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.

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. 

This is it! My last Gathering of the Juggalos post of 2021! But don’t think you will stop seeing juggalos from me anytime soon because my juggalo NFT series will continue and I am sure I will keep bothering you guys about that stuff. Sorry about that. Anyway, day three was my most chill day. I “only” have 160 photos for you guys today. I sort of felt like I had everything I needed and planned to photograph the bands and shoot some more portraits and shoot ICP and then be done with it but my day got sidetracked a little bit.

My first sidetrack was meeting the owner of Legend Valley, the campsite that the festival is on. I was photographing one of the giant dinosaurs that are on the lot and he started talking to me about them. Apparently they are for a EDM fest called Lost Lands that’s happening in a couple weeks. He told me he had 40 small dinos just sitting at his house. They apparently all move and I realize I had actually seen them on Shark Tank. He let me back to a place beyond the security fencing to photograph some of them. It was very cool. I even made a dumb TikTok. 

My next sidetrack was taking some photos with Ouija Macc. As I mentioned before he’s the #2 artist on Psychopathic Records after ICP and he’s managed by a friend of mine so we set up a quick shoot. I went backstage and they were loading huge pallets of Faygo for ICP’s set onto the stage with a forklift and I had an idea. The dude driving the truck looked like Stan Lee if Stan Lee were a biker and loved the idea and lifted Ouija up into the air as high it would go and I grabbed a few shots. He put it down before I was finished but I wasn’t gonna complain and I still got a couple of good ones. 

After that I finally shot a musical act. (I actually took a couple photos of Free Will too.) Lardi B performed and I knew nothing about her except her name sounded pretty funny. Apparently she went viral for doing a WAP parody. She had a set with donuts and candy behind her and as soon as she started playing the crowd started throwing food at her. I honestly couldn’t tell if they were doing it to support her or boo her but either way she took it in stride and it became one of the more memorable performances of the festival. People were throwing entire boxes of snacks at her. I got hit in the neck with a bag of cookies and just caught it, opened it and ate the cookies while shooting her set. It was really fun. There was also a unicorn. 

My next distraction was a pinata. I had shot a juggalo pinata event once before and it was pretty insane. This dude Poncho and his friends go around with the pinata to every campsite just collecting stuff to put in there. So yeah there is candy but there was also a quarter pound of weed and ton of other drugs plus every sort of weird thing you could imagine. I put one of my Driven By Boredom enamel pins in it, so shout out to whoever got that. 

After that a band called Black Raven played and I missed the start of their set so I couldn’t get in the photo pit so instead I shot their mosh pit. People were covered in chalk dust or something and it was a pretty fun scene. I actually went on IG live and filmed it which was fun since I never go on there ever. It just seemed like a good time and people could see what the Gathering was like first hand.

I spent a little while taking portraits during their set but then it started getting dark. I went back to the car to get my flash and realized I didn’t bring it. I made a calculation and decided it was worth trying to go back to the hotel. It took longer than it should have and by the time I got back it was pitch black outside and Big Hoodoo was almost done playing. Fortunately I made it back for Danny Brown.

Danny Brown is a dude I have photographed a ton of times. I actually had a meeting about doing a video for him off his first album but that didn’t ever happen. I still fuck with his music and his performances have always been fun. During his set juggalos seemed to be really vibing with him but after I left the photo pit something must have happened because he started talking shit to the crowd and kinda walked off stage at some point. I have no idea what happened and he didn’t mention it on his social media but he just threw his mic in to the crowd and walked off. Real bummer. 

Finally the festival ended with ICP and I have photographed ICP a million times now including 2 days earlier so I don’t really have anything to say about their set but I am gonna talk gentle smack to my girlfriend who was supposed to go on stage for the final song for the “Faygo Armageddon” and she chickened out and we ended up leaving before their set ended to beat traffic. I’ve done it twice and it’s the most fun thing ever. Just running around on stage throwing soda. Also shout out to Ouija for giving me his backstage pass so she could do it. 

Okay, so that’s it! Another Gathering of the Juggalos in the book. Gonna link some stuff below so you can see all my coverage. I actually have some photos in an article on Insider coming soon so I will link that here too when it’s out. (Update: It’s out.) Thanks for coming and I will see you juggalos next year!

 – Daily Beast – Rolling Stone – Brooklyn Vegan – Insider – Juggalo NFTs – NSFW Juggalettes – 

Now click here to see all the photos from Day 3 of the Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH. 

Whoop whoop! We are on to the second day and the third update of the 2021 Gathering of the Juggalos photos. Day two features another 200 insane juggalo images with the opportunity to lurk another 100 for a small fee. Sorry I am doing you like that but these are the times we are in. More on that in a minute, but now we gotta break day two down for you.

I spent the most time at the Gathering on Day 2. I got there early because Chris Hansen, yes that one, from To Catch A Predator, was going to be speaking. I saw him when I got there and asked if I could take his photo and then literally as I lifted my camera up they called his name. I took one bad photo of him but it ended up in Rolling Stone so what are you gonna do? I didn’t listen to a ton of the seminar because it honestly made me uncomfortable to watch 100 people listen to a talk about child sexual assault but he made it very clear he was down with the clown and considered himself a juggalo so that happened. He also hosted the main stage later that night. 

After his seminar the same tent hosted the Faygo wet t-shirt contest and I figured I had to cover that for you guys. Plus my friend Contessa aka Cunt Mafia was in it. She came with me to the Gathering in 2018 and decided she was a juggalo and has come back every year since and it’s amazing. She’s a musician and I got her in Rolling Stone too which was awesome. Anyway, Clownvis was hosting the wet t-shirt contest which made for even better photos, but it was in a horrible red tent which makes it a HUGE pain in the ass to color correct so instead of doing that I did what all bad photographers do and just made them all black and white. I also decided to only include a small selection of photos from the contest at the end of this gallery. The rest, including some VERY NSFW ones, will be only available on Girls of DBB. It’s over 100 photos in high res so it seems worth whatever it costs to join my site. There’s also a video from it on my OnlyFans.

Okay, after that there were bands. I apparently missed the first one and then Whitney Peyton was up next. She got really emotional about performing live for the first time since Covid and then she climbed the crowd to perform in the sky basically. I couldn’t help but dig her after that. Up next were a band called Knockout Kings who were filling in for a band who got Covid. They started with just three members on stage but then added three more as their first song went on and the stage got so crowded that they crashed into each other and knocked one of the guitar players over. After that was RA The Rugged Man whose music I legitimately like and he brought a bunch of juggalos on stage with him which was pretty fun. And after that was King 810 who I was not a fan of musically but they put on a good performance and as I have mentioned before that’s the important thing. Lastly was Ouija Macc who after ICP is the biggest artist on Psychopathic Records. I didn’t shoot great photos of him because the stage lighting wasn’t great but I linked up with him the next day and shot some portraits of him so those will be here tomorrow (or maybe Friday).

After Ouija we went back to the hotel again because I am pretty sure I had sun poisoning or something and we were fucking exhausted. And I think that’s all I got, except to tell you to buy my juggalo NFTs and to go look at some photos! 

Click here to see all my photos from Friday at the 2021 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH!

I spent several hours today trying to organize these thousands of Gathering of the Juggalos photos I shot over the weekend into little categories of updates and I just couldn’t do it anymore and I gave up. I am going to organize these photos into just three more updates by day of the festival. That means today you are going to get over 200 images, all taken last Thursday. Tomorrow I will get up all the photos I took on Friday and on Thursday you will get all the photos I took Saturday. That’s the plan at least. If you haven’t already make sure you check out my last update, which was just my favorite portraits from the Gathering back when I thought I was going to break this up into a bunch of galleries.

Okay, so let’s talk about day one! I got there a couple hours before sundown because I needed a nap after a 7am flight to Ohio. The music on the main stage doesn’t start until six but I wanted to get some portraits before then so I did some laps and showed my girlfriend Shannon around. The festival was missing some of the elements like The Busey Beauties and Psychopathic Radio but it did have a bunch of giant dinosaurs that are meant for the upcoming Lost Lands EDM festival, but I guess you can’t really hide a dinosaur so the juggalos got to hang with them. 

The mainstage musical line up started with 9 Dead and then a dude named Nascar Aloe played and he barely sang any of the words to his own music but he put on one hell of a show so that’s all I care about. I have shot so many music festivals I honestly tune out the music and just pay attention to the performance and his was great. After that Kid ‘N’ Play performed. Seriously, that happened, and honestly they were really fun. DJ Paul from Three Six Mafia was after that and he’s always great. I’ve seen him perform a bunch at past Gatherings and one of the few artists at the festival I actively listen to. Vanilla Ice played after that. He was actually on ICP’s record label for a while and has a juggalo tattoo and has played the Gathering a bunch before. He was bitching about the internet and cancel culture and how great cops were but on the plus side he did bring out a Ninja Turtle. Lastly ICP performed their double length album Bizzar/Bizaar in its entirety. Or at least I assume they did because we were exhausted and after I photographed them we went back to the hotel. Sitting on my ass for a year and a half has not been great for physical being and I was pretty much dead by the time they played. 

Oh, I don’t know why I didn’t mention it earlier but Steve-O from Jackass was the host of the first night and he’s a perfect fit for the Gathering. He did a bunch of stupid human tricks and cut his tongue with broken glass and set his hair on fire. He also showed his butthole to the juggalos not once, but twice, per their request. Don’t worry I didn’t upload those pictures but I did put them on my OnlyFans as a joke since the same day OnlyFans announced they were getting rid of porn on their porn site. 

Speaking of NSFW stuff, there are a couple NSFW pics in this gallery but you can see all the NSFW juggalette portraits on Girls of Driven right now in high resolution. It’s not a ton of photos this year, but they do exist. 

Okay now it’s time for you guys to look at WAY too many photos. Seriously there are over 200 of them and my website is barely functional these days so good luck. 

Click here to see all the photo from Day 1 of the 2021 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH. 

I just got back from Thornville, OH where I was shooting the Gathering of the Juggalos for The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone and Brooklyn Vegan… and of course this site. It was my 11th Gathering and I took it a little bit easy this year because I had my girlfriend with me and I still managed to shoot over 4000 pictures. I have so much stuff for you guys to check out but we are gonna start things off with the hits.

This update is just a gallery of my favorite juggalo portraits and that’s it. There will be so many more to come but I just wanted to get some stuff up today, link my incredible clients and announce the second drop of my Juggalo NFT series. Oh surprise, more NFTs. This juggalo series is going to be an ongoing series with each drop having a different theme and Series 2’s theme is juggalo portraits just like this update. In fact every NFT in Series two just so happens to be in this gallery. Oh, and did I mention these NFTs are very slightly cheaper? I wanted the first drop to be a little more expensive but for the time being they are going to be listed at .2ETH.

Anyway, I got so much juggalo madness coming for you guys this week so just hold on and I will be right back. Now go click some links below and check out all the photos that exist in the world already.

Juggalo NFTs

Daily Beast: The Gathering of the Juggalos Sees Steve-O, Chris Hansen, and a Horde of Crazy Clowns Take Over Ohio

Rolling Stone: Gathering Again

Brooklyn Vegan: The Gathering of the Juggalos 2021 in (NSFW) Pictures

Now click here to see all my favorite portraits from the 2021 Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, OH.

On March 1st, the 20th anniversary of Driven By Boredom, I released my first NFT. They were animated gifs of the Driven By Boredom logo. I released it primarily because the NFT community feels in a lot of ways like the early days of the internet and the community that exists around early 2000 websites that were essentially blogs before anyone was calling them blogs. But I also released it because I knew I wanted to make photography NFTs, but I wanted to do a trial run before I did them and I think I learned a lot.

I did 3 editions. I did a 1/1 that I sold for 2ETH which at the time was a little over $3000. I made it for me, I just wanted it in my collection, I didn’t think anyone would actually buy it. I then made an edition of 5 for .2ETH which was about $300 and then finally an edition of 20 at .02ETH for about $30. Amazingly the 1/1 was pretty much the first thing to sell. I sold a few of the other two as well, but I realized a few important things 1) Collectors want 1/1s 2) It’s probably a little too early for a lot of my fans. I had some real trouble trying to on board people. 3) Cheap NFTs are a hard sell because the gas fees to buy them are often too high to justify. Why would you pay $40 to own a $30 NFT? 

After the sale I took all that ETH and bought other NFTs with it. I wanted to be part of the community. I also started working on my next NFT. I didn’t see a big space for still photography yet and I thought animation was the way to go. I made a series of 5 adult themed animated photo NFTs and was getting ready to drop them in April when crypto crashed. It just didn’t seem like a good time. And then I waited longer, and waited longer, and I kept putting it all off because I was scared it wouldn’t do well and I didn’t want to make mistakes on the blockchain that would haunt me years later. You can take down a blog post, you can’t remove an NFT that you don’t own from the blockchain. 

During those months of me worrying about what to do and when to do it I have lost most of my ETH, learned more and I have seen photography NFTs become collectable finally. It’s a lot of landscapes that seem to be popular, but the idea that people want still photography got me very excited. I still plan on releasing my animated NFTs in the future, but with the Gathering of the Juggalos happening this week I felt like it was the perfect time to launch my first NFT with the biggest project of my career, the 12 years I have spent documenting juggalos.

The first girl I ever kissed was a juggalo. I mean she was really a punk but she liked the Insane Clown Posse. A lot of my punk friends did for some reason. They weren’t great musically but neither was most punk, but they were also hilarious and listening to them felt like watching a terrible B horror movie. They were the sonic equivalent to a Troma film. But when I went to college I didn’t know anyone who liked them and I didn’t really think of the band again until 2010.

When “Miracles” came out and everyone was making fun of it I found myself defending ICP. I was trying to explain that they were in on the joke and you just didn’t get it. At some point I Tweeted about how I wanted to go to the Gathering of the Juggalos that year and my editor at the Village Voice, Camille Dodero responded. She was in and we were going. We were willing to pay our own way but by the time we were done it was a cover story and changed both of our careers forever.

Since then I haven’t missed a single Gathering of the Juggalos. I have covered the event for dozens and dozens of clients including a lot of big ones. Of course I did, the Voice, LA Weekly, a cover for the Riverfront Times and a bunch of other Alt Weekly coverage, but also Rolling Stone, Vice, Playboy, Hustler, Kerrang, Daily Beast, Boing Boing, TMZ, and countless others. The last ever episode of @Midnight had a segment on my juggalo photos and The Late Show ran one of my photos last year. A thread I did about juggalos became a trending moment on Twitter and a photo I took of a butt with clown makeup on it has haunted me for years. I took the most famous photo of ICP without their make up and was the only photographer there when juggalos attacked Tila Tequila. If you do a google image search for juggalos it’s absolutely filled with my photos. I would guess that if you have ever seen a photo from the Gathering of the Juggalos there is probably a 40% chance that I took it. 

Long story short is that this is the most exhaustive project of my career and my life wouldn’t be close to the same without juggalos. They have welcomed me into their family and while I don’t listen to the music very often, I certainly feel like I am a juggalo myself after all these years… at least juggalo adjacent. I feel like this is a perfect place to get started with with my NFT journey and it’s a good way to give back to some of the juggalos in my photos.

I am holding 25% of the sale price of every juggalo portrait I sell for the subject of the photo. I own all these images and I don’t need to do that, but I feel it’s the only ethical thing to do. If it’s a photo of a bunch of people or a celebrity or if there are some people in the background of a shot I won’t be giving that out, but any primary person will have two years to claim it and I will be doing my best to contact them.

Now let’s talk about how the series works. There will be 17 drops (17 is a very important number for juggalos) and each series will have 5 1/1 images each with the exception the first and last series. The “genesis” drop will have 10 images and the last one is a surprise. I have no timeline for the series other than I would like to time the ending with my book release. 

I have a lot of ideas for this project if it is successful with both physical and digital rewards for the collectors of my work and some fun ideas that I don’t even want to talk about yet, but even if the project isn’t the hit I am hoping for I will still complete the series. I plan on building a website with information on every NFT I ever make at some point but I need to sell some of these things first. But I think NFTs are the future and even if a lot of the buzz dies out I will keep going. I am in this for the long run, just like I was when I started blogging more than 20 years ago.

Lastly we should talk about pricing. I think NFTs are very hard to price, but I know that if I was doing a 1/1 print I would sell it for several thousand dollars, but I also don’t really know how to do a 1/1 as a photographer. It would be like selling a negative which is something I would never do. NFTs give you a way to do that as a photographer that we never had before. So I do value these “jpgs”, as people like to derisively call them, fairy high, but I also want to sell them so I am hoping around .2ETH is a good place to start. As the series go I will be raising or lowering prices depending on demand but 9 of the 10 NFTs in this drop are going to be .217 ETH, honoring that lucky juggalo number once again. I also will be selling the first NFT in the series, a portrait of the Insane Clown Posse, for .517 ETH as it will be officially the first photo NFT I ever release. I don’t know if it will sell, but I am very glad to hold onto it in my collection if it doesn’t.

If you want to learn how to get cryptocurrency in order to buy one of these, you can read my last NFT post for a breakdown of how to do it. The easiest way is to to download an app called MetaMask and buy ETH directly from there. If you live in NY state or some other places with terrible crypto laws you will need to download CoinBase and buy the ETH there first.  You will need to buy more than you think you need because you will have to pay a fee to transfer it to MetaMask and another fee to mint the NFT. I am not exactly sure how much because it depends on gas prices, but they tend to be cheaper when it’s late night in the US. 

One final thing I am gonna drop down here because I know the environmental impact of NFTs is something people are concerned about… just do me a favor and google how much energy YouTube uses. You wouldn’t attack someone for making a YouTube video so don’t attack an artist for making an NFT. 

Okay, that’s it. Take a look at my Juggalo NFTs here. Happy collecting!