When I posted the photos I took from Roxbury, Queens one month after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast I mentioned that I would be posting even more devastating photos later in the week. Last November when I visited Roxbury with Camille Dodero our second stop was Breezy Point, Queens. Breezy Point is a small isolated community at the far end of the Rockaways between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. When Sandy hit it was completely flooded. During the storm a fire broke out and because of the storm no one could get to it to put it out. 111 homes were completely destroyed and of course it received major media coverage all over the world.

A month after the storm most of the media was gone. We met people with homes still standing just feet from where their neighbors lost everything. Their homes were flooded, without power and heat and in some cases slightly melted because of the fire. These people felt so lucky to even have a home and even luckier to still be alive. We met people who were still living in their heat free homes in late November despite everything. Not to sound corny but it really was a testament to the human spirit. It was hard not to be inspired by these people, but at the same time the trip was absolutely devastating. I walked around the rubble of the 111 houses and just tried to imagine what I would do if everything I owned was gone.

Since my last post on Roxbury another tragedy has hit this country. Tornados in Oklahoma have left many people homeless and in the same predicament as the residents of Breezy Point. Before you donate to the Red Cross to help the people suffering in Oklahoma think about some things I learned while talking to people from Roxbury and Breezy Point as well as Red Cross workers themselves. The Red Cross is very limited in what they can do for people. They work with FEMA but they can only provide immediate shelter, food and blood for people. They can’t help people rebuild their lives.

Everyone I talked to in Roxbury and Breezy Point recommended donating to Habitat for Humanity. They were on the ground almost immediately helping people gut and rebuild their homes. In this time of need in Oklahoma I would imagine that Habitat would be the ideal charity to support.

I would also like to point out that their is still a lot of work to be done in New York and New Jersey months after hurricane Sandy. If you would like to know how you can help visit the Hurricane Sandy Relief Foundation.

Now, please click here and check out the heartbreaking photos I took in Breezy Point, Queens one month after Hurricane Sandy.

In late November of last year I traveled to Roxbury and Breezy Point Queens with my former Village Voice partner in crime Camille Dodero to do a story for Gawker about the hurricane Sandy relief efforts. Only a month after the storm it seemed to us that people had almost forgotten about the complete devastation that occurred just a short drive from Manhattan. The city was without power and there was a lot of damage south of midtown but things were back to normal relatively quickly. I really wanted to see what was happening for myself and Camille and I spent a devastating  meeting with survivors and touring wreckage.

For whatever reason the article never ran and these photos just sat on my hard drive. I knew that I wanted people to see these images but part of me wanted to find a better place to publish them than my website, but something happened recently… I had a really bad day. I had a shoot get canceled, lost a $1000 gig, found out the Village Voice was falling apart, found out I was getting paid $400 less than I thought for a previous gig and my favorite hockey team got bounced from the playoffs later that night. During that 24 hours of bullshit for some reason I kept thinking about the people I met when I was in Roxbury and Breezy Point.

I wondered about them and thought about how much worse things could be for me. I also thought about how resilient people are and how even after losing everything people just carried on as best as they could. I met people still living in their flooded, heat free, electricity free shell of a home who just were just thankful their house wasn’t 20 feet closer to the fire that wiped out 111 homes in Breezy Point. In fact everyone I met would point to someone who had it worse.

I did fundraiser through the Dolfans NYC group that I run and I interviewed several members of our group. To a letter each one of them told me their horror stories about flooding and loss of power and then they would point to another Dofans NYC member who had it worse and how they were the lucky ones. I talked to a friend who lost his vacation home and was just happy it wasn’t his actual home. I talked to someone who lost everything on his first two floors who was just happy to still have a home. When I got to Roxbury they just were happy not to be living a mile down the peninsula. I talked to people in Breezy glad to still have a home and I talked to people in Breezy who had nothing who were just glad to be alive. It was crushing and inspiring.

I did a diservice to these people by not publishing these images and I want to apologize and thank them for their time. I especially want to thank the fireman who took us on a tour of Roxbury. It was such a small community and everyone knew everyone so he could point to each house and tell us a story about the people who lived there. Roxbury FD were the first responders in Breezy Point because the Breezy FD had been evacuated.

I am going to split these photos up into two sections. The first section is from Roxbury. The photos include shots from the Breezy Point Co-Op who had organized donations for the community, photos from the Roxbury Fire Department station and our tour of Roxbury. Later this week I will be posting photos from Breezy Point and the heart breaking devastation there.

But remember people still need help. Hurricane Sandy left hundreds of people without homes. If you want to find out how you can help check out the FEMA Sandy Website. And be thankful for your life no matter how bad it gets… humans can endure almost anything. We are amazing creatures.

Click here to see all the photos of Roxbury Queens one month after Hurricane Sandy.

Last night I decided to head down to the brand new Slipper Room to watch my man Barry Obama put a licking on Mitt Romney while comedians entertained me for just five dollars that all went to hurricane relief. This is America at it’s finest. The entire six years I have lived in NYC I have been going to my friend Seth Herzog’s weekly comedy show Sweet. As it happens on Tuesday Seth has done a lot of political themed nights like Super Tuesday Sweet and election watching Sweets. Always a good time because nothing is better than watching comedians make fun of our insane political process.

Last night Seth had his mom, who I love dearly, co-host. She was actually one of the funnier co-hosts he’s had and as always it got really awkward. Seth brought out Jordan Carlos doing a great Barack Obama impression. Rob Cantrell was up next and told a story about how he saw Run DMC, Whodini, Grandmaster Flash and the Fat Boys in 1986. It was hilarious and all but I was mostly just thinking about how jealous I was. Holy shit that would have been an epic show. Finally Driven By Boredom regular Hannibal Buress showed up and killed it as always.

After the jokes, shit got serious as we watched election results. Thanks to my near obsession with Nate Silver I knew Obama had it sealed up as soon as they called Wisconsin so I headed home early and by the time I got to my apartment CNN had called the election for Barack. I spent the rest of the night making fun of republicans on Twitter and then got an email about how my flight to Miami tomorrow got upgraded to first class. It was a fucking perfect day. God bless America.

Click here to see all the photos from the Sweet Election Party Special at The Slipper Room.

Last night as Hurricane Sandy started battering New York I stayed in my apartment waiting til the power went out. My internet went down pretty quickly but the lights stayed on and I just kept refreshing Twitter on my phone seeing the horrible things that were happening outside. As things got worse my joking Sandy Tweets became outrage and sadness as I saw photos of the Lower East Side under water. The combination of anger and photographic jealousy got the better of me and I decided I had to do something. I needed to help people or take photos or both. I really didn’t know what to do. I just put on a rain coat, grabbed my camera and walked outside.

My neighborhood in Brooklyn was empty but there wasn’t much noticeable damage. I started walking towards the Williamsburg Waterfront thinking maybe there was something I could do there where things might be worse. I promised my girlfriend I wouldn’t walk over the Williamsburg Bridge but when I got to the bridge something came over me and I just started walking over it. As I got to the middle of the bridge it went from the well lit bridge I have walked over a dozen times to pitch blackness once I reached the Manhattan side. Hurricane winds nearly lifted me up in the air as I kept one hand on the railing hoping I wasn’t going to be thrown onto the subway tracks. With a view of a half dark Manhattan and not much else I was half terrified and half exhilarated and I kept walking. At one point I was nearly scared to death when I came upon a couple actually having sex on the bridge. They must have heard me because they were completely still on the wrong side of the guardrail obviously hoping I wouldn’t notice them in the blackness. I didn’t until they were about a foot away from me. I yelled “Holy shit you guys scared me!” and then I told them to have fun and kept walking on towards the city.

When I got over the bridge there were cops everywhere blocking traffic. I slipped passed the barricades and darted up Clinton Street managing not to be seen by any cops. I didn’t want to get turned around before I saw the damage.  Walking up Clinton Street in the dark was one of the wildest moments of my life. It was completely vacated and totally black except for the police lights behind and in front of me. I walked the few blocks to Houston Street and didn’t see anyone except what I am 99% was a grafitti writer putting in work in an empty city. I climbed over a fallen tree to get to Houston. I stood there on the corner of Houston and Clinton for a minute, checked my phone and decided what to do. I wanted to go to the water but it was so dark I knew I wouldn’t be able to take any photos of it, but if I walked towards the police lights over on Ave A, I figured I would be told to get out of the evacuated areas. Eventually I decided to walk up Ave B, then over to C and then eventually over to Avenue D.

For those that don’t live in New York, Alphabet City used to be a dangerous area, but it’s pretty gentrified and safe to a point. When you reach “Avenue Dead” as they used to call it you meet with a series of housing projects that are still pretty dangerous. I used to date a girl who lived on the corner of D and 4th street and we would see people dealing drugs openly on her corner nightly. No one should be afraid to walk around there, but let’s just say I normally wouldn’t walk around there with a $3000 camera in my hand… much less at night, in pitch black darkness. Somewhere in my mind I fancy myself a war photographer or something instead of a second rate pornographer/ hipster party photographer so I decided I needed to see the flood and the only place it was still flooded was in the projects. As I walked north I saw more and more water.

Once I got to Avenue C I realized that most of it had been flooded. Cars were up on curbs and were steamed up from all the water inside them but the water had receded so it wasn’t until I got to Avenue D that I saw any actual flooding. The Jacob Riis projects were partially underwater. By this time I realized the cops weren’t going to stop me from wondering around in the evacuated zone so I tried to use their lights to take photos of the flooding. It wasn’t really working so I walked all the way into the projects and over to where the projects met the FDR freeway. The FDR was closed and mostly underwater. I started to take photos at 6400 ISO at an 1.4 f-stop and holding as still as I could to reduce the shaking from a long exposure. I got a couple okay shots but it started pouring so I put my camera away before it got destroyed. As I walked back towards Ave C I realized there were a bunch of people still living in the projects. I saw candles in the window and a few people walking around. They refused to leave despite the evacuation and four feet of water.

I walked up Ave C towards 14th street and around 13th I ran into several feet of water. I waded in up to my knees because I wanted to get shots of the Con Edison trucks that had floated away from the power plant on 14th and C. I spent a long time wading around 14th and C trying to get shots. I managed to shoot some stuff at 6400 ISO at 1.4 at about 1/8th of a second by holding myself still against a railing and a car and a parking meeter. It is really amazing what today’s digital cameras can do. Making the total blackness of a powerless New York look like daylight is something cameras only a couple years ago couldn’t possibly do. All the light in those shots comes from the sky, police lights several blocks away and one car light that was parked outside the power plant.

I continued my walk West on 14th street amazed how I didn’t recognize anything. I have walked 14th street between B and 1st Ave probably 100 times and it felt like I had never been there before. Stuy Town was black except for the cops and Con Ed trucks. I know I keep repeating myself but the total darkness of the city was so terrifying and magical that I can’t express the idea enough. When I got to the corner of 1st and 14th I looked down into the L Train platform thinking how much I wished it was open. I had been walking for hours and was soaking wet and I was ready to quit. It was at that moment when I saw an actual cab speed by the Papaya Dog and over to Beth Israel hospital and I wondered if he was working or just helping out at the hospital.

I walked over to 2nd ave and started walking down back towards the Williamsburg Bridge and back to Brooklyn. More people were out at this point. There were a few cars, a group of hipsters on bikes, a few security guards doing the Gangnam Style dance outside the NY Eye & Ear Infirmary.  On 2nd and 9th I met two guys who were keeping their bodega open despite the lack of power. They were the only store I saw open in Manhattan and they had pulled two cars up to the door, parked horizontally, with their headlights turned on so the bodega clerks could see what they were doing. I talked to them for a while and continued on down 2nd. At some point I saw another cab and I hailed him. I asked him if he was actually working and if the Williamsburg Bridge had been reopened. He told me it was still closed but he would take me to the bridge for $5. I was feeling pretty miserable so I took him up on his offer and walked back over the bridge to Brooklyn.

Three and a half hours after I left my apartment I made it home. I somehow ended up taking 350 photos, but most of them were complete shit. Taking photos without a flash in total darkness is harder than it seems… okay maybe it’s exactly as hard as it seems. I was left with about five photos I was mostly happy with and a bunch more spooky images that are at least interesting to look at. I didn’t help anyone, the photos I took were disappointing and I probably put myself in more harms way than I needed to, but I don’t regret the trip in the slightest. I will never forget those three hours last night and I am really glad that I was dumb enough to go outside and go on my little hurricane Sandy adventure.

I was very fortunate that the worst thing to happen to me was that my internet went down for a few hours, but there are tons of people suffering today. It’s going to be months before New York City recovers and probably a lot longer before a lot of the east cost gets back to where they were before the storm. I hope anyone who lives in an affected area can help out. If you can’t help physically you can always donate some money. I recommend the American Red Cross and I am going to be launching a fundraiser this week through Dolfans NYC hoping to raise at least $1000 to donate to the Greater New York Red Cross. You can text “Red Cross” to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross right now.

Anyway, sorry for the long post but I had to write this story down somewhere. Again, the pictures aren’t fantastic but I think they are probably worth looking at anyway.

Click here to see all my pictures from my Hurricane Sandy adventure.

I was still awake at 6AM this morning and I decided I would head down to #S17, the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street protest. I got there just after 7 and saw about a dozen people get arrested by 8. About an hour later I decided I should come home and upload the photos and try to get some sleep. I have been following the Occupy movement since before it even started and I honestly haven’t photographed nearly as much of it as I would have liked. The problem with the movement is that while I agree with a lot of it, there are so many too far left radical elements that make it hard to take it seriously. I watched news reporters interview the craziest of people and personally I think things like steam punk marching bands help trivialize important issues. So many people could get on board with this movement if the most visible elements of it weren’t so out there. Still, I am glad there is at least some at least mildly organized radical left answer to the Tea Party.

Whatever the case my experience yesterday was quite intense and seeing so many people including former Bishop George Packard willingly get arrested to promote something so important to them was very powerful. To me images like that are a lot more meaningful than people in costumes yelling about anarchy.

Click here to see all the photos from #S17 – the Occupy Wall Street anniversary resistance.

The big news out of the Gathering of the Juggalos is that the Insane Clown Posse is going to sue the F.B.I. I am sure people read some Tweets or saw a headline and laughed and went on with their day, but the truth is this is some weirdly serious shit. The F.B.I. added juggalos to their gang watch list. When I read about that before I kept thinking how stupid that shit was, but in reality it has had some serious impact on peoples lives. Make fun of juggalos all you want but they are fucking people with families and jobs and they are being fucked with on levels I could never imagine.

ICP had a big seminar where they announced the news. They told everyone about new shows they are doing and a couple of documentaries and all the fun stuff going on with ICP. And then at the end they started talking about how the F.B.I. is fucking up their business and their fans. Being on this watch list means ICP shows are gang activities. If they can find a venue to host one of their shows they have to pay extra insurance on it. Their merch is considered gang gear and can be confiscated. Many stores like Hot Topic have stopped selling their stuff. But on a serious, human rights violation, fascist level peoples lives are being fucked with. People are showing up at their parole officers with a little hatchet necklace on and having their paroles violated. Juggalos are getting pulled over 2-3 times a week for having ICP stickers on their car. Soldiers are being dishonorably discharged for having ICP CDs. ICP decided the only way to fight the law was to use the law and they announced they are suing the F.B.I.

After the announcement the seminar tent was electric. People stood up and cheered. It was honestly touching. I felt like I was in the middle of a movie where someone makes this big speech that changes the course of a war or something. It was sort of amazing. ICP introduced one of their lawyers, Farris Haddad, who was actually a juggalo growing up. And he set up a trailer where any juggalos could come tell him their stories. I became friends with Farris over the next few days and he told me some amazing and sad stories about things happening to these people.

After the announcement I went over to Farris’ trailer and talked to some of the juggalos waiting outside. I heard a story of someone who got sent to prison because they had violated their parole by associating with gang members by friending a juggalo on Facebook. I talked to a guy who had been fired from his job in private security for coming to the Gathering. I talked to people who had lost custody of their kids over this and people who had been arrested and had their tattoos documented and added to gang lists. My friend Kev Buc who came to the Gathering with me told me that he was pulled over once for something little and they photographed all his tattoos and added him to some gang list because he has a Twiztid tattoo. Kev is not some redneck drug dealer or something. He runs Mishka’s NYC flagship store and blogs. I assure you he is not a gangster.

Long story short this juggalos as a gang thing is bullshit. They are just kids who like a band. A lot of these people sell drugs and probably do some dumb shit and end up getting arrested, but that’s just cause the music is popular with poor uneducated kids, but this shit is clearly not organized and them committing crimes has nothing to do with ICP. So I really hope ICP wins and gets juggalos off the F.B.I. gang list.

If you have been fucked with by the cops because you are a juggalo go to juggalosfightback.com. If you want to know more better written, better researched info about all of this read my juggalo anthropology partner in crime Camile Dodero’s interview with ICP on the Village Voice.

I also posted the video of the announcement below the photos. I am in it a lot. At one point you can see me picking my nose which is not a good look but in my defense that place is super dusty and all my boogers looked like rocks.

Now click here to see all my pictures from the Insane Clown Posse’s announcement that they are going to sue the F.B.I.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwyFjrp8lRY[/youtube]

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

The Occupy Wall Street Protest reached day 11 yesterday and I finally headed down to Liberty Park in the finantial district to find out what was going on. If you are somehow now aware of the protest it is a couple hundred people living in a park in Wall Street who are protesting all sorts of different things.  There have been a bunch of arrests and problems that have made national news and a bunch of celebrities showing up to offer kind words to the protesters living there.

As someone who is left leaning politically and as a punk rock youth would probably living down there with them I generally support a lot of what is going on.  That being said there is no real focus and it is so overly PC and radically leftist so I don’t think it is going to attract a much bigger following than is currently down there. I think a lot of people support Wall Street reforms and the end of tax breaks for the wealthy but 99% of those people do not want to join a fucking drum circle. Everyone is so nice down there but it’s so nice that it’s almost condescending. Still, there is a lot of great stuff going on there and I think it is worth supporting these people and it’s about time there is a wildly left swinging answer to the Tea Party.

One of the highlights of my trip down there was Dr. Cornel West showing up. He spoke to reporters around 6PM and then stayed down there talking to everyone and just hugging people. That dude is so bad ass and at 7PM he spoke to everyone during one of the public town hall meetings Occupy Wall Street holds daily. I stuck around to hear him speak and then I had to get out of there when they started giving everyone a lecture about what hand signals to use during a meeting in order to be oh so respectful to everyone. I am sure it is useful to organize that many people but it also makes you just wanna rip some hippies dreadlocks off.

Anyway, I got a few nice shots and met some really interesting people standing up and fighting for what they believe in and you have to respect the hell out of that if nothing else.

Click here to see all my pictures from Day 11 of Occupy Wall Street. And click here to find out more info or make a donation to help support the protest.

On September 11th 2001 I was living in Alexandria, VA a suburb of Washington, DC.  I had taken a semester off college and I was living at home.  My parents woke me up to tell me that someone had bombed the World Trade Center.  My father had just canceled a business meeting in NYC that would have put him less than a block from the WTC. I got out of bed and came into their room about the time the second plane hit. About 30 minutes later a third plane hit the Pentagon in Arlington, VA just a few miles from my parents house.  At some point planes were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base and the sonic boom from the jets shook our entire house.  It was absolutely terrifying.  That night I went out with one of my best friends and we watched the Pentagon from a hill overlooking the city.  There were probably 100 people there and I don’t think anyone said a word.  This moment was extremely powerful and traumatic for me and I certainly will never forget that day.

But I didn’t live in NYC.  I didn’t have any family or friends die that day.  I didn’t have ash rain down on me. I didn’t have to pull anyone out of a burning building. I didn’t have to have my entire neighborhood quarantined.  I didn’t watch the sky fill up with smoke as everyone around me contemplated the end of the world.  2000 people from my community weren’t all murdered on the same day. As scary as it was living in DC on September 11th, it doesn’t compare to the emotions nearly every single person living in NYC in 2001 went through that day.

So when the news hit that Osama Bin Laden had been finally killed I knew that whatever emotions I was feeling were magnified ten fold by millions of people living in the city I now call home.  I watched the news for about an hour and then grabbed my cameras and headed down to Ground Zero. There was a party down there to say the least.  I stayed for hours and witnessed so many different feelings. People were singing and screaming and crying and drinking.  Firemen walked around remembering their brothers who had been killed saving lives.  Frat boys drank beers and chanted “Fuck Bin Laden”.  Hipsters brought out boom boxes and sang country songs about America. Marines carried flags and got hugged by everyone. The Fat Jew and the Hipster Grifter was there, and so was Dan Choi. People were climbing anything they could find so they could wave American flags high above the crowd.  I saw Muslims, Hasidic Jews, Sikhs and Christians all come together to celebrate this moment and finally get some closure. People crowd surfed and bag pipes played Amazing Grace while everyone sang along. It was an amazing moment.

I can’t say too much more about all this. I was just really glad to be there and be part of this city and this countries healing after the attacks 10 years ago. My Twitter feed has filled with Osama jokes and while I rarely think anything is in poor taste, I just can’t find myself contributing to that. This moment is just too important.

Click here too see all my photos from the celebration of the death of Osama Bin Laden at Ground Zero.

I got a chance to cover Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear for the Village Voice… and that meant press access. I went down there with my brother and two friends and we got there more than an hour before the rally started and they couldn’t get anywhere near the stage. I on the other hand got to hang out in a press area that while still awkwardly far from the stage, was still a pretty fantastic seat to watch history.

This was an historic event. The crowds dwarfed Glenn Beck’s rally and the left’s answer to the Beck rally. People came together from every age range and every race. It was the most peaceful rally I have ever attended and back in my punk rock days living in DC I attended a lot of damn rallies. The Rally was star studded and a lot of interesting people were in the crowd but I think the most important part of the day was the message.  After all the music and the comedy Jon Stewart addressed the crowd with complete earnestness that might be the best speech I have heard since Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. If you haven’t heard it yet click here to do just that.

Anyway, the convention has been talked about ad nauseum and you can figure out who was there by checking out any national media source so I won’t bore you with the details you can find anywhere.  But I did really enjoy the Cat Stevens Vs Ozzy Osbourne Peace Train Vs Crazy Train battle.  It was really amazing to see those guys share a stage. Unfortunately the photographers were cycling to the front of the stage throughout the event so during that performance I was about 100 feet from the stage and couldn’t get the shots I wanted. That being said I got some fantastic shots throughout the event.

So without further ado, please click here to see all the pictures from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear on the National Mall in my home town of Washington, DC.