It seems like the only time I cover nightlife anymore is when some sort of historic NYC institution shuts it’s doors. Between the New York nightlife and all of my friends who have died I seem to be getting a little too good at writing eulogies… But that’s life and sadly we suffered another casualty in the corporate takeover of downtown New York City: Webster Hall.

Webster Hall doesn’t close it’s doors for a few days, but last night was the memorial service for the legendary venue. AEG Live recently bought Bowery Presents (Terminal 5, Bowery Ballroom, etc) and they weren’t done buying up New York venues. They partnered with Brooklyn Sports Entertainment (Barclays Center) to purchase Webster Hall after being owned by the same family for nearly 30 years. The venue will continue, possibly under the same name, but it won’t be the same.

Webster Hall was home to the first Motherfucker party I shot for my site. Motherfucker was the greatest party I have ever been to and their 7th anniversary was at Webster. I barely knew Michael T at the time and he specifically told me I couldn’t shoot it so I went around him and got a press pass from the Faint. The next day I got an angry phone call from Michael yelling at me about going around his back. I still have no idea how he got my number but despite his anger he loved my photos and I from then on I was always on the guest list to his parties.

Webster Hall was the place I would bring friends who were visiting town so they could see what real nightlife felt like. Webster Hall had the kinda parties you only see in movies. I would spend New Years eve there hanging with tourists and porn stars and misfits and famous DJs. I let Alex English crowd surf with my camera to MSTRKRFT and partied with a dwarf dressed like a New Year’s baby. It was always the party you dreamed about going to before you moved to NYC.

When my favorite weekly party Trash moved to the basement of Webster I was disappointed because there weren’t any lockable bathrooms to shoot naked girls in, but I quickly got over that because Alex and Rekles were throwing their weekly Boys & Girls upstairs. Every Friday I would shoot both parties for the Village Voice and get paid twice for the same amount of work.

I could use the word legendary a lot in this article but Boys & Girls will go down in history. I don’t think EDM would be what it is today without that party. From their first sold out party featuring Justice to Skrillex playing last night they gave DJs of all genres a huge platform in NYC and they did it so consistently for so long. Despite my long career shooting dance parties I don’t actually like dance music, but that scene was so much fun to photograph and it really felt like a family. For so many years the only DJs I knew were DJs I actually knew and now those same people are touring the globe making millions. That shift from EDM feeling like an underground movement to Atrak, Skrillex and Diplo becoming pop stars was such a crazy thing to be a part of and you had a front row to that every Friday night at Webster Hall.

Once EDM became pop culture the vibe of Webster Hall changed quickly. There were so many bros upstairs at Girls & Boys that the only safe space was when you were hanging out on stage. The security became overly aggressive and there were always crazy lines. Getting into Webster Hall became so stressful. You had to make sure you were on the right list and had the right photo pass and then had to wait in line again your bag checked and then groped by security. By the time I got in the club all the positive energy I had would be gone.

But downstairs at Trash was a whole different thing. DJ Jess was the first person to hire me to shoot parties in New York and one of my favorite people to party with. When Jess worked out his deal with Webster he was given his own door and own security and they were told not to search anyone. Jess stepped up and took responsibility for his party. His little family of misfits playing the Smiths and Bowie were left alone by the finance bros and aggressive security upstairs. Once you got past “door bitch” Brendon James you were set.

Jess threw me a bunch of birthday parties over the years but my 30th was the last and one of the most memorable. I will leave out the details here but let’s just say I got fairly drunk and ended the night naked stuck inside my laundry basket until the go-go dancer I had lured home with me with the promise of tiny kittens pulled me out. My final Tweet of the night was about eating a pretzel sandwich.

Eventually I went to Trash less and less but I would always go to Trash’s anniversary parties. Trash meant so much to me and it was the longest running weekly party downtown. When it finally ended it felt like such a huge chapter in my life had closed. It was such a sad moment made only more sad by the tragic death of DJ Jess a year later. I actually referred to his death as the end of New York nightlife. It was so fucking heartbreaking but his memorial brought so many people back together and it was of course held at Webster Hall.

Despite my complaints about the terrible crowds and aggressive security at “Webster Hell” I really do have so much love for the place. I met so many amazing friends and lovers there. I had so many good times. Many of the staff felt like family and I loved going to Veselka or Sidewalk or another diner with the bartenders and go go dancers and DJs at 5:30am after waiting for everyone to finally clear out so we could get paid. Last night I got to see a lot of those people again.

There are a lot of people that run Webster but I want to give Kenny Schachter a special thanks. He would always get me into shit if I asked and was always so cool to me. He really appreciated the people who were part of the scene and made me feel appreciated. He was one of the first people I ran into last night when he walked me in the door and made sure I had all the passes I needed without having to deal with any of the madness. Skrillex and Boys Noize gave him a shout out last night and the whole thing got me choked up when they brought him on stage and thanked him for everything.

Before I finally get to the photos I should probably mention the actual party last night. Deux Twins were on when I got there and they were followed by Ekali. Around 1am Skrillex got on and didn’t stop playing until six in the morning. He brought up Boys Noize and they performed as Dog Blood which is honestly a fantastic name for just about anything. I have also been told I should mention that DJ Sliink was there although he didn’t play any music.

I still don’t fucking know anything about EDM but Skrillex was a pretty good soundtrack to reminisce to. I just hung out on stage all night with old friends telling stories about that period of time where we ran downtown nightlife. I was talking to a DJ, a coke dealer, a door guy and another photographer together just looking back on the last decade. I might be a more successful photographer now and still doing some interesting shit with my life but I don’t think my life will ever be as fun as the years where I could walk into any bar or nightclub south of 14th street without so much as an ID. I would know a dozen people in every spot and run into bunch more people while headed to the next one.

Everyone who has ever lived in NYC has their “things were better back in my day” story but the sale of Webster Hall another reminder that the New York I fell in love with is gone. Thanks for the memories.

Click here to see way too many photos of Skrillex from the End Of An Era closing party for Webster Hall.

Okay! This is it! Final post of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos. I know how much you guys like looking at photos of juggalos. This is probably the biggest gallery of the four days with nearly 200 photos. Gonna run through the day real quick and then end with a bunch of links to all my coverage from around the internets.

Oh and speaking of coverage, I got a name drop on the second to last ever episode of @midnight last night. That was kinda cool.

Day four was the final day and of course it all ended with a crazy set from Insane Clown Posse. Even if you hate their music, their sets, especially at the Gathering are totally worth watching. I always like watching them with people who have never seen them because they go from mocking to on board in about 10 minutes. Even at this under attended, last minute Gathering in Oklahoma the conclusion of their set was a hell of a moment.

Before ICP went on there were sets from POD and this dude Prof who was actually pretty great. People were throwing water balloons full of ketchup, mustard and brightly colored water at him and he seemed to love it. Personally my camera smells like mustard now so I was less excited.

The only other thing worth mentioning in this gallery was the piñata madness that happened. This juggalo who I have met a bunch of times over the years named Poncho walked around the campgrounds collecting shit for two piñatas and had everyone break them open on the last day. There was so much insane shit in them and juggalos basically tried to murder each other for shit. It was like in a movie when they throw a dead body in a pen of starving pigs. I ended up with a beer, a can of off brand Nutella and a clown nose. I still have the clown nose.

Okay, that’s all I got here’s all my coverage and then we will get to the day 4 photos at the end.

Voice Media Galleries (LA Weekly, Miami New Times, Houston Press, etc):
The Party Begins at the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Best Dressed of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Juggalos of the 2017 Gathering Show Us Their Ink
The Extreme Scenes of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Gathering of the Juggalos 2017: Welcome to Juggalo Island
Clown Love: The Cutest Couples of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos
The Grand Finale: The 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos Comes to a Close

Voice Media Article:
Turns Out Moving the Gathering of the Juggalos to Oklahoma Was a Bad Idea

Chicagoist:
Get Weird With Our NSFW Photos From The 2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Brooklyn Vegan:
Gathering of the Juggalos 2017 (ICP, Waka Flocka, Faygo, pasties & more)

@Midnight:
Juggalo missed connections (around the 18min mark)

Driven By Boredom:
For all Driven By Boredom’s Gathering of the Juggalos content over the last 7 years click here.

And finally, click here for the final, mildly NSFW gallery from day 4 of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City.

Okay, I promised two updates today but I lied. It’s 8pm already and no one wants a post at fucking 11pm so you get this one today, another one tomorrow and then back to naked people and party pictures on Monday. Let’s get into this shit.

Day three of the Gathering was my longest day there. I got there early cause I wanted to shoot a bunch of day time stuff for my “Juggalo Island” gallery. (Bonus content: watch this fucking video.) After being outside for an hour I wanted to die so I headed over to Psychopathic Radio to take some photos of the madness that Wolfpac’s gets into every day. The first event they had was a juggalo drinking contest. They had two juggalos take 10 shots each. One of them made it about two shots in before puking. The other crushed his. After he was finished and the other guy was done vomiting, the sick juggalo finished the rest of his shots. I saw him 45 minutes later and he had completely lost his fucking mind. Good times.  After that they had a round of the infamous juggalo fight club. Two brothers faced off and kicked the shit out of each other for three rounds. That was real fucking enjoyable.

At some point during all that my GOTJ date Gia Paige put stickers on her nipples which made the rest of the day interesting because every five minutes we’d be stopped by some juggalo who wanted to smoke weed with her or take her photo or in the case of a cop want to take her stickers off and put new ones on. Another cop just said “Niiiicee” to her which was creepier than anything the juggalos did. How delightful.

After that the bands started playing. I shot a mosh pit and ate a far too spicy burrito while waiting for Waka Flocka to go on. He played one of the best sets I have ever seen at the Gathering in 2015 and I was really psyched for his set. He did not disappoint. He called on juggalos to get him drunk and people threw beers at him which he caught and chugged. He then was handed a bottle of Fireball which he chugged as well. He jumped into the crowd and played several songs in there while juggalos and security chased him around. I jumped over the photo pit and followed him too. I even got off a couple selfies. After he got back on stage he brought some girls out of the crowd and that was fun too. Overall I took way too many photos of him and posted way too many of them here. Enjoy.

The night ended with fucking Vanilla Ice headlining. He was mostly promoting a home improvement show on the DIY Network or something. Honestly I stuck around for two songs, took some photos and went back to my hotel cause I was exhausted and let’s just say I wanted to hang out with Gia Paige more than I wanted to see a rap rock version of Ice Ice Baby. Sue me.

Now click here for a ton of mildly NSFW photos from the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City. 

Day two of the Gathering of the Juggalos was cool because Gia Paige showed up. I met her in LA right around the time my LA Weekly writer told me he couldn’t make the trip. I jokingly said she should come with me since I had an extra press pass and she actually said yes. She’s from Detroit so she was kinda familiar with ICP and seemed pretty unfazed by the whole thing. It was pretty great.

As far as stuff that actually happened on the second day I pretty much started out photographing the VIP meet and greet thing. I got to talk to some juggalos about their memorabilia and shoot the clowns with their fans. I shot a bunch of tattoos for a gallery I did for the LA Weekly and I shot a bunch of portraits that ended up in their “best dressed juggalos” gallery.

That night ICP played their album “The Wraith” in it’s entirety. The Wraith is the 6th Jokers Card and it was supposed to be the last album before the world ended in ICP mythology. Weirdly enough the world didn’t end when it came out, but Juggalos did get a surprise when it was revealed that the “Dark Carnival” was really just a juggalo form of Christianity. Seriously. If you haven’t heard “Thy Unveiling” do yourself a favor and listen to it. It’s way funnier than Miracles ever was.

Late night I shot Wolfpac cause their sets are always a total shit show. They aren’t quite as fun when nudity is outlawed but the photos are probably worth looking at anyway. Lil Debbie was supposed to play later that night but she didn’t show up. She Tweeted that she was playing the next night but I had no idea when so I skipped it. But I was real curious to see what her juggalo set was gonna look like. I still have no idea if she ever actually played.

Okay go look at photos now. Two more updates coming tomorrow…

Click here to see all the mildly NSFW photos from day 2 of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City.

I got back from the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos a few days ago but I have taken my sweet time to post these because most of them are already online via the LA Weekly (and all the other Voice Media papers). I will post all those links in part four of this madness. In past years I have broken these photos down by subject but this is my 8th god damn one of these and I just wanna get these photos up and move on with my life. The plan is two posts today and two posts tomorrow and then on to whatever comes next.

Let’s start by talking about what every juggalo in the festival was talking about: Oklahoma sucks. The Gathering was supposed to be in Colorado but several venues fell through because the FBI designates juggalos as a gang because apparently the FBI has never actually met a juggalo. At the last minute they found this place called Lost Lakes Amphitheater in Oklahoma City and it turned out to be kinda a disaster for a bunch of reasons. First of all beer in Oklahoma is watered down which is like some shit I thought they only pulled in Utah. All hard liquor was theoretically outlawed and the place was full of undercover cops were arresting people for selling drugs and supposedly public nudity. I saw supposedly because I only heard rumors but all the nudity got shut down. Not sure how you can even call it a festival with everyone sober and clothed. The place also had weird cut off times for music, it was hot as balls, it was far from the midwest where most juggalos live, it was spread out over miles and the line up sucked. There were probably a third of the juggalos there as normal It was a total bummer.

Aside from all that it was not completely terrible. The combination of the brutal heat and the line up sucking meant I showed up late every day and still managed to take a million fucking photos. I didn’t have to worry about shooting the bands so I could focus on just shooting juggalos cause I knew I couldn’t sell any of the band photos. Oh and my hotel had a pool plus Gia Paige came with me for three of the four days. So really it was chill as fuck.

Day one I only had one gallery due and I flew in to Oklahoma City that day so I didn’t get down to the Gathering until about 7pm. I had an hour of light to get a few shots and then popped on the flash. Mushroomhead headlined and they are real weird looking so I took photos of them and then hung out with Mike Busey and his “Busey Beauties” who have been the highlight of the last few Gatherings. They had to keep stuff PG and they shut down their stage at 11pm cause of the stupid noise rules so I just hung out with them on their bus mostly. It was air conditioned, full of strippers and there was a pug. 0 complaints.

Anyway, that’s all I got for the first update. Day two is coming in a few hours. It’s a much bigger gallery.

Click here to see the mildly NSFW photos from day one of the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City.

My friend January Seraph died a few days ago. I am not sure that there has been an official cause of death announced but based on what I have heard and what I know about January it sounds like it was suicide. January was a wonderful fucking human who dealt with severe depression and other mental problems. It’s something we have in common and is really how we first formed a bond.

January and I had been friends online for a long time but in 2014 I had Tweeted about depression and out of nowhere I got an email from her reaching out to tell me she was there for me. She told me about her depression and that I was too talented to be sad for too long. It was the sweetest email from someone who was nearly a stranger. It meant a lot to me.

A few months later I was in LA and was having a particularly bad day. I had some shoots canceled and I was in a terrible mood and once again I sent out a Tweet. This time it was about needing a model since people had flaked. January reached out. She lived in San Francisco but she was in LA. Less than an hour later she was in my hotel room and we were shooting.

January and I became instant friends after that. It seems crazy to me that I only knew her in real life for a few years. We bonded over depression, mutual friends and crazy stories of lives well lived. January was an internationally renowned dominatrix and when she would be in NYC working I would always hang out with her after she got off work and last summer when I did a west coast road trip I stayed with her in San Francisco twice once on the way up and once on the way down.

January was so generous and amazing. She offered to fly me to San Francisco once to visit because she was about to try some new experimental treatment for her depression and she wanted to hang out with me before it started. She told me that she had no problem spending money on her friends because she made enough money when she was working and wanted to spend it because she never knew how much time she would have left.

And that’s just the thing. Severe depression is like any other illness. If you can’t treat it, it’s terminal. It’s not a matter of if it’s going to kill you, it’s a matter of when. I have had so many friends take their own life and I have learned that there’s not much you can do. You can postpone it and try and get them help, but sometimes it’s just inevitable and that’s the saddest fucking thing. January tried every possible treatment she could find including some pretty extreme stuff, but it was just never enough and I don’t think there’s anything anyone could have done.

I think the main thing we can all do is talk about mental illness more. We need to treat it like any other illness or disability. If we can remove the shame from it maybe then people will feel more comfortable reaching out and asking for help.

So let me share a little bit of my story and maybe start a conversation that you guys can continue. I have had terrible depression my entire life. I have never been suicidal but I have never been happy for more than brief moments. It’s just this constant weight on me and when it gets bad I don’t get out of bed or leave the house. I can’t be productive, I gain weight and I piss off my friends. On top of that I grew up with dysgraphia, ADHD and a severe form of obsessive compulsive disorder now known as Tourettic COD.  Because of this I was a weird fucking kid who struggled in school and got picked on constantly until I was 16 or 17. That shit does not help with depression I promise.

As an adult I still have issues with depression and ADD but computers help a lot with the dysgraphia and with a lot of behavioral therapy I am very incontrol of my OCD. I still feel it every day, especially right now as I think about it but it’s very manageable. I feel very lucky not to have suicidal thoughts or many of the personality disorders, anxiety or mania that a lot of my friends have but it’s not been an easy life despite the massive amount of privilege I’ve had as an upper middle class straight white male.

So there you go, now you know a little bit about my mental illness and now maybe you can relate and maybe you can tell someone else about your problems. Bring this shit out of the closet and if you are feeling bad tell someone. There’s always someone who will be there for you even if you don’t think there is.

I don’t even know what else to say but I fucking miss you January and I don’t wanna see any more of my friends take their own life. I can’t fucking deal with it anymore.

Anyway, I wanna share with you the first and only photo shoot January and I ever did. When she died I was looking for a photo to post and I realized I had never put these photos up. I felt like I had to get them up right away in her honor. I know she really liked the photos she saw.

Now here’s the point where I would normally tell you that are some extra photos on my app but I obviously am not going to plug my bullshit in a post like this so instead of signing up for my app, take a moment to donate some money to American Foundation For Suicide Prevention or another mental health charity. Or if nothing else, just hug someone you care about. You never know when it’s gonna be the last time.

Click here to see the first and last photo shoot I ever did with my amazing friend January Seraph. Rest in peace. 

I have made it back to NYC and I have just a few days before I leave again for the god damn Gathering of the Juggalos. I got a ton of books to ship (buy my book!) and a lot to do in the next 5 days so I am gonna try to make this quick.

One week ago today I was in LA I hit the AVN House Party deep in the valley. AVN if you aren’t aware is the number one magazine covering the adult industry but they also do a ton of shit including throwing the AVN Awards that I have been covering for a decade. They also wrote a great review of my book!

My LA book release party was the next day and a room full of porn stars seemed like the perfect excuse to promote the book party so I hit up my friends at LA Weekly so I could make a little money while also trying to convince cute girls to come to my party. It worked out pretty well because I met Gia Paige who came to the party and hit on me and we took photos and hung out and I think now she might be coming to the Gathering of the Juggalos with me which is probably a terrible mistake but don’t tell her that because I am real psyched about it.

Anyway, there are a lot of pretty photos of pretty people in here and there is a bunch of nudity because porn stars like being naked. Oh, I should also mention that they announced Angela White and Harli Lotts are going to be the next hosts of the AVN Awards which was sort of the point of the party.

Click here to see all my NSFW photos from the 2017 AVN House Party.

Last night I threw the second and last Instaxxx release party. The NYC one was fun, the LA version was fucking insane. I am always stressed out when I throw parties and there was plenty of shit to get stressed out over but the party was actually really good and I would have had a ton of fun if I wasn’t the one throwing it.

Superchief Gallery LA is such a great space in DTLA and I am really glad I threw the party there. That being said they don’t really have a DJ set up and apparently I either borrowed the wrong stuff or not enough stuff so Carter Cruise had to DJ off iTunes. It was pretty hilarious but she kinda killed it anyway. When her set was over she was laughing about how she only had the music on her Itunes cloud and so she ran out of music “at some point I just played an A-Trak mix for 2o minutes.”  Sorry Carter!

By the time Kate Mo$$ played it was already after 10 and the party was supposed to end at 10. It did not. Kate Mo$$ played a short insane set that was pretty perfect for the party. I unfortunately missed half of it cause I was doing shit but I am really glad they came out. It was total madness.

Joseline Kelly played after that and then I took photo of her in a bathroom cause the bathrooms at Superchief are grimy and cool looking so clearly I had to shoot some photos in there.

Speaking of girls in bathrooms, huge thanks to Charlotte Sartre and Riley Nixon for hanging out topless on a couch all night. Not sure the photo booth worked exactly how we planned it but it made the party a lot more fun.

I think that’s it. Thanks to everyone who came out and partied with me and thanks to everyone who bought a book. If you are in LA and still want one get at me quick cause I have about 10 more books than I want to take home with me.

Buy a book here.

Oh, and also I should mention that these photos have an unreasonable amount of nudity in them. Enjoy.

Click here to see the NSFW photos from the Instaxxx LA release party at Superchief Gallery LA.

Just figured I would do a post about the LA book release party. It’s essentially just the email I sent to my book’s Kickstarter backers but I got shit to do so sorry for being repetitive…

The party is on Friday at Superchief LA. 7-10pm although we will probably go a bit late. Should be a hell of a party.

Once again all three DJs are in the book. Porn babes Carter Cruise and Joseline Kelly probably make more music than they do porn and my friend Ivy Diamond is gonna be opening the night. I actually once shot her at the very location we’re having the party.

We also have a special set from Kate Mo$$ which should probably be insane. Just google them and look at the pictures and be prepared from some wild shit.

We are once again doing an Instax photo booth and I got Charlotte Sartre and Riley Nixon there to take naked photos with. Oddly I haven’t figured out a photographer yet but that should be pretty easy.

The party is free and there is free beer and it should be a lot of fun. Hope to see some of you soon! Here’s the flyer. The end.