we could easily be heard on TV cheering for the Dolphins. The NFL Network was joking about how loud we were and how many Dolphins were at the game. A bunch of players mentioned us and the Dolphins social media posted about us several times throughout the night and posted this video the next morning. It was all pretty fantastic.

Anyway, I know most of you guys don’t care about any of this but for those who do I took a handful of photos. Thanks again to PBR, AQUAHydrate and Sailor Jerry. Phins up.

Click here to see photos from Dolfans NYC’s 2016 #MetLifeTakeover.

It’s almost that time of the year again where I switch from misanthropic disaffected hipster photographer to bat shit crazy sports fan who spends hours a week screaming at a television and hugging strangers. People who meet me during the football off season often have no idea about my obsession so I guess it’s time to remind you.

I co-founded the New York City Miami Dolphins fan club, Dolfans NYC in 2008 with my friend Michelle. Together we have turned a group of about 30 Dolphins fans into the largest Dolphins fan club in the world and have raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity. We have filed paperwork to become a 501(c)(3) non-profit group and that should be official any week now.

We throw massive events every Sunday but our big event every year in both scope and outreach is the “Metlife Takeover” an event surrounding the Dolphins trip to New Jersey to play the New York Jets every year. We own the three largest group ticket purchases in MetLife Stadium history and two years ago brought 1200 Dolphins fans to the game.

This year, the Dolphins played their first pre-season game against the New York Giants so we threw a mini MetLife Takeover as just an excuse to see everyone and meet some new Dolphins fans.

Michelle has recently moved to Miami so it was just me planning this one and we just went ahead and let people get their own tickets. Fortunately for me I had a bunch of help from our crew who helped me out a ton and we set up a small tailgate. We had some burgers and beer and our signature inflatable palm tree cooler and we had a good time before the game and I ended up taking a handful of pictures which you now have to look at.

The game itself was pretty awful because preseason football is particularly terrible. But the Dolphins won and I got free tickets (thanks Justin!) and ended up sneaking down to the front row for the last quarter so it was a good time. Thanks to everyone for helping out and sorry to everyone who read this whole who isn’t actually a Dolphins fan… Now go look at a handful of photos from our tailgate!

Click here to see the photos from the Dolfans NYC mini Metlife Takeover when the Dolphins played the Giants in NJ.

One of the things I spent extra time on at this year’s Gathering of the Juggalos was the wrestling element. I have covered it in the past (I really enjoyed doing behind the scenes at Bloodymania 6) but it’s never been a main focus of my coverage. This year was a bit different because one of the guys covering the Gathering for the LA Weekly (Art Tavana) is a huge wrestling fan and that seemed like a good angle for me because mainstream press hasn’t really covered it and there are infinite wrestling fans out there.

One night we headed down to “Strangle Mania” which was the all hardcore Juggalo Championship Wrestling event. That means lots of barbed wire, thumbtacks and a lot of real blood. I didn’t stay all night and I didn’t really have an appropriate lens to cover wrestling but I got a few decent shots both back stage and in the ring.

The second night was our main focus. Former WWE legend Jeff Hardy was going to be part of the main event at “Bloodymainia” Which is like the Wrestlemania of the JCW. This is the big event of the year. Jeff is not only a pretty big star in wrestling but also happens to be kinda an eccentric guy who wears make up while he wrestles and also just happened to have made this amazing viral video called Final Deletion that was the talk of the wrestling world. He seemed like the perfect person to profile for this juggalo wrestling story.

Jeff is apparently a bit reclusive and doesn’t do a ton of interviews but fortunately for us I met Jeff’s sister in law Reby Hardy at the Gathering of the Juggalos a few years ago. The Gathering is a seriously bonding event and Reby and I have become pretty good Twitter friends. Her husband Matt Hardy is one half of the Hardy Boyz with Jeff and all three of them made Final Deletion. For those of you who care about wrestling all of this is probably super obvious but for everyone else it’s probably mildly confusing. Long story short, Reby hooked us up with Jeff and we got the interview.

Art and I drove out to the Columbus airport to interview Jeff (and his wife Beth) in their hotel room. They were super nice and it was actually a really fun interview. Listening to Jeff talk about wrestling made me kinda miss watching it. I was a pretty big fan in high school right around the time Jeff was huge and the Hardy Boyz were involved in one of my favorite matches of all time. It was great to talk about all that stuff and to find out that Jeff was only a couple years older than me when he was doing it.

Anyway, from there we all drove down to the Gathering. I took my rental car and they all drove in the car that JCW provided. We got there at pretty much the same time and Kevin Gill who runs the wrestling picked us up in a golf cart on the way in. Juggalos were freaking out about Jeff and he posed for picture after picture and signed autographs. I got to take photos of him trying out the ropes and working things out with a wrestler named Hero who was a huge fan of Jeff growing up. He told us later went back stage and cried he was so overwhelmed.

I got to shoot back stage at Bloodymania and of course I shot some of the matches. The event actually had some pretty amazing moments. My long time Gathering buddy Colt Cabana played his cop heel character and started yelling about Blue Lives Matter until a midget (he wanted to be called midget) named Swoggle who we had met earlier kicked the shit out of him which was great. There was also a pretty bloody hardcore match that ended with kinda an emotional passing the torch moment where JCW legend Pondo made everyone in the crowd chant for the other two wrestlers involved in the match.

But the real highlight of Bloodmania was actually a low light. Violent J’s best friend The Rude Boy is a JCW legend himself and was apparently diagnosed with dementia. He was inducted into the JCW Hall Of Fame and both he and Violent J gave speeches that had the entire crowd crying including myself. It was such a weird thing to be crying at a juggalo wrestling match. I was not expecting that. Rudy announced his retirement and the crowd went crazy for him and he finally made it back stage after several walks around the ring thanking fans.

Right before the final match Violent J came back out an announced that he was going to be wrestling for the first time in 8 years. He had been in WWE back in the day and was a wrestler in JCW before he gained a ton of weight and quit. He ended up losing something like 200 lbs in the last year and somehow not only wrestled, but wrestled well. It was impressive. But not only did he wrestle but he brought out 2 Tuff Tony and the Rude Boy for Rudy’s final match before retiring. The crowd went crazy again. The match ended with Rudy winning it but after it was all over Violent J did a moonsault which is essentially a black flip off the top rope. It was pretty fucking insane and I missed the shot because I thought the match was over.

The whole thing ended with the big three way JCW Championship match between Jeff Hardy, Kongo Kong and Willie Mack. The match was a bit of a mess because so many juggalos had thrown beers and Faygo at the ring and the ropes were wet. Jeff slipped on them and then moments later took a serious hit to the head from Willie Mack’s ass. Seriously. Apparently Jeff really hurt his neck in the process and I am fairly certain he was concussed as well because after the match was over he stayed after and just started breaking shit. I think he wanted to give the juggalos a show since he didn’t perform to his standards but it was a little weird and juggalos were reporting he was on drugs or something . Honestly he seemed fine after the match was over but I am sure he was really dazed after that hit. He told us his neck was killing him but otherwise he was good.

Anyway the day was a pretty cool experience for me because even though I don’t watch wrestling now I was really into it as a kid. I loved WWF Superstars when I was little and then again I got into it in the late 90s when the WCW/NWO storyline was warring with the Rock and Stone Cold and Degeneration X. It was a pretty awesome time for wrestling and the Hardy Boyz were the best tag team in the sport.

Now, if you made it this far it’s time to look at stuff.

Go read Art Tavana’s profile of Jeff Hard in the LA Weekly.

And then check out my photos from Juggalo Championship Wrestling at the Gathering of the Juggalos.

And finally click here to check out my photos of Jeff Hardy.

Here’s one of those posts where I talk about sports and no one cares because no one comes to this website to read about sports. But at least try to make it through the third paragraph because I am trying to help raise some money for a good cause. As you may know I am a big fan of two professional sports teams. I am both a big Miami Dolphins football fan and a Washington Capitals hockey fan. Currently the hockey playoffs are upon us and that means two things — 1) I ignore nearly everything else in my life and 2) I take part in a superstition that nearly guarantees I won’t have sex for a while: The playoff beard.

The idea behind the playoff beard is that it’s good luck to not shave during the playoffs. I realize that a fans superstition will not actually impact the game but I have been wearing the same socks during three consecutive Caps games and the are 3-0 so you can’t possibly argue with that.

Anyway, me and three hockey watching friends of mine are growing our beards as part of Beard-A-Thon in order to raise money for USA Warriors Ice Hockey. They are an organization that helps rehabilitate wounded veterans though hockey. It’s a really great cause and we are trying to raise $400 for it and we are almost there already. With your help we can blow past our goal.

Aside from raising money we also started a weird blog for our weird NYC Caps Crew. So far the site features articles from me, my friend Fatou who names her “Bae of the Game” and a game day journal from a stuffed bear that happens to be owned by our resident DJ Ky. There’s gonna be a lot of stuff over there soon but you don’t really care so I am just gonna stop talking about it.

Also, in hockey news today is the one year anniversary of that time that my friend’s car got fucked up at a hockey game and I wrote about it and then we ended up becoming a national news story. Yikes.

End of sports post. Will try and not post one of these for a bit but if the Caps keep winning* I may not be able to help myself.

*Don’t worry. The Capitals will no doubt crush me as they have done every year of my life.

Hi there. I have some stuff for you guys and I figured I could throw all of it in one post and use alliteration in the title to make it seem more like this post has a real purpose and not just a thinly disguised attempt to sell you more shit you don’t need. Let’s begin.

First up, I found 17 old Driven By Boredom t-shirts under my couch. These shirts were for DBB’s 8th anniversary back in 2009. Apparently I forgot they were there. I threw them up on Etsy last night and now there are only 12 left and honestly I might keep a couple of them so if you want one, you should do it soon. Just saying. ORDER NOW!

Next up… Remember my Arts zine? I am really proud of that thing. It features really lovely black and white portraits of some amazing artist friends of mine and a selection of their art work. It’s printed well, inexpensive and fairly collectable given it’s small edition and great collection of artist… but because it doesn’t have any nudity in it, no one bought it. Seriously, I have sold like 30 of them. All of my other zines have done great, but this one? Not so much. I have learned my lesson… Fuck art, more tits.

Anyway, at the Zine Friends release party for Arts I traded amazingly talented human Penelope Gazin a print of a tiny puppy on a giant butt for a bunch of 5″x7″ drawings of the art school test turtle on the cover of Arts. (Side note – that turtle has an actual name and that name is Tippy.) I am keeping one of the drawings because it was a drawing of a turtle vomiting at the site of my genitals which seemed important. But the other four turtles are now for sale with the zine! So get your own Penelope Gazin drawing now! Do it!

Lastly, tonight my Dolphins are playing in their first and only Monday Night Football game of the year. Seemed like a perfect occasion to debut the video from the 2015 #MetLifeTakeover. The Takeover is a massive tailgate party/group trip that my club Dolfans NYC organizes to MetLife Stadium when the Dolphins come up to play the Jets.

The game went very poorly for the Dolphins but we threw a hell of a party! We had  nearly 1000 people go with us and had a huge tailgate with live music, catered food and free drinks thanks to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Sailor Jerry rum and AquaHydrate water. We had the CEO and Vice-President of the Dolphins stop by the tailgate and even Ace Ventura showed up! Check out the video!

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/149079473[/vimeo]

I have thrown a lot of parties in my life and honestly most of them have been pretty successful. I started out booking punk bands in highs school before moving on to managing bands and helping throw the occasional dance party. When I moved to NYC I decided there was too much competition to spend that kinda energy but I have thrown a couple parties a year for the last decade or so anyway. Out of the probably hundreds of events I have thrown or helped thrown I can only think of a handful that were disasters so I think over all I have had a pretty solid party throwing career.

All that being said, nothing compares to the #MetLifeTakeover.

For the last five or six years my Dolfans NYC partner Michelle and I have been throwing massive group trips to the Dolphins/ Jets game every year when the Dolphins come up to New Jersey. It really started with a loosely organized group in 2010 before getting a pretty serious group of about 70 in 2011. In 2012 the name #MetLifeTakeover was born and things really took off with about 200 people gathered the day before Hurricane Sandy hit. In 2013 the Jets ticket sales people took notice and actually started helping us organize a much bigger purchase when we had 750 people sitting together!

Last year we hit our all time record with 1200 Dolphins fans sitting together across four sections. This year we only had 900 because of the Thanksgiving holiday (Okay, the real reason is because the Dolphins are terrible) but we threw our biggest tailgate party yet with catered food, drink sponsors and music care of DJ Tropic and Solo D. We also threw a party the day before the event at our bar Slattery’s and raised about $5000 for charity over the two days not including the money we made from ticket sales.

The Dolphins got embarrassed on the field (although our record is still pretty good as our last loss in New Jersey came in 2o11) but we had a hell of a time off it and even at the end of the game you could still hear us loud an clear when the Dolphins scored a garbage time touchdown with 5 seconds left.

Aside from the game everything was amazing and I actually think you might dig looking at the photos even if you don’t care about sports. Fandom is always fun to lurk. But before I get to that I just wanted to thank our sponsors Pabst Blue Ribbon, Sailor Jerry & AquaHydrate. Taking photos of drunk people for a living sometimes has it’s benefits and getting lot of free booze (and water!) is one of them. Thanks guys!

Now click here to see all the photos from the 2015 Dolfans NYC #MetLifeTakeover and Pre-party!

Hey it’s Monday and after I spent 3 days at the NY Art Book Fair and yesterday dealing with the pain that is my Miami Dolphins fandom it’s time to start fresh with a new week. It’s possible I ate two entire pizzas last night and today it’s time to catch up on a bunch of work and perhaps force myself to eat a salad.

With that in mind, let’s drop a bunch of stuff on you real quick.  Got some new naked photos, some weird music and of course I gotta try and sell you some zines again. Let’s start with the zines…

I spent Thursday night and most of Friday and Saturday at the New York Art Book Fair. As both a creator and consumer of photo books the NY Art Book Fair is pretty much my favorite thing ever. I get to look at so much rad shit, buy a bunch of rare books and zines and hopefully make more money than I spend. It’s also a good networking opportunity. Last year I met Mike Krim who runs Paper Work NYC and this year he let me sell my stuff at his booth. Last year I met fucked up illustrators Matt Crabe and Wizard Skull and this year I am just finishing a zine collaboration with them and a bunch of other artists many of whom I ran into at the book fair. Oh, did I mention that there are so many real cute girls there who also make really cool shit? What could be better than that?

The zine fair went pretty awesome and I actually stayed real close to my budget a picked up some stuff that I am really happy with. I also think I sold a bunch of stuff, I don’t have the exact totals but I think I made more than I spent so high five. But I do know I have some copies of my new zine Same Old City left still so they are now for sale in my Etsy store and will ship pretty much right away. I just mailed off all the pre orders. So get you copy now!

Click here to get Same Old City regular edition!

Click here to get Same Old City limited edition with print!

Next up, let’s talk babes. A really long time ago I shot my friend Caitlin. She had done some modeling for her roommates art projects but I was the first person to photograph her professionally. We took a bunch of photos and even though she’s kinda awkward it was a good kinda awkward and I think we got some really pretty photos. I posted a few to my Tumblr and stuff and then totally forgot about the set. Last week I found the set and realized I had never posted it. It had been a while so I hit her up about the photos and she didn’t really want them on my website which is totally fair. I love shooting new models, but there’s always a risk that they are gonna change their mind about the photos and I always respect that even though it can be really disappointing. Luckily we came to a compromise. I told her I wouldn’t post any more of the nude ones on my site, but she said I could publish them to Girls of Driven By Boredom. That way the images aren’t just floating about the internet for free and you gotta at least spend some money to see them. Seems like a reasonable compromise.

Click here to sign up for Girls Of Driven By Boredom to see an exclusive set of Caitlin.

The last thing in this way too long post is a weird one. I got a bunch of my Miami Dolphins vinyl collection online. The Dolphins may have been embarrassed yesterday but I will never be embarrassed by my collection of some of the weirdest records to ever be released. I have what I assume is the world’s largest collection of Miami Dolphins themed vinyl and my plan is to eventually build a website with all of my collection on it but for now I started a Sound Cloud with just the singles. If you are a fan of football, record collecting or just absurd 70s and 80s nostalgia you need to check this out.

Click here to listen to a bunch of my weird Miami Dolphins record collection.