Huero

What's going on on your leg? Is that from the tattoo?

I love tattoos like that. I'd rather look at one of those over a 1,000 Bert Krak panther heads or Daniel albrigo Navajo blanket tattoos. Offensive tattoos, racist tattoos, religious tattoos, drifter, hobo tattoos, Political tattoos, obscene tattoos. Tattoos done in garages, motel rooms, Russian penitentiary tattoos, south African gang tattoos, british soccer hooligan tattoos, handpoked punk tattoos, facetats, poorly thought out names on necks. I've always loved ugly tattoos, and I always will.

It was on my homeboy's dad. he was from a old gang called lomita maravilla, from east LA. He had a topless girl ina sombrero, just her torso. I think some roses too. She had a rifle in her hand, her nipples were covered by a ammo belt. On the other forearm he had this little dude in a sombrero, but you could just see his feet, his mustache, some shotgun barrels, and that big sombrero. it said MARAVILLA in gang writing, arched above the hat. Youd see writing like that all over and I used to try and copy it or write my name in those letters too like in schoolwork I'd write the answers like that, or my name all crazy like that and they'd get pissed. Anyways I'd always try and look at those tattoos when I'd go to his house, but they were old and sort of faded. He was a garbage man, and sort of a scary lookin dude, or was back then and i didnt wanna hassle him or fuck with him about it. Years later I asked to see em, and got a good look. Another friend had a older punk rocker sister with a pachuco cross under her eye, but that was later, and I found out it was make up. Lots of punk rockers would do that with a ballpoint pen or mascara if they hung in certain scenes.

"Sugar Skulls"

Forgot to mention that fool. Robert pho too, outta Vegas via the LBC. He comes from the tradition and does some of the baddest portraits in the game.

roots of "Chicano tattooing" can be traced back a long way, but what was really influential on the art form was the tradition of public murals, especially in east LA in the mid to late 1960s. These murals were scattered all over Los Angeles, in nearly every barrio neighborhood, but you had a concentration of them in the projects. Places like Ramona gardens, Estrada courts, aliso village, dogtown (not the venice dogtown, butthe dogtown projects, by the LA river, near chinatown) Sometimes they were political. The themes generally revolved around racial pride, community disenfranchisement, Aztec and mayan mythology, Lowrider culture, pachuco culture etc. Tattoos were and are an extension of that tradition. That was the era. The end of the viet nam war, a massive increase in the prison population in California and the rise of biker culture. It just happened that Cartwright and negrete and Rudy where there at the right time in the right place. They had credibility in the broader tattoo culture, and exposed that style far beyond califas. It was seen as an underworld, undesirable thing, then it became chic for a time.

I don't think it's a strictly "Chicano" thing, or a "black" thing (actually you didn't see tattooing making much of an inroads in the black community in general until reletively recently, and prior to that the tattoos they'd have we're very basic, and almost never photo realistic portraits. Blacks in general were very conservative anout tattoos until the mid 2000s. Before that You'd see political tattoos, black power, racial themes or tribal, pan african themes, on them, very basic lettering, maybe old English.) Whites and hispanics in the california prison system got them. It came from the same genre as fantasy themed tattoos, Aztec motifs and Viking imagery (if the wearer was on a white power trip). Stuff inmates had, bikers had, sometimes military, gang members had. Portraits were a 1970's thing and southern California thing specifically. It came from prison and was disseminated into the public sphere informally through home tattooing, and then formally through various influential tattooers and tattoo magazines.

One of the most slept on of the single needle old guarde, and among my favorite tattooers. Did I mention tony olivas? Him too.

Scrappy doesn't do single needle tattoos. There are lots of newer tattooers carrying on what the aforementioned tattooers started. Pint and chuey q, Placaso, drew flores, Jose l, jun cha, ruger, chente, chuco, andrew farnsley, Tattoo tony, Mexican tattoo family, Steve soto, tattoo Louie, big Gus, el bros Mendoza, Antonio m, kiki platas, Dave Sanchez, even kat von d. Grillo and Hendricks do it good too but they aren't married to it. The thing with these tattoos is it can look good even when it's bad. The tradition is that it's handpoked or done with homemade machines, so even when you see people with rough looking stuff, it still looks great. You don't find a lot of people outside of southern California that do it right, and while it's a style most associated with inner city Los Angeles, the people that do it the best are in orange county, riverside, inland empire, etc. There are some shops that specialize in this stuff, under the gun, tattooland, oc ink house, Por vida, lowrider, rubes, shamrock, the Slauson swap meet ha ha. But these are just tattooers known by the general public or people who know about tats. Every hood in califas has a few local people working out of their house or in small little shops or swap meet spots that get it in.

I'm not hating on homeboy, it's just all this gossip, praise, chitchat. I see that a lot here, everything dan higgs does is brilliant, mike Wilson is "the best tattooer in the world," face tattoos are dumb but Corbin's are okay, tattoo shows are evil, but it's okay that Hendricks/peck is on it, etc, etc. It's a little weird. To me at least.

All this big deal about this dude. It's a little carried away I think.

i don't get it.

Gogue Hooper Rudy Goethe Roberts Brand Montie Stoney Hollywood mark Stell Placaso Lakra Negrete Hardy Grillo Jondix Shige Everett Chuey q Mr x Olivas Leu

No not at all. Specially mike giant. Fuck no.

the best people that work in this style are unknown. i came up in l.a., and growing up id see, and still see to this day, people with really beautiful black and grey tacs, lettering and portraiture and other staples of "chicano" tattooing, but were done by nonames, in prison, county jails, firecamps and kitchens. it looked green! id always look at that stuff when i was a kid.it would almost always be girls. topless girls in sombreros on a forearm. and i remember always trying to get a good look at it. i still always try to look at it. a lotta this stuff was done in the late 60's to the mid to late 80's, with the heyday being in the 1970's. a lot of cool looking tattoos were made in the 70's. in the 90's it took on a different look. still cool but a little different. not as blue. no one invented it. no one started it. some people just capitalized on it. it become popular. not so long ago a lot of tattooers were doing that kind of work, bob roberts was doing it, ed hardy. the fad went out, and they went back to what they knew. but some people started with it, and stuck with ut. the two best known "names" for this stuff are negrete and rudy. i think they might be about the same on the art level, but i think negrete is the better all- around tattooer. jacks got him on lettering for sure, but jack is a beast on letters in general. negrete learned to tattoo in prison, so his work retains that purity, that packed in, dense, blueish black hue. hes good at more stuff i think, then jack. then theres lesser known but just as important arteests, like baby ray, brian everett and tony olivas. dick warsocki, romo, flame, creeper, lady blue, mahoney, montie and brown (RIP). all those people have been doing the kind of work your talking about, for a long, long time. i think some of them get associated with "chicano" tattooing, but in reality they did a lot of other stuff, a lot of biker style shit, or typical 70's tough guy motifs. They did as many sombrero girls as they did single needled grim reapers, starry space scenes, naked girls, pegasus and other winged creatures, unicorns, led zepplin winged dudes, butterfly's, zigzag men, Harley Davidson shields, vikings, castles and wizards handling business. That stuff is cut from the same cloth as cholo stuff. later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNY3_00p180

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKzRNRZLfls [video=youtube;Nh8X8O1nvEQ] [/video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo0Cazxj_yc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHE6hZU72A4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USlnfTGlhXc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV4E5GxifzE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9krsiL8oZNE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ6APKIjFQY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRhpdBI8GPk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-UscJNQnvQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaVDM4a4nL0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3FtapkiKWI ]

Black n grey all day.

I'd jump at the chance to get a tattoo at an insane clown posse convention, just for the story. I'd get something really bad and make them freehand it.

It says: 5150, and is a prison thing. You see it a lot in county, 5150 on peoples earlobes or chins. Means your straight loc'd out and don't give a fuck. Involuntary psychiatric hold. Also is slang, like if you meet a real crazy chick someone might say: don't mess with her holmes...she 5150!

Or a giant cock.

PEACOCKS, portraits, long stemmed thorny roses with a banner in the middle and a name, "east l.a. christmas trees" (a college of four girls, two vertical, two horizantal), names, head shots, skulls, grim reapers, spiderwebs, pachuco crosses, gypsies, wizards, L.A. logos in all black, aztec stuff, charra girls, old english, traditional roses, dice, weedleaves, car club logos, misfits skulls, lowrides, cholas, gun barrells (beware of owner), la pieta, jesus portraits, religious stuff, psycho city blocks (big 3D block letters), laughnowcrylater, area codes, face tattoos, gangster shit, anything done single needle, spiders, pharoes horses, winged stuff, rosaries on wrists or feet, girls with long, feathered out hair, castles, prison towers, barbed wire, old school gang stuff, jailhouse tattoos, old homemade, handpoked stuff. There is a motif of a dude kissing his hyna. No name for it but people who have been around know whats up; everyone has seen it at some time or another: yeah. all day. ALL DAY: Not into diamonds or fuckin umbrellas, cup cakes, cherries, ICP clowns, Mike Devries superrealism or birdcages or weird rosespanthercoffins with spiderwebs and pretend cholo writing in the background. No cartoony Joe Cap, No dia de low muertos newjack neochicano Mike Giant BULLSHIT. No Nikko Hurtado, Roman Abeigo, Bandon Bond Neuma machine portrait crap. My favorite tattoos is neighborhood stuff from the late 60's to the mid 80's. I will never ever get tired of looking at it. It's what I thought was dope as a kid, and what I think is dope to this very day.

I am a lifelong bachelor. I don't believe in monogamy and marriage. It makes no difference whatsoever to me if I dealing with a tattooed girl or not. I've been seeing a girl lately who is heavily tattooed, face, neck, hands, etc. But tattoos in and of themselves don't make a woman more attractive. An ugly girl with tattoos is still ugly. I don't even notice tattoos anymore really. It's more unusual when someone doesn't have them. What matters is how tolerant they are and open they are to that lifestyle. I was seeing a girl without a drop of tattoo on her, and I was getting heavily tattooed at the time, and she was cool with it. That's what matters. Openness.

But everyone looks the same. That's what I am saying. Bikers all look the same, so do ravers, and punks and greasers, eskimos and lesbians. That's just how people are. Make it irrelevant by creating something that makes the norm obslete and outdated. My take is that this is something that is pretty universal; tall skinny girls with dark hair will never be replaced by homely women. That's just the way it is. That's what most people like to look at, for better or for worse. They just look good. There are lots of pictures of girls that look like that because they are sexy and narcissistic. They are young and sexually charged. People like looking at them and they like to be looked at. It's highly self referential; photographers are looking for compelling shots, and these people want pictures taken of themselves. So it's sort of cannabalistic in that way. Everyone gets what they want. But what is a hipster; you could be one, I could be one. It's the most generalized, nonspecific slander I can think of. It's something no one can really define, but is always being thrown around. The specifics of what that is are elusive. It seems to me that a hipster is something everyone else is. To that end, I don't see "hipsters" as any kind of genuine or legitmate subculture. It's just young, typically white, upwardly mobile people. They don't really stand for anything except for irony and irreverence, being young, being out, doing cocaine in the bathroom. There are no set of values or aesthetics that can define them, which is exactly why so many are accused of being a hipster, it can apply to a lot of people. You have to remember that very few people really take any chances with their art. So the "hipster aesthetic" is sort of in, and in a while it will be something else, and people will get sick of seeing that, and on and on it goes. I mean, it can go to tattoos also. I see very few tattoos anymore that are new. Certain groups of people get the same kinds of tattoos and it gets played out very quickly. Comes n goes in waves and trends. In the 90's it was tribal stuff, biomech. Then it got really cartoony. Now it's sort of elevated neotraditional; girlheads, panthers, roses, etc. Sort of one dementional and sloppyclean, bold lines, colors. Eastcoast, and SF-ish stuff. Very popular, and I am sick of seeing it on everyone. But you never get sick of seeing stuff you like, so it doesn't come off as repetitive to people who are into it.