Note: The folks at our sister paper Riverfront Times have ventured into the breach that is the Gathering of the Juggalos in Hardin County, Illinois. Rocks Off will be following their exploits all weekend.
Even as we enter day four of our time here at the Gathering of the Juggalos in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, we still haven't yet exactly mastered the art of being productive, functioning people in a kingdom of hedonistic insanity. As we ascend the mountain of madness and slime, more and more things become apparent. For example, a lot of the shit we brought is completely useless here. There are some things that simply do not belong at the Gathering of the Juggalos.
Nate "Igor" Smith Once you arrive at the Gathering, you quickly learn you did not need to bring all that food.
So after compiling a list Friday of the items that you should bring to the Gathering, we used our rapidly deteriorating intellects to put together a list of the opposite: Things you should avoid bringing along when camping with Juggalos.
REWIND:
Death Reported at Juggalo Gathering; Drug Bridge Closed
Death at Juggalo Gathering: "Four Dudes Had Been Sleeping With a Corpse"
10. Food
This is a festival, which can only mean one thing: port-a-johns galore. All the crapboxes you've ever wanted to see in your wildest dreams. Defecating in public is intimidating enough for many of us, and in this particular situation, it would probably be best to just not eat for a few days. The toilets here are all strangely lopsided and feel like they're moving when you're in them.
The outsides are covered in spray paint and the insides of them are either covered in mud or poop. When the rains come--and boy, do they--one can't help thinking, while wandering the grounds that the entire earth beneath our feet is actually just human waste.
9. Bug Spray This seems to fly in the face of conventional logic, we know, but other than this weird lump that spontaneously appeared on the back left side of my neck (which could be some sort of inaugural "backne"), there is no evidence that insect life is capable of existing at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Even with sugary Faygo soda sticking to every surface, the noxious environment leaves confusingly few bugs to be found.
8. Skinny Jeans Interaction 1: "Hey faggot, where did you get them skinny jeans? C'mon, tell me where you got them skinny jeans! Hey, where are you going, skinny jeans?"
Interaction 2: "Yeah, I knew you guys were press when I saw you wearing those black jeans."
Interaction 3: "I usually wear skinny jeans, but I actually went out and bought these baggy pants when I realized I was coming here."
7. Condoms
If you're coherent enough to find the condoms, you're probably clear-headed enough to realize that you should not have sex with the thing you're about to have sex with. Besides, if you decide you really need to get yourself some strange, you can always just use one of the many mud-covered discarded condoms on the ground.
6. Anyone You Care About You're going to be drunk. You're going to spend 30 minutes in a bathroom. You're going to get caught up in a conversation with a Juggalo dad selling cigarettes for another thirty minutes. And then you're going to lose track of the people you came with.
You have to trust that the Gathering will see whoever you're with to total safety. Which, at this point, is a concept we are no longer 100 percent familiar with.
