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. 

In 2014 I was in LA and I took a ton of photos. On one specific day I photographed three models, including Skin Diamond. I had been friends with Skin for several years at this point, and we had done a mini shoot the year before at AVN but we had never shot one on one. I went over to her place and I think we ended up going to the grocery store, because I have a photo of her flashing me in a Trader Joe’s elevator or some reason, but I really don’t even remember that day. What I do remember is that it was my third shoot of the day, and that’s why you are just seeing these photos now, eight years later. 

Eight years ago I didn’t use photoshop at all. These days, just due to how my current camera sensor works, I basically do some very minimal leveling stuff and some occasional color correction, but I am very bad at it. In 2014 I was even worse. When we shot these, it was night time so there was no light except the natural light of her room and when I got the photos back they looked terrible. I remember talking to a photographer friend of mine about it and she offered to color correct them for me so I sent her the photos and then she just never did it and months went by and I forgot about them, which brings me to reason #2 for their delay. These photos were in a folder with two other models photos, so when I was looking for unpublished work, I saw that I had published the two other women’s sets, and didn’t see the Skin photos because the folder name was too long. It was so dumb. 

So fast forward to 2022 and I am going through my old 35mm images for both my OnlyFans and my new Vintage DBB instagram account and I came across that photo of skin flashing me in Trader Joe’s. I suddenly remembered I had this unpublished shoot with her, I went back and found it and tried my best to make these photos look halfway decent. I failed, but Skin is so hot that it absolutely doesn’t matter. I think you are going to dig these photos a lot. 

Now we get to the next issue, which is my website gallery system is still broken. The problem is, I don’t actually know how to fix it, and this website hasn’t been updated since 2008 and I hate it and I just want to maybe scrap the whole thing and start over but I don’t have the money to pay someone to build me a new site, so we are just in a holding pattern. I was just using Flickr as a temporary gallery solution but Flickr doesn’t like nudity anymore so these photos are exclusive to my pay site. I know that sucks, because I like giving you mostly free nudes and then paywalling the really NSFW stuff but, my pay sites are really cheap and they are pretty much paying my rent while I figure out what to do with my life with a disability that I worry is maybe permanent, because none of the physical therapy has helped.  So yeah, these photos are very NSFW because I was shooting for Hustler at the time and I would have pitched these to them but for the whole never getting edited thing, so they are more sexual than I would shoot for my personal work. 

Now click here to see the unpublished photos of Skin Diamond from 2014 and many, many more NSFW photos. 

Not sure if you noticed but my life has changed significantly in the last few years. I am injured and wifed up and spending more of my time looking back at old images than making new ones. Don’t worry, I got plenty more to shoot, but I am not exactly upset with my new middle aged life. That’s why instead of bringing you some crazy Halloween party photos, I got some photos of pumpkins carved into art taken in upstate New York where I went with my girlfriend so we could drink hot apple cider and eat apple cider donuts and buy a new magnet to add to our fridge. It was great. 

I actually had no idea what we were going to see. My girlfriend just told me to bring my camera, so I did and now because of it, you guys get to see a bunch of photo of pumpkins. The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze happens every year in the Hudson Valley in upstate NY at Van Cortlandt Manor. It’s about an hour from us in Brooklyn. It’s honestly insane what they can do with pumpkins. A bunch of stuff was carved into fake pumpkins that I am guessing they reuse from year to year but my girlfriend went a few years ago and she said most of it was different. A lot of the pumpkins are real though and were barely showing signs of age. It’s all very impressive. I particularly enjoyed the MoPA (Museum of Pumpkin Art) where they had art by Koons and Calder and Warhol and many more made out of pumpkins.

This is a pretty quick update, but wanted to drop a few links on you. First of all, I have started a new Instagram account. I told you I was looking back at old images, it’s because I started @VintageDBB, a selection of my party photos from 2006-2012. Most of the stuff I am posting right now is from 2007 but I am working my way forward. I post several times a day. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I had to do a new Juggalo NFT drop for Halloween since spooky season is year around for psychopathic clowns. Okay, that’s it. On to the photos!

Click here to see my photos from the 2022 Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor.

I realize that two Miami Dolphins themed updates in a row is not what you are looking for from me, but it’s just a coincidence. Our video from our event last year came out like 10 months late and now I have new photos from you from last weekend so here we are with back to back posts about Dolfans NYC, the charity I helped found around watching football games. 

The main event of the year is the #MetLifeTakeover, a gathering of Dolphins fans centered around the Dolphins annual trip to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to play the Jets. We do a party the night before the game and then we throw a huge tailgate party and we organize big blocks of seats so everyone can watch the game together. This year we had our biggest year yet with over 1400 people sitting together. 

During the two day event we did a series of raffles and fundraisers and ended up raising close to $7000 for charity and that doesn’t include the money we make off the event and the merch we sell. This year we have already donated over $10,000 to different causes. It’s honestly one of my favorite things I do if life, even if the Dolphins cause me so much pain. 

I don’t need to go on an on about this but you can look at some photos if you want. I still haven’t fixed my site because I don’t know how to fix it so we are stuck with Flickr, and since I already put these on the Dolfans NYC Flickr I am just gonna link to that gallery. 

These pictures aren’t my finest work because I was throwing a massive event while I was taking them, and just shot some stuff here and there, but it’s still pretty exciting to see how many people showed up to a tailgate in New Jersey.

Click here to see the photos from the 2022 #MetLifeTakeover.

I haven’t updated this site in a minute and I figured it was time to do that. I don’t know how much I have talked about my girlfriend moving in and me moving to a new studio but it’s consumed my whole life and when you add into that my back injury and physical therapy and a few trips to visit my family, I don’t have a lot of content to give you guys. Good news is that once this office is up and running I hope to get a lot more done and be way more productive. 

That’s not to say I haven’t been shooting and planning. I am working on a project that is going to span 15 years of my career and include a ton of new work as well. I have shot about 10 rolls of film for it and I have a lot more planned. The project will be released as a web3/NFT situation, but it isn’t about using that to make money, it’s about using the technology to organize and preserve work in an interesting way. I don’t want to say too much about it, but you won’t have to care anything about web3 to enjoy it. The blockchain is just the medium. But yeah, not really important because it’s a long way away but I just wanted you to know that I am working on something significant.  I am also have a new zine in the works, but it’s been in the works since like 2019 and still isn’t out so it’s probably not worth mentioning. 

If you do want to get a sneak peak at the new project you can sponsor a roll of film and see one of the rolls I have shot recently before anyone else and get a print of your favorite shot on the roll. 

Lastly I gotta mention the thing that’s taking up a ton of my time right now and that’s the Miami Dolphins. I know, I know. But seriously they are actually maybe good this year?  As you may know, I co-run Dolfans NYC the NYC Dolphins fan club and we throw this massive event every year when the Jets play the Dolphins in New Jersey and we raise thousands for charity in the process. It’s pretty amazing. This year we have sold nearly 1300 tickets to the game, all sitting together, surpassing our record for most people ever. 

We finally put together a recap video from last year, and I always share them with you guys, so I figured I would do the same for this one, but I just wanted to update you guys a little on everything that was going on since most of you don’t care about the Dolphins. Still, I think the video is worth a watch. Enjoy!

I can’t believe this is my final Gathering of the Juggalos post this year. I don’t know what you guys are going to do with your lives now, but I am sure we can figure it out together. The last day my back was really killing me and I had a friend show up so it was my least productive day at the festival but I still have 100 photos for you and we can do a little wrap up of all my content from my 12th trip to Juggalo Island.

I got down to the Legend Valley campgrounds in the middle of the afternoon, but I spent probably my first hour there just sitting on a rock. I really pushed myself the day before and my back was really hurting. I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it. One of the other photographers came by and told me the Miss Juggalette pageant was happening in a few minutes and as much as I hate shooting in that tent, it seemed like something I could do without standing up. I didn’t shoot a ton of it, I got there late and I left early, but the stuff I did see will haunt me forever. The talent contest involved everything from spoken word poetry to gymnastics to putting safety pins on their vagina to making themselves squirt on the stage with an umbrella to singing and riding a unicycle. A well rounded bunch for sure. Also one of my favorite parts was the juggalette who did the poetry decided to cover herself in ranch dressing during the swimwear competition. The photos are WAY too NSFW to post on here so you can see them all on Girls of Driven By Boredom. I posted a few here for free so you can get a little taste, but yeah you need to check that site for the crazy ones. There’s a couple video clips on my OnlyFans as well. 

After the Miss Juggalette contest I met up with my friend Roach who was in town. I hadn’t seen her in a minute and it’s always great to hang out with people when they experience the insanity of the Gathering for the first time so I walked around with her and her friend and they immediately got into some weird shit and I found out Ro gave herself an ICP tattoo so I feel like they were doing the Gathering right, even though they only came for one day. I am sure they will be back. They ended up going to the haunted house thing, so I went over to the hot dog eating contest, which I honestly should have competed in. I have won many an eating challenge in my day and the ICP hot dog themed hockey jersey they gave out for first place was incredible. I deserved that. 

By that time it was main stage music time and I ran over to catch Slick Rick. I listened to a TON of Slick Rick when I was in high school and I was really excited to see him. I have seen so many old school rappers at the Gathering and it’s honestly one of my favorite parts. That being said, Slick Rick gave one of the laziest performances I have ever seen. He barely moved and just looked so bored. He had a big throne he sat on which was kinda great and he’s Slick Rick so he can do whatever the fuck he wants. At some point juggalos started throwing things at him and he actually got really into it towards the end of his set. I think the measure of a man is how he acts when a half full can of Faygo goes flying past his head and Rick The Ruler passed that test. Also I should cut him some slack because there was some sound difficulties which brings me to KRS ONE. 

KRS is one of my favorite musicians of all time. I have seen him close to 10 times live and it’s always amazing. He rocked it as hard as the first time I saw him more than  twenty years ago. Even his sound check freestyle was incredible. Once I saw him freestyle for 30 minutes while he was selling t-shirts in his booth after the show. He just never stopped. Eventually I just had to leave because the DC Metro stops running at midnight. He’s really one of the best live performers ever. His set at the Gathering really had some sound issues though, and it impacted everything, but KRS has been doing this shit for 40 years and handled it really well. It’s just a bummer they couldn’t get it figured out. If you get a chance to see KRS ONE, do it. 

Finally it was time for the Insane Clown Posse. They did a deep cuts set on the first night but I didn’t make it in time for that. They always end the festival and it’s always a blast. I have seen them so many times and it’s still so much fun to shoot them even if I end up covered in diet Faygo. They are the hardest band to photograph, but the easiest band to get lucky with a great shot. They are another artist that you should see once in your life even if you don’t like their music. It’s just an insane experience. They are semi retired because Violent J has heart problems, and I think not playing was good for them. They looked legitimately happy to be out there which has not always been the case even when they put on a good show. For some reason they didn’t kick us out of the pit after three songs so I actually got to shoot until I got really soaked and decided I should leave because I didn’t have another pair of pants (I’ve lost 30 lbs in the last three months and none of my old pants fit me). So because I got to shoot more than three songs there are more ICP shots than I normally have. There are also a couple shots of Taji Ameen getting sprayed who was filming his show Better Man for Vice. I am very excited to see that episode.

Okay so yeah, that is the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos. I ended up doing okay despite my back injury. Maybe I didn’t get as many shots as in the past, but this was the first year in a while that I went by myself so I think that helped me be a bit more productive during a shorter window of time. I got some shots I am very happy with (five of which are already for sale as NFTs) and I didn’t do any permanent damage to myself (I hope). To see everything I shot you are going to need to go to a few different sites but all the links are below. And to see all my Gathering content over the last decade plus you can click here to see every post tagged with Gathering of the Juggalos. 

• The Daily Beast
• Brooklyn Vegan
• Driven By Boredom Part 1
• Driven By Boredom Part 2
• Girls Of DBB
• OnlyFans
• Juggalo NFTs

And now for the final chapter of 2022….

Click here to see all the photos from Day 4 of the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, Ohio. 

My second day at the Gathering of the Juggalos was my longest of the four day festival. As I mentioned in Part 1 yesterday, I actually skipped Wednesday and only spent about 4 hours there on Thursday, but on Friday I was there from about 3pm to about 2am. The heat combined with my back injury made it seem even longer. But at least I took a lot of photos. 

When I got down there I walked over to the tent where the Faygo Wet T-shirt contest was happening. That tent is a red abomination of heat, moisture and horrifying color balance so I usually try and avoid anything happening in there. However the Faygo wet t-shirt contest is always absolutely chaotic and has been hosted by my buddy Clownvis the last couple of years so I figured I would deal with the heat and then just make all the photos black and white which is the easy way out of color balance hell. Taji Ameen from Vice was there filming a series called Better Man which I had just watched several episodes of. It was a very weird coincidence. Like literally three days earlier I had gone down a YouTube hole so I made sure I got some good shots of him looking uncomfortable while juggalettes showed their Faygo drenched buttholes to the crowd. Honestly the photos are totally insane but you can only see them on Girls of Driven By Boredom because I still haven’t fixed my gallery system yet. There’s some video from it on my OnlyFans too.  Just give me $4.99 and we can all move on with our lives. 

After the Faygo contest there was some sort of stunt show happening in that tent but I had no interest in taking any more photos in there so I did a lap around the campgrounds. When I made my way back around I heard screaming from the tent and went inside to see some total madness happening including Super Humman doing one of his famous stunts. I just caught the very end though and suddenly everyone went outside for a car stunt. The stunt group and brought a car to destroy and I believe the plan was to have Taji drive the car down a path and aim for a ladder, and a guy standing on the ladder would jump over the car. I can only speculate because while they were setting up one of the security guards started yelling for people to get off the port-a-potties they were standing on to get a better view. The juggalos didn’t appreciate getting yelled at so they did what juggalos do best and threw some Faygo at the security guard, she freaked out and radioed for the police. They showed up and the whole thing turned into a really ugly scene and the cops were totally outnumbered. I thought one of them was gonna do something stupid and things were gonna go really badly, but luckily they didn’t and Violent J’s brother Jumpsteady showed up and got everyone to calm down. That’s when I left to do another lap.

When I came back around the car was flipped over and juggalos were standing on top of it. It had become quite the party around that and at some point someone was selling merch off it The whole thing was honestly pretty fun, unlike in 2012 when someone who got caught stealing had their car destroyed. Eventually the owner of the campgrounds came by with some sort of heavy machinery and took the car away while all the juggalos followed him like the juggalo pied piper. A situation that seemed pretty dark turned out totally fine in the end. Juggalos usually do a pretty good job of policing themselves and glad the cops didn’t intervene more than they did. 

After that we did some more running around until the mainstage music really kicked off. Sir-Mix-A-Lot was the first artist we were aloud to get into the photo pit before and I was pretty psyched about that. After I mentioned his performance he actually Tweeted at me telling me how much fun he had and I think everyone really enjoyed his set.

By the time he was done my friends in Ho99o9 had shown up. The last time the played the Gathering I followed them around for a Vice story. This time they had experienced the Gathering already and were mostly just focused on the show. I went over and just hung out with them while they were sound checking and stuff until I heard Ouji Macc on the main stage. I don’t really listen to any juggalo music except when a random ICP song will pop into my head, but I really like Ouji as a human, his shows are a lot of fun and his managers are friends of mine. He also gave me a pair of his record label’s (Chapter 17) socks which I think I am actually going to wear today. So when I heard him start playing I ran down to the main stage and got there just in time to shoot one of his songs before they kicked us out of the pit.

As soon as Ouji’s was over Ho99o9 launched into their set. They absolutely killed it as always. I have seen them more than a half dozen times, but not in five years or something. They are more polished, and even creepier, but as energetic as always and it was great to see them again. After I went backstage and shot them and Ouji together and then said hi to Dana Dentata who I briefly met at the Gathering in 2019. Esham was playing between Ho99o9 and Dentata and that dude is an absolute legend. He invented horrorcore and Eminem, ICP and everything that came after them wouldn’t exist without him. Finally Dana Dentata went on and I was only going to shoot one song but her set was incredibly interesting and I couldn’t find a reason to leave. Finally when she was over I escaped into the night and got back to my hotel after 3am. I was in an incredible amount of pain and honestly my photos on Saturday suffered because of it, but I had shot a ton of photos and had some fun and it was probably all worth it. 

Click here to see my photos from day 3 of the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos and come back soon for the final chapter. 

Ps. Buy my juggalo NFTs.

In 2010 I Tweeted “Who wants to go to the Gathering of the Juggalos with me?” My editor at the Village Voice* responded and we ended up doing a cover story that changed both of our lives forever. Over a decade later I returned to my 12th Gathering of the Juggalos ready to shoot some more photos of my favorite insane clowns. This year I was hired to cover the festival by The Daily Beast and Brooklyn Vegan so before you read  the rest of this post, check those links out. 

I pretty much start off every post these days talking about my back injury, but this time it’s especially relevant. I hurt it one year ago at the Gathering of the Juggalos. This year I had no idea how I was going to make it through the festival but I had a plan. I would skip the first day (that’s why this update is Part 1, not Day 1) and I would only spend a few hours at the Gathering each day to rest my back. I almost didn’t make it, day 3 almost killed me, but I shot enough photos just on day 1 to make the trip worth it. 

I landed in Columbus Ohio around 1:30pm on Thursday, grabbed my rental car and headed to my hotel. By 3:30 I was headed to Thornville, Ohio and after getting my credentials I was on Juggalo Island by 4. One of the first photos I shot was maybe the best photo of the whole weekend and I despite being down there for only a few hours, I think I might have shot my best stuff on the first day. 

I mostly just shot a bunch of juggalo portraits but I did shoot a handful of bands as well. The first one was Green Jellÿ. I had no idea what to expect, I remember being blown away by the Three Little Pigs video when I was a kid, but I haven’t really thought about them since. But that shit was so wild and so much fun and the photos are absolutely chaotic. Back on the main stage they weren’t letting photographers upfront until 8pm for some reason so I didn’t shoot much of the early stuff this year. I did shoot literally one photo of Cybertronic Spree who dressed as Transformers and played a bunch of weird covers. I didn’t really understand what was happening but I wasn’t mad about it. I also shot a few photos of the Clue coverband that is an inside joke that would take too long to explain it to you. They only played one song. Finally I shot Steel Panther who are a parody of a hair metal band. We have a bunch of friends in common and I have wanted to see them for years so glad I got to see it. It’s such a wild commitment to be doing this joke band for decades, but it seems like it’s a lot of fun.

After I shot Steel Panther I decided to call it a day. I was exhausted from the flight and my back hurt and I knew the next day was going to be my big one so I wanted to get some rest. ICP was playing a deep track set that night, but I knew I would shoot them again on Saturday so I figured I could skip it. I also missed a late night set by Onyx who are incredible, but I have seen them a few times before so it made sense to bounce. In the end I was only there for about 4 hours, but I still got some great shots which you get to look at right now. 

But some housekeeping notes first… I totally screwed up and I haven’t fixed the gallery system on my website. That is an incredible bummer because I am now using Flickr for these galleries and apparently nudity is now against their TOS unless you have a pro account and I am not giving Flickr $60 a year. I will get this fixed, but not this week. So because of that all the nudity is going on Girls of Driven By Boredom and my OnlyFans. I am sorry about that, I wanted to give you guys some random juggalette nudity and then just paywall the really crazy shit, but here we are. I am sorry about that. So far on Girls of DBB we have one gallery of just random toples juggalettes including some outtakes that I wouldn’t normally post. On OnlyFans I have some video from the Wet Faygo Contest and the Miss Juggalette pageant, but more on those in Parts 2 and 3. There will be a lot more content on both sites in the next few days and my sites are pretty cheap.

Speaking of you giving me money, I also uploaded 5 new juggalo NFTs from this year. There are now 55 that have been uploaded over the last year. There will be under 100 images total and they start at just .1 ETH. My other NFTs have done a lot better than these, but I love them and I am not stopping any time soon. 

Okay, now it’s time to look at some juggalo photos.

Click here to see all the photos from my first day at the 2022 Gathering of the Juggalos.

*My editor at the Voice, Camille Dodero,  is featured heavily in the new Netflix true crime series The Most Hated Man on the Internet because of a Voice cover story she did on the subject of that documentary. I shot some photos for her story that also ended up in the documentary.