TRUK, TIFFANY, AND THE TENNESSEE PARTY BUS
7-1-08 POST KEYWORDS: truk, joseph john trukovich, party bus, nashville
, artsucks.com, cojo
Fellow artist Joseph John Trukovich, AKA TRUK was getting married to his beautiful fiance' (my girlfriend MOLLY's best friend), when their wedding photographer called to cancel last minute.
Considering I was going to be in Tennessee and attending the wedding anyway I filled in. Working with two different cameras I got in and around everyone's faces. I shot frantically, a full suited Yankee idiot in the southern heat I darted around the room snapping away.
I felt like I must have come off like an overheated berzerker strobe light leaving behind a wake of blinded onlookers.
Of the hundreds of shots (and drops of sweat) A handful came out looking pretty damn good. I'm glad for them, having never done professional wedding photography.
The fact that I was using Truk's Cannon (which is a few generations better than mine) didn't hurt.
Look at the photo above to get an idea of the different depths of field I could get, I could never pull this off with my camera. You wonder why some photographers take such great pictures, a lot of it has to do with how their camera functions.
After the wedding, which was more work than play, a few of the close friends and family sat back on bean bag chairs at Tiffany and Truk's house and played Rock Band for a few hours while drinking heavily-which for me was the most relaxing part of the day, that was until the PARTY BUS showed up.
We all piled into the bus, there were about 30 of us. We brought a giant cooler full of booze. This basically was a normal city bus that had been converted into a dance club with disco lights, lit up floor and a personal DJ. 
Where the racks above normally would hold your loose luggage had been converted into long rows of drink holders and the normal poles had been replaced with stripper poles. 
The girls would push up against the windows and yell out to passerby's, it was such a raucous time. The photos I took were totally on the fly, and only when I remembered to take my camera out of Molly's purse.
The music was thumping, the lights were whizzing and we were rolling, Nashville bound. It took about an hour to get there, and we did a lot of drinking and dancing in that time. All of Truk's brothers and their pretty wives were along for the ride, as well as the bride and groom's families and a few of their close friends. 
If there was a bus equivalent of a crazy train, this was it. I have never had an experience like this before and I hope to have many more like it. It was a SUBWAY PARTY x 1000 and totally legal. By the time we got to the city we were all pretty much tanked and the night was just beginning.
We parked in the nightclub section of Nashville and walked with the bus driver to a club called GRAHAM CENTRAL STATION. This club was enormous. Seven different unique environments on seven different levels. From my own experiences in the late 90's it rivaled NYC's THE TUNNEL in size. It was just enormous, and the drinks were New York priced. After one or two drinks we all agreed to get the fuck out of there and get back on the bus.
The bus was our VIP club, and it was mobile! We had the driver just circle around Nashville until the bars closed and then drive us back to Murfreesboro. We drank and danced and partied hard as fuck for hours. These pictures don't do the experience justice.
As the night wound down Tiffany, determined to get her money's worth out of that wedding dress ended up falling asleep in the back of the bus. The newlyweds lovingly shared a bench for the rest of the ride.
Oh I almost forgot, this weird relative had a huge crush on Molly and tried to make out with her.
Yeah, that's the funny fucker. Man, good memories. Congrats Truk and Tiff!
