My Days Attending The Gathering of the Juggalos May Be Over, Sadly Enough

For a solid DECADE, beginning in 2010, a big part of my career has involved Insane Clown Posse and The Gathering of the Juggalos. I’ve been to myriad other Insane Clown Posse events as well, including an appearance at a Rob Zombie-designed Haunted House, a Juggalo Days event in Canada where Ice-T opened for the clowns and ICP’s notorious “Hallowicked” Halloween concert. 

I even had the surreal honor of being the last writer to speak at the 2018 Juggalo March on Washington, one of the undeniable highlights of my career as well as my life. 

But the heart and soul of my Insane Clown Posse experience, and it is indeed an experience, is The Gathering of the Juggalos. 

I couldn’t have asked for a more memorable introduction to the festival. Everyone was naked and high off their ass on every drug. Indeed, you needed to pass a Drug Bridge that was EXACTLY what it sounded like to even get to the venue in the aptly named Cave-In-Rock, Illinois. 

The first night there Ron Jeremy, who was performing “comedy” after opener Hannibal Burress signed my wife’s cleavage without asking and then my wife and I watched in open-mouthed horror and disbelief during the infamous Tila Tequila incident. 

Saner, more responsible human beings would have experienced that literal and figurative shit show. Instead, my crazy brain thought, “Holy shit. I am hooked! I want to be a part of this forever!” 

Thankfully, writing You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me FORCED me to go to the Gathering at least three years in a row. 

Once the book was published, I no longer HAD to go to the Gathering but I desperately wanted to so I scooted temporarily out of my comfort zone and found places to pay me modestly to cover the festival. 

Shortly before it was sold for seventy million dollars High Times paid me 250 dollars to cover the Gathering, which meant that I probably ended up losing about a grand for four days of work. The A.V Club paid me about 500 bucks, which also meant that I lost money. 

I was willing to lose money to cover The Gathering because it wasn’t all, or even mostly, about work for me. It was personal. It was important. It was something that mattered to me on an emotional level, that I wanted desperately to continue to be a part of. 

In 2019 I could not get anybody to pay me even an insulting sum to cover the landmark 20th Gathering so I covered it for my website. I had an amazing time and would not want to have missed it for the world but it also didn’t really make sense from an economic perspective to spend so much money on something that did nothing for my site’s page-views or popularity.

I didn’t once again lose a sizable amount of money while working non-stop so I had a Kickstarter to raise money for the trip. 

Because I have low self-esteem and feel like nothing I do can ever be good enough, I didn’t just offer to cover the Gathering for patrons. Instead I turned it into a whole big crowdfunding thing with books for sale and original cards and a whole bunch of other wonderful stuff. 

It did not seem to matter. Pledges came in slowly and it took a very long time to come close to our 1500 dollar goal. Considering all of the expenses involved in The Gathering, and the cost for all of the crowd-funding stuff I probably would have lost money had I gone to the Gathering in 2021. 

It ended up being a moot point, however. I couldn’t leave my family mere weeks after we moved to a new neighborhood and I sure as shit didn’t want to get COVID because I just HAD to see Vanilla Ice perform live. 

So I reluctantly cancelled the campaign and resigned myself to another year of not going to the Gathering. 

It was probably the right decision although I am bummed that I missed the seminar where Violent J announced that due to heart problems, ICP would probably never mount a traditional tour again. 

As always, I REALLY wanted to go to the Gathering of the Juggalos this year but the stars were once again not aligning. 

The fight is strong in some folks. They’re ornery and bull-headed and stubborn and cannot be dissuaded from doggedly pursuing their goals. 

That has been me in the past. I’ve had a hankering to go to the Gathering that doesn’t entirely make sense and I think freaks my wife a little and, full disclosure, even I find a little unsettling. 

The quit was strong in me this year, however. Though being a part of the Dark Carnival is important to me, I gave up pretty quickly because I’m broke and my career is struggling and I can’t afford to lose money on the Gathering again and despite my Juggalo bona fides I cannot, for the life of me, get someone to pay me money to write about The Gathering of the Juggalos. 

The longer you’re away from the Gathering of the Juggalos the weaker the pull to come back becomes. 

This year a trip to the Blues Brothers Convention in Joliet Prison will take the place of the Gathering of the Juggalos. It’ll be easier, and more convenient, and cheaper, and not too far from my old hometown of Chicago, where my dad lives. I’ve already raised way more money through GoFundMe without promising patrons a goddamn thing beyond a good article at the end of it all. 

I’m forty-six years old. I have two neuro-divergent children and three failing small businesses. Truth be told, I may never go back to the Gathering. It might be something that’s already part of my past. And that would fucking suck but it would also be okay because I am, if anything, excessively, even obnoxiously human, and it is very human to want to do something big and ambitious, year in and year out, that you just can’t pull off. 

Send me to prison where I belong! I just launched a GoFundMe for the first ever Blues Brothers Convention at Joliet Prison, which you can be a part of by donating over at https://www.gofundme.com/f/send-nathan-to-the-blues-brothers-convention

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