hawk

Previous thread or no, I feel that the "non tattooer shop owner" would be a chapter of many found in a well researched study documenting "The exploitation of the tattoo culture during times of it's renaissance and rise into pop culture" as it would have to contain many different aspects of the rape of it's (tattoo culture) origins from aspects of psychology, media, internet, clothing fashion, influences in marketing, and the list could go on forever. Marketing for instance would have to illustrate, not to exclude the tattooed but to outline exactly how any one entity could achieve and extract monetary figures from organizing a host of popular designs and images produced by foreign labor and targeting an area of people who may not afford, obtain or desire a tattoo but will spring for a shirt, hat, purse, poster, etc.. A time I was leaving a truck stop comes to mind when I passed a couple who were seriously wearing the "imitation tattoo sleeves" pulled up their arms like nylon hosiery, they were victims of that targeted area and out of their personal desire to emulate an image that money minded moguls and investors discovered that they could cash in on no different than a purse with a peace symbol targeted for the 12 year old Beeber Fever target area that may have no idea or concern what the origins of the symbol may be other than the declaration of it's fashion. Ultimately, the fad will fade for Beeber but tattooing will always survive and evolve just as it has through its previous peaks in its history in time. It is a sad thing to witness when something so dear and personal to us gets taken away and used/abused and then thrown out when it's no longer profitable to some hollow/shallow agency/entity that's only concern and goal was for profit gain BUT actual tattoos will not be found on a yard sale table or thrift shop and the merch of the era of orange county choppers, LA ink, and "nylon tattoo sleeves" will be had for a nickel. Our photos of kinship, stories and literature will survive to some day take its place in history like the generations we researched before our times and our biggest hopes can be that we can honor the past by preserving and representing our culture as best we can for future generations. Just my 2 cents :)

Tell me about it! Just helped a friend awhile back in putting a "fresh rebuilt" trans in his shovel, placed it in, replaced starter, battery box, primary(inner and outer), adjusted the chains, etc. to find out the trans was not done right, wouldn't shift to fourth....Everything back off and out and the "mechanic" didn't replace a simple plunger that was obviously out of spec, so the part replaced and back to doing the left side to right side motorcycle jog (you know what I'm talkin about), got it all back in place and correct and got that "Motorcycle Zen" feeling when she found fourth and she's been runin smooth ever since. If only I had taken the top cover off for a look before we put it in but the "mechanic" had "totaly rebuilt" the trans, just because some have wrenches don't make them a mechanic but when everything is right it seems to stay right for good while and there's no feelin like knowin whats going on inside and how fresh the parts and/or wear is. Good luck with the Suzi, there will be rewards.

Yes, I ride and just got home on a 47% night ride through "Deer Alley". I don't think I would be here if it weren't for Harley Davidson, my Dad rode by my Mom one day when she was sitting on the lawn of her parents home, eventually a girlfriend of hers told her that "Bob Hawk wants to take you on a date", my Mom replied "As long as he picks me up on the robin egg blue Harley Davidson of his then he has a date" and the rest has been history. I eventually restored the same year and model with the factory paint color, it was HD color code "Peacock Blue"(Mom always called it robin egg blue) for 1949. My every day rider is a 1948 panhead HD and my land barge is a stock 1967 Electraglide HD and my go fast machine is a 93 inch S&S in a 1974 frame with all the cool chit but goin into Winter I'm ridin a stock 1978 bagger with full fairing and snap on leg covers to deflect the cold and I will probably be ridin it come the early Spring, may have to head to South Dakota on that next week due to a death in the Family. Those are what I have plated to ride but I will always have a Triumph in the garage til I die, it's a 1962 pre unit 650. Can't count all the bikes I've had in my lifetime now and the whole Family rides, in fact we would come home from school to go ridin when we were young and Dad would take one of our bikes to work, guess he felt entitled, ha! I sold off allot of bikes back when I bought the home I live in now, back then Bankers weren't very keen on Tattooers cause it wasn't "popular" like it is now and the banker told me that they could ask for as little as 10% down and the usual was 15% down but from ME they wanted 20%, I knew this was a way for them to get rid of the long haired tattooed biker trash but I said OK. I went home and called a friend of mine whom I worked the motorcycle swap meet circuit with, I tattooed and he sold parts, told him what was going on and to come over and make an offer. Sold him all of my 6 and 12 volt parts, a 1948 Indian Chief, a WW-II 1942 WLA HD, '81 FXR, '80 FLH HD, '74 shovelhead Chopper HD, and a stroker shovelhead custom and that 1049 pan and didn't look back, went to the bank and laid down the 20%. Another kid was comin and we needed more room for what was going to be my last rug rat, 4 boys and this 5th to be a Daughter and here is a picture of the smartest one of the lot, well armed when she was just little, you guys don't get any pic's of the lady she's grown to be...The second is a pic of my other precious the 1948 Pan and she's had some mods since this pic. Thanks for kick startin this thread, enjoying the read. RIDE HARD DIE FREE

That is BA! Thanks for the treat. Can't help but love a tattoo you can see from across the room and know what it is but that can be seen from across the street, very cool. All said and done, it's the skill, pigment and the care of the artist's that tattoo "for the long run" e.g. those whom, with the foresight and forethought, that tattoo with longevity in mind and not a pic for the portfolio. This is to say that, when someone enters into your establishment and a tattoo you did 21 plus years ago is still holding well in pigment and they are there for another tattoo and not a "renewal" then you have validation that you have been doing "true tattooing in it's intended form" for those 21 plus years. Dye lotts and maintaining proper pigments is a major key in the answer to the question posed here as longevity is the goal. I think we all can admit to ourselves that if you do a color portrait with a dozen shades of this and another dozen of that and still another dozen shades of another color until you have forty caps of ink from varying suppliers then you can expect a somewhat tye dye effect in the long run of the life of the tattoo and the smile on the customer, ha! Mixing down the individual color and creating multiple shades from the same "tried and true" color lott's should yield the best results for longevity sake. I started maintaining my "dye lotts" in the early 80's and still have pigments I stocked from back when and what started me on that road was when I had read George Burchetts memoirs where he spoke of the difficulty he had in searching and collecting "ink" in a day and age where most if not all of what you could obtain was of quill pen "ink" variety, it almost begs the question of "what" he used when he tattooed the Queen out of her Doctors"surgery" as he called it. A fine example of obtaining good pigment in more recent times would be when "tribal" came to be so popular in the USA, simple bold black.....it was like everybody was stumped for finding something so simple and I was one of those spending loads on what some claimed was the best, I threw out several tubbs of stuff I had good money in and reworked for free what boomeranged back while experimenting, ha! Truth had it that pitch black was always around all along, it just took some mixing to create something you would never use for detail work as it needs to be at that "stain" value. Anyhow, I always bear in mind the longevity of what I do whether portrait or Pegasus, makes for good rep return business and ultimately is what should be considered "proper" in tattooing for the sake of the trade.

Amund Dietzel tattoo done in 1956, 55 year old tattoo still makin the the guy smile.

"Buyers Remorse" is allot different with tattoos than tires......Choose wisely

yo,word...

It's not just border towns, it is everywhere that a "good drawer" with a 50 dollar kit get rent shop space. Just had ANOTHER one open a block and half up main st. from me, tattoos and tattoo supplies and piercing and these people are still working at WalMart, no kiddin, their website shows they've been tattooing for 10 years, etc., on THE DAY they received their business permit I got a little turd who popped in and asked "What do ya think of the new tattoo shop that just opened downtown?", WOW! probably an hour after they got the permit the trash talk begins, ha! Jake has the answer, just keep the old nose to the grindstone and keep puttin smiles on peoples faces and your work will shine out, I have lost count of all the shops that have come and gone in the last 32 years tattooing but like it has been said here before, "Anyone can sell snake oil on a Sunday" no matter how small a town can be. This is history repeating itself and the only worry I have is what they will do that will be labeled to us, the one shop around the corner that came and went was so well known for it being a "front" that people would come in and naturally figure that we sold drugs too. The worst "feeling" that I have is that I came out of the old rep when I started and beat down the stereotypes and over came all of that and now I have tattooed long enough to see the match lit that will burn us. It's so closely related to the "Harley Rider"/"Biker" parallel, Harley wanted nothing to do with the "Biker" image until they figured out how to shrink wrap it and market it into billions of profit and now the guy lookin like an Alaman Bos. band member that paid their dues in the biker subculture gets laughed at by the checkbook biker. But make no mistake that tattooing will always carry on and survive.

The best solution I can find to these tattoos and hairdoos pop up and burn the rep misanthrope pop culture peddling life forms can be found in a Garret Morris clip I found on youtube;

Oh, I love calling out the people who claim this "My Great Great Grandmother was a Cherokee Princess" thing, it generaly pans out to a 6.5 blood quantam but I always retort that I'm 1/32nd Wicken on my Mothers side, ha!

Thanks for all your hard work, lots of good has come out of this site and I know it ain't easy so a big pat on the back to all involved

The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe -Zappa

Still waitin', hopin' to hear something and just keepin the thread up to date and informed of any progress. I contacted him through his user program and left my anytime cell# but still no reply. Thanks

"Actual tattooing on practice skin" and "Must be 16+ to enter tattooing course" are a couple of the quotes I pulled off this site, too much! Crazy Eddie once said in 2001 that he was approached by some people who said they were professional tattoo artist's and he said "What the fuck? What are we?" But Cazy Ace Harlan sayin what would/has become very chauvinistic by todays standards that, "I only apprentice females and all apprenticeships must be performed in the nude. Gotta love Ace R.I.P, him and Gil Monte tattooed next door to the gas station that year in Sturgis during Bike Week. Thanks for the laugh Bubbleberry

OHHHHH HEELLLLL YEAHHHH!!! TOO FUNNY! That's kickin' em in the nuts!

I respect your opinion but you know what they say about opinions. Mine is that I will speak out over a scam that someone could be a tattoo artist in two weeks and a program that claims such or lends credibility to the concept. People make stands for their beliefs all the time, that is why we don't see Italians playing the roles of native americans anymore and I would like to see the same in the industry of tattooing. Giving the general population the idea that what we do is so simple that a caveman can do it is no more cool with me than going back to the days when I couldn't get a loan for used pickup truck for what I did for a living. Sure thing that this tattoo school will crank out tattooers or people roll playing as such because they are set up around me already and making me money on the cover ups and fix it work but I would rather see more people treated better and becoming living examples of our craft than living with people who figure a tattoo that ain't half bad is truly half good and good enough to be excepted as a tattoo. To acknowledge this activity and lending credibility to it is two separate things and I will never except green day as punk rock no matter if it's placed in that area of the music store. I feel that the community speaking out in numbers against something they feel is fraudulent is very valid and lends more to the respect of the craft than the program will. The tattoo community speaking out is lending fuel to our credibility and not that of a two week grad, so I disagree.

I can top that with a boneified "Professional Tattoo Artist"(as that is what it sez on the certificate) of an 80 hour graduate of the Tattoo Learning Center's back piece and this is truth and reality. Now the guy sportin this is as happy as a two petered pup but when he showed it to me he did the "curtain up curtain down" thing that I've come to recognize of the people who deep down know that it's not good work. Other than that he sounded like a PR rep for the shop. Jebus!!!

My Gawd that was a COOL story! What a whacky era to grow up in, Belfast was a "sub" culture. Thanks for sharing that. As far as tattoo regret goes, I picked a lesser desirable eagle off the wall because it was facing the right direction for my arm as the people at the shop were not artists so much as they were tattooers, back then the acetate stencile was carved over the design and slapped on the skin which reversed the eagle making it face the wrong direction and in those days I would have been smacked out of the chair for making them change it before inking it. Ultimatly I had it covered and now in retrospect I wish it were still there, as crazy as that may sound to others, it would be a reminder/example and was still a bad ass stencil. Thanks again!

Thank you very much and yes I own aplenty "legal" MG's. I really hope this comes through and I'm between appointments right now typing this and all of todays work are service people, so I have to imagine where we would be right now without them. I always try to put back into what I take from. As to the MG fun, I figure it will keep him on trigger time for the Military, just good thinkin. I have a project right now goin on with the mg's and how to properly adjust a Chinese machine, so stay tuned for that one here, it's gonna be a blast literally. That pic of me chootin was a 7mm beltfed Czech ZB-38 that got taken by the Nazi's and then liberated by by Americans. Gotta go!

Hey Mask0311, First off, I would love to see everybody sportin great tattoos wherever I go but unfortunately there are fewer people out there "keepin it real" and if I go to WalMart I can see a store full of bad tattoos these days. As far as this guy "blowin you off", it's an old game, as old as it gets with "runnin' the scam", some will spot you and size you up to start something at a high price that they never intend to finish when they have a string of butterflies they can knock out and make more on when you may have already paid in advance, basically you will get shuffled to the rear like you got treated at the 9pm bell. NYC went crazy with those scams when it opened tattooing back up and on this subject I could go on and on. As far as the tooth hurting thing, RUN!!! should have been your instinct and this leads me to tell you that there are tattooers out there who relish a challenge of turning bad tattoos into good ones, so don't worry about having someone else drive over the mess you have started. As far as your expecting better treatment/respect for being home from the military, your absolutely right, the military has always been our staple in tattooing and when everybody's home and the wars are all over we will miss that amount of biz and it goes from steak to pork chops for us tattooers and this is not to mention that there are those of us out here that understand your service to Uncle Sam. So, as far as "keeping it real" and to prove that not all of us are like this disgrace to our trade I will fix and finish your dragon at no charge with the stipulation that you provide the steaks that I will personally grill for you at my country home where I have a rifle range that I will provide 500 rounds of ammunition for you to shoot through my legally owned and registered machineguns after we are finished with the tattooing, on this deal you have my word. Your only hitch is to make it by land sea or air to Illinois and provide the bovine. It can be fixed and finished and picture posted to this thread should you come through on your end of this bargain and I mean all of this most sincerely. I can't do this for every person that's received your treatment or I would work myself into the poorhouse but this is my offer to you. Thanks for your service and I apologize for the hack who misrepresented our trade and culture and I hope to hear from you. Sincerely, -Hawk- of Hawks Tattoo's

It took the Village to raise the Child of tattooing we see today.

Paroled sex offender......from a sentence for aggravated sexual assault and indecency with a child. I'm certain the child is living a life sentance with invisable bars and the powers that be couldn't parol a lesser criminal to make room for the pos rapist.

Gal walks into the shop, demands a turkey on the inside of her right thigh and a Christmas tree on the inside of her left, I said "what's up withe the turkey and tree idea?" She said "I'm tired of my Husband complaining there ain't nuthin good to eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas!"

What somebody like that would have saved in their computer "favorites" takes my imagination to places unexplored.

Hey, if yer refering to the machine frame at the top center as the Jensen, it's a Zeis frame and a very nice one at that.