irezumi

Sounds familiar.

My boss (Jack Witt) used to zap at a couple of different spots on the Pike (Lee Roy's, Long BeachTattoo) and has a killer scrapbook of vintage photos and business cards. I scanned all of them the other day. Being an ex-HA(apparently not an easy club to quit) and working on the Pike in the mid 70s, he has a boatload of great stories.
I can't give ALL of the gems away, but here's some decent ones I can post.

summer of '93. i was 12 or 13 years old, my buddy darren and i used to aimlessly ride our skateboards up and down pch all day long in laguna beach, only to stop by the local punk record store underdog, candy stealing missions at circle k, and we would occasionally try to sneak in the door at laguna tattoo and hide behind all the adults until someone noticed we were snooping around and kicked us out.
the second time i ever stopped by, i actually walked in, instead of standing outside with my curious head noodled into the shop. laguna tattoo always got really busy in the summer, it probably still does, so there was a lot of interesting folks and plenty of cool stuff for me to look at. this particular time, darren and i stood in the back of the tiny lil' shop trying not to be noticed and totally dumb-founded by what we were seeing. there was a huge shirtless biker dude in the chair getting his head tattooed and reading a magazine. he didn't move or make a sound. we were completely awestruck! i think this was by far the coolest, toughest, scarriest thing i had ever seen in my life up to that point. it was then that a rather large, ringed hand appeared on my shoulder, as if to say; "you're in trouble kiddo." i looked up to see another shirtless biker-looking dude guiding me out the door. "stay outta here kid." he muttered. he grabbed darren, who at this point was boldly standing up front, hit him over the head with a rolled up magazine and sent him on his way out the door.
it wasn't until a couple years later that i found out by hanging out at the record store that the tattooed man was gg allin who was getting the murder junkies logo tattooed on his head! i'm not quite old enough to have any more biker/tattoo stories. but that experience and other stories i heard growing up single handedly changed the way i saw tattoo shops, and it may be the reason still get that sinking feeling in my gut sometimes when i walk into a shop, an unexplained feeling of fear, like someones going to pull out a knife any second and kick me out. i guess i caught the tail end for that age of tattoo shops.
i later returned to laguna tattoo 3 days after my eighteenth birthday for my first tattoo done by lindsey carmicheal. 5 years after gg allin, the shop seemed so different to me. it was so obvious, even to me as a youngster who didn't know anything about tattoo culture yet, that there was a huge shift in the demand for tattoos by popular culture. after some looking i discovered this....

enjoy!

Me and six of my buddies went in to the only shop in town at the time, and it was every stereotype you had ever heard. The guy who owned it, was hanging out in there with his friend, and in come me and my friends who are 18 at the time. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure I was the only one who really wanted a tattoo, but 3 of my other friends went through with it. They definitely tried to intimidate us with our questions like "is it safe?" to which they said "yeah, we always wipe the needle off when we pull it out of the junkie" I got a terribly done rose on my thigh, one of my friends passed out after getting the outline of the smallest 4 leaf clover you ever saw. He wanted to quit but they wouldn't let him. In the middle of one of the tattoos, the sound of a bunch of motorcycles comes roaring down the road. The guy tattooing puts down his machine, draws a pistol from his person, and tells his buddy to get the shotgun from the back. They both run outside with guns drawn, while me and my friends are laughing and terrified at the same time. I don't think it was an act by these guys, I think they were seriously paranoid. The bikes just kept going down the road, never even slowed down, and they came back inside, and finished the tattoos. This was on Long Island in 1991. I thought it made for a memorable first tattoo.
Hey Irezumi, I remember a girl named Margureite from Peter tat2 who supposedly was the shit. I got tattooed by a girl named Cindy there in '92, and a guy named Brett who I just found out is back in NYC now.

I was 15 or 14 when I walked into a shop... Deep Ellum, it was a Sunday afternoon, my folks were always super curious types... They had me and my little sister with them after like a big weekend, Texas vs OU, or Fair Days, or Art Fest....
We tried to walk into Pair O' Dice, my mom and sis wanted a piercing from Skin and Bones... Stace wasn't at the counter, but I can remeber Richard Stell, standing up with Deb on his left, and him ye.ling to get those fucking kids out of the shop.... Hahaha, my Dad being taller then Richard popped off something back, and we were out of there....
Years, YEARS later, I had been coming in watching Richard tattoo, and he finally was like, I like you, you should buy the piercing shop and be my new partner.... After all was said and done, lease signed... I asked, "That's always been your station right?"
His reply, Yup...
I said, well.... funny how life works out, you kicked me out when I was like 15... I come back and bought half the place....fucking small world. It was a Sunday when you kicked me out, you're usually off... So it was either a shitty day, or something was wrong, either way it didn't keep me away...

My boss (Jack Witt) used to zap at a couple of different spots on the Pike (Lee Roy's, Long BeachTattoo) and has a killer scrapbook of vintage photos and business cards. I scanned all of them the other day. Being an ex-HA(apparently not an easy club to quit) and working on the Pike in the mid 70s, he has a boatload of great stories.
I can't give ALL of the gems away, but here's some decent ones I can post.

My boss (Jack Witt) used to zap at a couple of different spots on the Pike (Lee Roy's, Long BeachTattoo) and has a killer scrapbook of vintage photos and business cards. I scanned all of them the other day. Being an ex-HA(apparently not an easy club to quit) and working on the Pike in the mid 70s, he has a boatload of great stories.
I can't give ALL of the gems away, but here's some decent ones I can post.

My boss (Jack Witt) used to zap at a couple of different spots on the Pike (Lee Roy's, Long BeachTattoo) and has a killer scrapbook of vintage photos and business cards. I scanned all of them the other day. Being an ex-HA(apparently not an easy club to quit) and working on the Pike in the mid 70s, he has a boatload of great stories.
I can't give ALL of the gems away, but here's some decent ones I can post.

My boss (Jack Witt) used to zap at a couple of different spots on the Pike (Lee Roy's, Long BeachTattoo) and has a killer scrapbook of vintage photos and business cards. I scanned all of them the other day. Being an ex-HA(apparently not an easy club to quit) and working on the Pike in the mid 70s, he has a boatload of great stories.
I can't give ALL of the gems away, but here's some decent ones I can post.

My boss (Jack Witt) used to zap at a couple of different spots on the Pike (Lee Roy's, Long BeachTattoo) and has a killer scrapbook of vintage photos and business cards. I scanned all of them the other day. Being an ex-HA(apparently not an easy club to quit) and working on the Pike in the mid 70s, he has a boatload of great stories.
I can't give ALL of the gems away, but here's some decent ones I can post.

My boss (Jack Witt) used to zap at a couple of different spots on the Pike (Lee Roy's, Long BeachTattoo) and has a killer scrapbook of vintage photos and business cards. I scanned all of them the other day. Being an ex-HA(apparently not an easy club to quit) and working on the Pike in the mid 70s, he has a boatload of great stories.
I can't give ALL of the gems away, but here's some decent ones I can post.