In the photos above, you'll see the result of what our correspondent Jim Kiernan calls "Juggalo Justice." When a Gathering attendee burgled from his neighbors at the campground, The Family banded together to get their revenge. The people in the photos above are not necessarily those that participated in the smash-and-grab of car parts. Kiernan says these photos were taken after the car had been ripped apart. Now Kiernan takes us into the Juggalo camps to give us a glimpse of life at the Gathering...



Juggalos and Juggalettes drive from all over the country and camp out at Hogrock. There are tens of thousands of people, cars, trucks, tents and campers everywhere. They form pop-up communities of different groups and many of the sites have their own names and identities. There is a fair amount of security onsite throughout the 240+ acres but security is just there to ensure that people are safe, not to police or attempt to regulate behavior. It essentially feels like a lawless society, albeit a free-form version of utopian anarchism, in that people are free to do/say/act/dress/party as they please without constraint. This leads to the most obvious display of personal freedom that I've personally ever witnessed.



You might expect with this many people, in various states of sobriety, that there would be the potential for riots and violence. Surprisingly, the opposite occurs. The Juggalos share food, alcohol, music and other substances freely and regularly. Despite lots of yelling, hyper-aggressive music (everything from Gangsta/Horrorcore Rap to Extreme Metal and back again), constant ingestion of a rainbow of substances and chronic sleep deprivation, people treat each other with a great deal of respect and love.



The Juggalos often yell out "FAM-UH-LEE" (Family, sounded-out phonetically) during shows, while drinking, as they're walking around... you get the idea. The concept of the Juggalo Family is very real. There is the clear sense that despite their backgrounds, finances or level of education/intelligence, when they come together at the Gathering, people are really decent to each other. Like any family, there is an expectation that you will treat the people around you very well, better than if they were strangers or casual acquaintances. But woe be unto him that violates the spirit of this unspoken agreement.



From what I heard, in one of the campgrounds a number of tents were robbed. Items went missing, personal effects, money, etc. To steal in this environment—a safe haven, if you will—is tantamount to sacrilege. So, the Juggalos in this camp began conferring. They realized in short order that all of them had been robbed of something, except for one person in their encampment. They waited until he was out of the area and investigated, and their suspicions were confirmed upon finding of some of the missing items. When The Thief returned, he met with an extremely unhappy group of Juggalos, and a reckoning occurred. The Thief left the campground posthaste after receiving an epic beatdown.



The enraged Juggalos then turned their attentions to his car. After the car was spraypainted with the words "THEIF," among other things, they began smashing the windows, slashing the tires and ultimately dismantling the car... and dismantling it is the only description I can think of.



They completely took that car apart, like I could never have imagined. Every part that could conceivably come off was removed. I first saw people walking around with various car parts and then began to hear rumors of what had transpired. I learned the location of the car (carcass?) and made my way over there. What remained of the automobile was just a skeleton—body drilled through everywhere, roof removed, chassis almost completely cut in half. The Juggalos attempted to fold the remaining structure in half but they were stopped by the arrival of security.



It was a real-life case of Frontier Justice or as I've come to think of it, Juggalo Justice. Juggalos don't play. Perhaps the lesson here is best summed up by what someone wrote on the bottom of the car, "You ****ed Up!" Even in a free-will society like the Gathering there are rules and a price to pay for violating those rules.