jake bevil

about a week ago i got my knee tattooed by wes grim...not as bad as i thought......and a month ago i got both my feet tattooed by mike belzel....pure hell....the healing, my shoes looked like there were freshly baked loaves of bread in them, and i couldnt walk for about two days. the absolute worst were my thumbs done by eddie gracida. ive kinda started to think that the older i get the more it hurts, or are all the easy spots done with already........

no way in hell are we doing specials on tattoos or lowering our prices.up until about a year and a half ago i had never even heard of tattoo specials! "anyone can sell snake-oil on a sunday". we all stand by our work and thats it. richard is probably right that brownsville is the problem, and i had been thinking about that same thing. are there just some towns that arent tattooable? meaning that the majority just doesnt get it? even after they see all the bullshit on tv that might show people what descent tattoos might look like? so after taking saturday off, drinking lots of lonestar, smoking a shit ton of camels and doing alot of grumbling about this or that is wrong with tattooing, i descided to say fuck them. nose to the grindstone. im only worried about me and mine. thats all you can do in this situation, unless you have a knack for arson. its gonna get worse before it gets any better, all we can do is try to take care of tattooing and try to educate our clients. im not into the whole internet revolution in tattooing, this is the first time i have posted anything or joined a blog forum thingy. good positive feedback thank you all again. oh yeah fuck snitches. homie dont play that.

a nice big sign that says "if you can get it cheaper then why are you here". they operate in a tiny space that i cant believe people would even want to get tattooed in, so i dont think that making rent will be a problem especially with all the gimmicks they are putting out. some or their crew work at an out door fleamarket on the weekends and raffle off fake coach bags and bongs along with tattoos at local night hot spots. i hate to bring up the negative a negative topic, but i look at this shit and wonder if im going bat shit. and yeah land lord said there was no competitive clause in lease...

im going to paint a sign that says "WE FIX $20 TATTOOS". sometimes i think back of the days when i could still smell green soap, people still made needles, and there was somewhat of a common respect between tattooers in a town. unfortunately violence doesnt solve anything, only gets you an extended stay in a beautiful state run facility. i love tattooing, although lowballers and phonys are making it harder and harder. time to knuckle down and just keep working.

so heres the deal, i moved my shop after being opened for five years in the same location, to a larger nicer building. i didnt tattoo for about a month as i was building stations painting and all the other legwork that goes into opening up a shop. two days before we opened the doors i see RIGHT NEXT DOOR some jerky looking kids snooping around. come to find out the land lord signed them up to open a bong/ tattoo supply/ tattoo shop, that also does artsy fartsy photography of tattooed girls with fake blood smeared all over them (you know the type). i talked to the owner and tried to reason with him about shop minimums and what not, and nothing. shop min 20 bucks, on top of that they have a 250 all you can hack! 250 bucks and get tattooed all day. needless to say none of these kids can tattoo their way out of a paper bag but people are eating it up! the only thing i can think of to do is to unload a huge can of bear mace in thier mail slot and wait. is this what tattooing has become? oh i miss the stories of people getting their hands broken and shops being burned down. MAKE TATTOOING ILLEGAL already. the up side.....i have a lot of time on my hands to paint flash. jake bevil.