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Scott Sylvia

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  3. Scott Sylvia
    ATTENTION ALL BAY AREA TATTOOERS.
    my friend danny dringenberges car was broken into tonight next door to black heart tattoo and all of his shit was stolen. anyone brings any tattoo related stuff including tattoo machines please call the shop.415-431-2100 there will be a reward for sure. please help if you can. thanks
  15. Scott Sylvia

    one fucking year.

    By Scott Sylvia,

    So....One fucking year already? I can't believe it has been that long. seems to fly by with everything going on you never really keep track of the beginning point? At least I never do, but thank god somebody paid attention because I sure wasn't. When loch told me about it I was surprised to say the least.
    I would like to thank everybody who has participated in this place, from the blogs, to photos, to the stories and even bumble nuts who i think may secretly be marrying ursula, "they really had an energy between them". ha-ha i would really like thank the great tattooers who have let me intervene in their lives for a while and show people what i find great about them and there work that needs to be shared.
    I would also like to thank everyone for their patience with the changes of the actual site while we grow and try to keep it an easily useable site. Who would have thought we would have so many photos so fast?
    We are having a get together tonight and I cant wait. Spent all day shoveling and ripping out concrete. I could use some diner and adult conversation, as adult as I am capable of.
    Finally I would like to thank everyone who has made this possible. First Steve is the man! He made this mother fucker from duct tape and paper clips and it rules. Tammy is the internet guru who has the master plan of the forum she is sort the grand master flash to our furious five. Lochlan is the man holding down home plate always managing and posting and doing things that people abbreviate and i just smile and act like i know what the fuck they just said. then there is as i like to call her "the boss" my wife who has to put up with me in all forms and has to edit everything i write so i don't sound like a retard. she will not be editing this so you can get the idea of how important she is. ha ha. she is a great women and i am a better man for even knowing her.
    Thank you all. Scott
  16. Scott Sylvia
    Dan Dringenberg hails from an era of tattooing that was scary, violent and otherwise hostile. I started tattooing in
    this period, cutting my teeth with a big biker guy named Miller. I'm sure that many people will understand when I
    say that Dan has changed tattooing in many ways, but most notably with his black back pack. It maybe true that every corner of this business is currently saturated with suppliers ripping each other off, but it wasn't like that back then. Dan was one of the first people to produce a high quality tube. Up until that point, you either used super small Spaulding tubes or crappy brass National ones that turned strange colors in the autoclave. That's where Dan's genius began. He produced a remake of the tattoo Sven tube which is now known as the "open top shader." Philip Leu had been traveling around the world tattooing with these, but they were just legend to us, until along comes Danny. In his great wisdom, he figured out the jig work needed to make these things. Now I have seen these things, and they are really complex pieces, multiple actions happening at once. But cut, polish, press, and blamo! There goes Danny, out on the track pimping his wares out of a black back pack. I still have the first tubes i got from him to this day. They've been beaten useless, but i still have them. Dan has since been through the gauntlet of ups and downs and has come out on top. His machine shop has become a corner stone of innovation, and the quality of the machines coming out of that shop matches Danny's integrity. All of my first parts were from Dringenburg and Company, he is the only reason I was ever able to start making machines in a production form as opposed to one-offs.
    I did this interview at the same time as Kore and Tim's interviews, just real late at night when everyone had split
    except two of Dan's friends who sat next to me while we talked. I'd like to thank Dan for not only allowing me to use his place and disrupt the day to day affair of his shop to do these interviews, but also for all of his
    help and involvement with my own machine business.
    I hope you enjoy this wild ride with Danny, I know I sure did.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WjcUpHoBbQ
  17. Scott Sylvia
    The following is what I wrote at the end of a thread that will be removed. By request, I've taken this part out and moved it here. If you have no idea what it's in reference to, lucky you. Don't worry about it.
    Hey everyone,
    Sorry I haven't been on here so much, I've been super busy painting and getting ready for an art show for the shop. Thank god we're now officially broken up with BumbleNuts.
    To clear up the "private section" issue, I just want to say that it has never been my intention to have a private tattooer's section. My goal has always been to promote good tattooing in a positive way. There are other tattoo forums that have had private sections, and they've just turned into knitting circles with name calling and frat boy posturing. I'm not against clubs per se, I am a member of the Good Gents and the Oddfellows, but a private section would only hurt the long term health of our forum.
    There are tons of ways for tattooers to talk to each other everyday, you could also PM each other on here. But this forum was never intended to teach techniques or explain how to tattoo, we just want to elevate the publics' knowledge, and our own, of the truly great things that are happening in tattooing, past, present, and future.
    I especially want to thank Valerie and Stewart and anyone else who's tried to participate as a tattooer OR a collector on here and help cool this fire down. It's also the non-tattooers like Shawn Porter, gougetheeyes, Ursula, and Ms Rad that make LST great. Just like how we wouldn't be tattooers if we didn't have clients, we're interdependent both in the shop and on LST as well.
    So yeah, Go Team! (Clearly I've drank a lot of good coffee today.)
  18. Scott Sylvia
    Hey everybody, there is some light at the end of this Tattoo School tunnel, and it came in my mailbox today. I recieved a letter from a friend whom I know to be a credible and reliable source on the subject. Here are his suggestions on how we can direct our collective energy in a positive direction to help clean up this mess.
    Thanks,
    Scott
    "Ok, here is the breakdown of the atrocious new show Tattoo School. The show as we all know is aired on TLC, TLC is part of the Discovery Channel Incorporation. DCI is owned by media giant Cox Enterprises Inc and is received in nearly 66 million homes and is co-owned with Tele-Communications Inc.. They also own part of the E! Entertainment Network, Rysher Entertainment, six television stations (which covers 8 percent of the United States), 16 radio stations, 18 daily newspapers, and several weekly newspapers. Cox Enterprises employs roughly 60,000 people Cox Enterprises, Inc.
    In 1994 Cox Enterprises Inc. was worth $3 billion and is now worth nearly $15 billion.
    TLC bought the show from Touch Productions, which produces Tattoo School. Touch productions is a massive Production Company from the UK who is behind a slue of television shows and documentaries for BBC and many of the largest UK and United States Networks. They are not worth as much as Cox but are still up in the hundreds of millions and climbing. TOUCH PRODUCTIONS
    The tattoo industry, even if every single last one of us banded together, could not make a tiny dent on TLC or Touch Productions. It would take tens of millions of petition signatures to raise enough awareness for any action on their end to take place. Do not be discouraged, there is still hope. Remember, it all trickles down (or in this case, UP). TLC purchases the show from Touch Productions, Touch hires a crew to film the show at its location of the Tattoo School. If you eliminate the Tattoo School out of the equation, there would be no show for TLC to air. The Tattoo School is a real business and is well within our reach to do something about and create waves for them. It would take a lot less signatures on a petition to raise enough awareness about a local business teaching without licenses and keeping an unsanitary environment according to health standards. THIS IS WITHIN OUR REACH PEOPLE. Artists and collectors need to unite against the Tattoo School, If we would have focused all our attention and time towards the Tattoo Schools as we have towards TLC we might easily have damned the Tattoo School’s for good. The executives at TLC are most likely toasting champagne glasses to all the media and free promotion we have given them, but what’s done is done.
    Let’s start campaigning against the Tattoo Schools; we can do this. There is one in Upstate New York and one in San Diego California. If you live near these areas I urge you to go to City Hall and write a complaint about these schools, even a letter or email to the city website will suffice for those who don’t live close enough to make an appearance. If you sit around and keep the attitude that someone else will do this for you then you do not deserve the gift of being a tattooer or wearing one. All the information is listed below and it will only take a small portion from your day to speak out in what you believe in.
    Tattoo School in upstate NY
    This is the link to the City of Schenectady Council where you can write a letter and copy and paste it to every councilman’s email address Schenectady::City Council
    Or you can email Kathy Finch who is in charge of human resources at:
    [email protected]
    Tattoo School in Escondido, San Diego"
  19. Scott Sylvia
    Up until this point, everyone I have interviewed has been a friend or acquaintance. When I was getting ready to do the Tim Hendricks interview, I spoke with my friend Demian Cane. "Since you're coming down, you should do Flatmo, too." Now I have seen a lot of Kore Flatmo's work and I've always loved it, but I've never so much as even seen a picture of him, let alone had a heart to heart conversation. Demian took matters into his own hands and called him. One phone call later, I was sick to my stomach with nerves. I am not what anyone would call a social butterfly, I have anxiety beyond a doubt. I am only 100% comfortable at two times, when I am tattooing, and when I am in my home. All I can do is think of how I don't know the guy and how awkward it will be, and how could I possibly do a good interview if I don't know what to ask? Seriously. Well, lets say when I met him it was a surprise, the general size of the man. I was not expecting a big dude since his tattoos have such a gentle sense about them. Kore was really easy to talk to, very well spoken, and had strong opinions, which is a quality that I love in people. Strong opinions, to me, signify a strong character. Whether that has any validity, who knows, but that's what I believe. After a few minutes, it became clear that Kore is as prolific in his words as he is in his tattooing, and I was able to see where the gentleness in his work originates. This interview turned out to be single handedly the easiest one I have ever done. I hope that his words bring a huge smile to your face, as they did to mine.
    Thanks again Kore for your graciousness, and thank you Danny Dringerberg for letting me do this at your place. LST viewers, you are in for a treat.
    Scott

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpqwCuwGPtI
  20. Scott Sylvia
    So keeping with the Aaron cain, I have a lot of them I use to bail him out of every bad financial decision he made. Usually he would go on some toy shopping spree right before rent was due.
    This machine was from when he first started to build machines for sale. i could have gotten a lower number but thought the 13th one would be cool and somebody had dibs on number 7. i have the number 14 of the iron telephone dial from Mickey sharpz and for a moment i thought i would collect machines by numbers but lost interest quickly. i used this for a while it always had some crazy long stroke and was not an everyday machine. it now hangs in the cabinet and looks great in there so there it stays ha-ha.
  21. Scott Sylvia
    Tim Hendricks is a world renowned bad ass. He lives a life most of us could only dream of having, and somehow pulls it off. From pro skateboarder, to surfer, to incredible tattooer, to TV notoriety, he has encompassed all things cool in his life.
    Tim and I have a good friend in common who's responsible for our introduction, Demian Cane. Demian has a body suit that I believe Tim has redone three times or something absurd like that, Tim finally had to cut him off. His tattoos are like that, they can make a collector act like a dope fiend.
    I respect Tim Hendricks so much because he puts all the work into the tattoo and it seems effortless. If you've ever been fortunate enough to see this dude execute a portrait, you know what I mean. Most tattooers peck at them like chickens, where Tim is hauling ass, dumbfounding speed and ability rock his tattooing. Tim Hendricks produces line drawing books for tattooers, but he's also made power supplies, tattoo machines, his own needles, his own gloves and motorcycle grips, and god damn ball point pens just for tattooing. Yeah, they write on paper, but they really show their stuff on skin. If he thinks of it, he just does it, that simple. Tim has tattooed me three times, and my wife two times, one of which is a portrait of me that is so good it weirds me out. It's strange to see yourself on someone else's body. My wife didn't tell me she was getting it done, so when I first saw it, she said that I stared at it so long, speechless, that she started to think I was angry. Truth is, that's just my face, it makes me look angry even when I'm just thinking about a sandwich.
    I have had the pleasure to travel across the globe with this man, and in addition to being a great person, Tim is also a great traveler. How well someone travels, in my opinion, tells a lot about a person's character. Tim has a great sense of humor and can tell a story like no other. This interview takes place at Danny Dringenburg's place, I drove down to catch him before he headed out to NY to start filming New York Ink. I am glad and grateful that he shared this time with me. I find this interview to be a lot of fun, I hope you do as well.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FBDYctTcqU
  22. Scott Sylvia
    Ok, just so you can understand the sickness of my tattoo machines these are pictures of just the ones at the shop. I still have the machine shop where I build machines. I am going do organize these things I am hoping to build some display cases so I can get them all in one place. So retarded.
  23. Scott Sylvia

    first shader

    By Scott Sylvia,

    So this is one of two of my first shaders. I am not sure which one is the actual first one because I never marked them but they are from the same order one was millers and one was mine then he sold me the other later on.
    i rebuilt this machine 10 times over the years. i use this one a lot now a days. it is primarily my big mag machine it really pushes and quick. don't dig it with 7 mags sort of turns it all to shag carpet " not really what I'm going for"
    I had a third frame the in my great wisdom I cut the chuck into a quick loader style with the diagonal cut which promptly back fired on me so I cut it up and made the side brace which is silver soldered on" before I could braze" and has stayed on for well over 16 years I think I built it like this a couple of years ago. heres to you karl.....now eat a bag of dicks.
  24. Scott Sylvia
    I don't know how many of you know me or my history of growing up in tattooing so i will start in the beginning with my first machine. I started tattooing in late 1989 with Aaron Cane he was responsible for me getting my fist job in tattooing. We had gone to school with each other since the 6th grade and he had done my first tattoo on his couch when i was 14?. my second when i was 16.
    My first job tattooing was working for a guy named miller cotton who didn't know much in the way of art but knew how to hustle people which is half the game in tattooing back then. when i started at the shop i tattooed grapefruits for one day. my self the next and the guy they fired for me to have a job. the fourth day i was released on the public and told to tell them i had been tattooing for four years?...which i did till i had been for five. in that shop everything was Spaulding and Rodgers which was not really uncommon at the time and place. monterey was not the tattoo meka. When i started i was not allowed to have my own equipment as a way to keep reliant on him. but when i got my first personal machines they were a Spaulding supreme and puma for a shader.
    By this time Aaron had been fired for going to the record store......in santa cruz? with my car ha-ha. If you know him you will understand. Anyways he started hanging out with the only person in the county who knew anything he worked at a place called gold coast and i cant for the life of me remember his name but he had Polynesian tattoos and back then that was fucking cool i remember thinking it was tire tread. So this man with a name i have no idea what it was had been showing aaron about machines he taught him how to make a cut back mad bee. and he made me one.
    It is the second machine he ever made and my first liner. Check out the sweet engraving i think it rules especially how crazy that shit he does now is. Yes the wrap on the coils is a brown paper bag pretty classy and the upside down capacitor is real nice as well.
  25. Scott Sylvia
    So i am going to start doing a couple of things that I want to invite people to do as well.
    First I am going to start writing post about when I travel, having two kids and two jobs, tattoos, and machines I don't travel much but when I do it always involves working. Conventions, guest spots , etc., so I am going to write mini articles to sort promote and celebrate the good times we get to have in this business.
    Secondly I am going to start to post pictures of my machine collection. I have so many fucking machines its retarded I mean really in the couple hundred status, dumb hobby I started 20 years ago. I am blessed by my time in tattooing for many reasons but one is that I have been collecting machines long enough that I got a pair of Rogers for $500 that does not happen now. Jesus people will kill each other over a waters frame for the love of christ. oh and don't think i don't have some steaming piles of shit as well. so i think ill start this week not sure what the first one will be?....how about my first one. second machine Aaron cain ever built...mad bee cut back. ill post it up when i get it out of the display case. your gonna shit.
    many thanks to all of you on this site
    Scott
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