I spent the weekend in Chicago out shooting Pitchfork Music Fest, Chicago Exxxotica and primarily a Sailor Jerry sponsored three day party called Cobrafest. Cobrafest is a Pitchfork after party that takes place at Cobra Lounge. Cobra Lounge is less than a block from Pitchfork so it’s a pretty ideal place for an after party. Each night a bunch of bands played and Sailor Jerry gave out rum and tattoos to the bands. The Chicago Tattooing Company provided the ink with Nick Colella doing the tattoos on Friday and Saturday and Frank William took over on Sunday.

I am gonna try to bang out all three days before I get on a plane today so I am going to make these quick. There are a lot of photos to get to!

Friday night featured Far-Out Fangtooth, Stagnant Pools and Psychic Paramount opening for the really amazing Human Eye. Human Eye pretty much killed it and their front man, Timmy Vulgar invited me to Detroit to eat tacos. Clearly, I should not pass this opportunity up. A bunch of people got tattooed and fun was had by all. Let’s get to the pictures!

Click here to see all the pictures from day one of Cobrafest at Cobra Lounge in Chicago, IL!

Friday was a mess. It was like 100 degrees out and then it started fucking raining. I had walked all over NYC with my back pack on cause I new I was gonna hit up 99 Attorney St. for the Already Famous Go Skateboarding Everyday party. When I finally got there it was so hot and humid that I thought I was going to die. Luckily Vitamin Water was one of the sponsors and two drinks later I was feeling a lot better. Plus my Sailor Jerry crew was there giving out rum so I dropped by back pack off in their amazing airconditioned airstream and jumped into the crowd of sweat and madness with my camera.

The party was seriously wild. It was hot and sticky and crazy and people were skateboarding between music sets all on a half pipe/stage thing. This rap group Gospels opened up and started fucking shit up and then Flatbush Zombies got on and the place got pretty out of control. They had half the crowd on the half pipe with them and it was raining so everyone was just packed in this small space whiling out. Love seeing mosh pits break out to hip hop.

Punk rockers Cerebral Ballzy headlined and really destroyed the place. 100 Spongebob Squarepants balloons fell from the ceiling during their set and the mosh pit was pretty violent. Around their third or fourth song I decided I had taken enough pictures, I put down my camera and ran up the side of the half pipe and jumped off into a crowd of people who had backed the fuck away from the pit. They were not exactly psyched about a 185lb man jumping 10 feet on to them so they quickly dropped me onto my back. Two songs later I got one of the pointiest shoulders I have ever felt to my eye and during the last song an extremely large man tackled me for really no reason.  It was a lot of fucking fun but days later I still hurt. Still, it was nothing compared to how I feel the day after a Fucking Bullshit show, so I guess I did okay.

These pictures are nuts and there was actually that topless photographer girl who shows up to events from time to time so you even get some unexpected boobs. The rest is just really sweaty people whiling out and skating the fuck out of a makeshift stage. Good times, good times.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Airwalk Already Famous Go Skateboarding Everyday party at 99 Attorney St.

Ps. Shout out to my girl Jasmine Solano who hosted/DJd and the Harold Hunter Foundation who took all the proceeds from the door. RIP HH.

Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins the legendary tattoo artist died 39 years ago on Tuesday. To celebrate “Sailor Jerry” day Three Kings Tattoo in Brooklyn gave out free Sailor Jerry anchor tattoos for six straight hours starting at 10pm. Over 200 people were on the list and a HUGE line formed in the pouring rain outside the shop when it opened.  Luckily once you got your name on the list you could head over to Matchless across the street for free Sailor Jerry Rum and some absurd karaoke.

Speaking of karaoke, one of the highlights of the night was when Oliver Peck of “Ink Master” fame did “You Might Think” by the Cars. Another highlight was getting Alex from Three Kings to tattoo a Sailor Jerry badger on me when he got bored of doing anchors. He put it right between the Sailor Jerry bunny Oliver did on me at SXSW and the Aloha Monkey Betty Rose did on me.  I have a pretty nice Sailor Jerry zoo going on down on my party leg…

It was a fun event and a ton of people got tattooed. You should probably look at the pictures.

Click here to see all my shots from the Sailor Jerry Day anchor tattoo giveaway at Three Kings Tattoos.

Sailor Jerry upped the ante on giving away free tattoos at South By Southwest this year. Not only did they have Oliver Peck doing free tattoos for bands and VIPs but they also had my homie Terry Brown tattooing at the Great Wave Tattoo shop with one of the locals Ben Sibert doing Sailor Jerry flash on anyone who could get an appointment. They did a ton of tattoos working pretty much all day for three straight tattoos.  I even got Terry to touch up a tattoo he did on me way back at Voodoo Fest.

Aside from tattoos it was just a fun place to hang out. They were selling Sailor Jerry swag as well and I managed to make it out of Austin with a new belt buckle and the documentary about Sailor Jerry (the person, not the rum). Also when Oliver got booked up I brought Sara Jean from Bleached over to get tattooed by Terry. Bleached is pretty much my favorite new band right now and Sara had a bunch of Sailor Jerry flash already so I knew we had to get her hooked up.

Anyway, I am just getting back into the swing of living a normal life again so I gotta go respond to 40 emails that I didn’t have time to get to when I was in LA & Austin. I will catch you guys soon with the rest of my SXSW stuff and probably a naked girl or two… See you Monday.

Click here to see all the photos from the Sailor Jerry SXSW pop up tattoo shop at Great Wave Tattoo.

Mess With Texas is a three day event that happens during South By Southwest. I was there the whole time and it was the bulk of the stuff I shot during South By Southwest. Normally if I had so many pictures from one event I would break it down into several posts but I am on the road and I don’t have time for such things so this is going to be one MASSIVE gallery.

The event was sponsored by Sailor Jerry so they brought in one of the best old school tattoo artists in the world, Oliver Peck, to do Sailor Jerry tattoos on people. He tattooed a bunch of musicians during the three days including Theophilus London, Stalley, members of White Mystery, Fidlar, The Crocodiles, Dum Dum Girls, Skindred, Passion Pit and a bunch more that I am sure I would have remembered if I had slept more than 4 hours any day in the last two weeks.  Oliver even tattooed a little bunny on me.

I don’t have time to get into the whole fest, but you can see the line up and I will hip you to my favorite acts.  I had seen Fidlar before but they were awesome again. This other punk band Ceremony was fucking awesome as well. I thought Saturday’s headliner A$AP Rocky lived up to the hype and Dinosaur Feathers are a New York band I am looking to see again when I get back home.

Anyway, I gotta figure out where I am gonna sleep today so I will leave you with this MASSIVE gallery MWTX.

Click here to see all 500+ pictures from Mess With Texas.

I just wanted to get a few photos from South By Southwest up really quickly. This week has been so insane and is going to keep getting more insane. On Tuesday night, the night before SXSW Music kicked off Panache threw a party at the Scoot Inn. I was only there for a few hours and I don’t have time for a long update but I really was digging on this band Natural Child even though I only took a couple of shots of them and Thee Oh Sees were awesome as always. I gotta go take more photos of bands and rum branding.

Click here to see all the pictures from the Panache SXSW Pre Party at the Scoot Inn in Austin, TX.

As I write this I am currently on a flight from LA to NYC on my way home from shooting the Musink tattoo convention and music festival in Orange County, CA. I was out there working for Sailor Jerry and having some fun along the way.  Sailor Jerry once again set up a trailer to tattoo bands, promote the brand and host some serious games of corn hole. Dan Smith was doing the tattoos all weekend and tattooed bands like New Found Glory, Bayside, Paramore, Against Me and a bunch of others.

I personally had a lot more fun than I expected. I am not a huge pop punk fan and was not exactly excited to see bands like Yellowcard bastardize the punk rock I hold so dear to my heart, but across the board the bands were a lot better live than I expected. Even Yellowcard put on a pretty damn good show. New Found Glory and Alkaline Trio really proved why they were the headliners of the two days of the festival I attended putting on some pretty fantastic shows. I don’t think I am gonna go home and buy their records but I was glad I got to see them do their thing.

I didn’t spend a lot of time inside the tattoo convention part of the festival as I had to stick around the Sailor Jerry airstream for the most part, but I did get to make a few rounds and saw some amazing work done.  My favorite had to be a Steve Jobs leg tattoo that I think won one of the tattoo contests. There were also an unreasonable amount of hot girls at the tattoo convention so that was a reason to venture inside to the air conditioned part of Musink.

One last thing I should mention about this festival is that Hayley Williams and Taylor York from Paramore showed up to watch Hayley’s boyfriend from New Found Glory play. I shot a couple of pictures of them and then Taylor came back and got a Sailor Jerry tattoo from Dan on Sunday.  I posted a few of those pictures on my Tumblr and it was as if the internet exploded. Evidently there are like 2000 Twitter accounts dedicated to Paramore. It is sort of insane.  So if you came here from one of these Paramore Tumblrs (Hayley herself posted one of my pics on her Tumblr) looking for more pictures you are in luck. There are a couple more pics of Hayley and a bunch more of Taylor getting tattooed.

Anyway, I am gonna get back to flying in this airplane now. I will see you guys on the ground.

Click here to see the HUGE gallery from the 5th annual Musink tattoo and music festival in Orange County, CA.

If you recall from two posts ago I was in Aspen for the Winter X Games last weekend working for Sailor Jerry. The main promotion that Sailor Jerry did at the X Games was to set up “Hold Fast” a pop up tattoo shop at the Sky Hotel.  They had tattoo artists Terry Brown from New Orleans and Preston Chambers from Denver working all day for four days giving out free Sailor Jerry tattoos.

The man behind the name Sailor Jerry was Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins who revolutionized tattooing and designed thousands of what are now classic tattoo designs. Anyone who wanted one of them could come by the shop and set up an appointment and get tattooed by one of these amazing tattoo artists.

Aside from a ton of bar tenders, hotel staff and X Games fans Hold Fast hosted a few notable people who got some SJ ink. A hilarious BMX biker named Mike “Hucker” Clark came by with BMX legend Tim “Fuzzy” Hall and got his first ever tattoo. He had such a good time that he was constantly in the shop hanging out with us. The next day he signed a huge sponsorship deal with Red Bull and seemed to be having the best weekend of his life. I reached out to folks on Twitter and found out that former The Pack member Stunnaman was in town with Trouble Andrew performing a few hotels away. Stunnaman came by and got this sick pharaoh tattoo and then came back a day later with Trevor from Trouble Andrew who got inked as well. I was actually on my way back when they came by again but I got shots of Stunnaman first tattoo. We also had two members of AWOLNATION come by. They were playing a show at the base of the mountain and got matching ship tattoos to commemorate both their travels and their hit song Sail.

The most legendary icon to get tattooed was of course the hero of men that is Igor from Driven By Boredom AKA me. I got my third Sailor Jerry tattoo when I convinced Preston to tattoo a rooster chasing a pig to my leg.  In nautical lore pigs and chickens are the only animals to survive a ship wreck so sailors would tattoo the animals to their feet for good luck. I got mine on my leg instead because drowning at sea is not really one of my top fears at the moment….

Anyway, it was a great time staying in an amazing hotel in Aspen and hanging out with rad people all day. I didn’t get to see any actual X Games but it was fucking cold outside… and besides ESPN was on in the hotel room. I can’t wait till the next Sailor Jerry pop up tattoo shop event I get to shoot in March at SXSW!

Click here to see all the pictures from Hold Fast the Sailor Jerry pop up tattoo shop in Aspen for the Winter X Games.

Right now I am in Aspen for the Winter X Games. It was 1 degree out yesterday… but it was a warm cold. I am in a hotel with an outdoor hot tub. It’s all pretty awesome.  Thursday night I shot the X-Games kickoff party that Sailor Jerry Rum threw at the Sky Hotel. I got to meet legendary mohawked skier Glen Plake who was a hero of mine when I was a kid. He was rolling with Tanner Hall and all the kids wanted pictures with them.  Freeskier Sean Pettit was double fisting Sailor Jerry and just pouring shots into his friends mouths and things started getting weird. At some point a dance battle broke out and people were just wilding out.

In other news I will be back in NYC tomorrow and after I recover from this insane trip I will be posting stuff like a mad man.  So much good stuff coming soon. Get excited!

Click here to see all the shots of the Sailor Jerry X Games Kickoff Party at 39 Degrees at The Sky Hotel in Aspen