ShawnPorter

A couple of years ago I would have said "Valerie Vargas" but luckily people have been giving her work the attention it deserves :D Today... Today I'm going for Rick Lohm of Halo in Syracuse. I just completed a short interview with him for the Occult Vibrations blog. Editing it now with it going live probably Monday. He just posted this on his FB... gotta love the boys in gray.

Ooh... the lovely Marisa! Welcome to LST.

The elephant and the moose are kickass.

More excerpts from Tattooing Reality « Occult Vibrations I'm not happy with this one. can't balance out the hiss.

Plus Gil Montie rules.

Because despite a license to carry concealed, I thought that pissing off some meth head biker dude who outweighed my fat ass by at least 50lbs might be a bad idea :D

For the record, I was walking by a tattoo shop. When random folks start talking about Gil, it's hell and a handbasket.

I've been keen on Dusty Neal for the last two weeks or so, absorbing all of the work he's posted on his tumblr. SWORN TO THE BLACK When I first saw his feed on Tumblr.... there was a great Christ head AND a Pushead piece. I was sold.

First time I've heard this, but earlier today some peckerwood with shitty squidwork on his arms comes up to me and asks "who you wearin, bro?" I've never heard that before. He mentioned Gil Montie twice. He seemed less than impressed with my choices in artists, since none of them were Gil Montie. This is why I hate going out in shortsleeves.

I spend a LOT of time in Jr. High locker rooms..... I thought you looked familiar, Pshackman! heh

Ive been trying to upload a new clip for two days, and it keeps getting halfway uploaded to Youtube and then has a connection error. This is boo'sheet.

I watched that Epicly Later'd.... Great stuff but his socal skaterspeak started to wear on me by the end.

My staff doesn't really care either way about my tattoos. Just the customers that get all grabby.

One of the other community sites I frequent (Skullbrain.org- Japanese & Kaiju toy community) has a Netflix thread where we comb through the massive amounts of crap NF has to offer and try to pull out the rare gems. Here's my list of must see stuff that's currently available for streaming: 1. Burden of Dreams. Docu on the filming of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. 2. I think we're alone now. Docu on two people who could be considered stalkers of teen icon Tiffany. 3. Plain Clothes. I watched this so many times as a kid that the tape broke. 80s "young looking cop returns to high school" film. 4. No Reservations. Any season. Viva Anthony Bourdain. 5. Cruising. Al Pacino goes undercover in NYC's Gay Leather underground to find a serial killer. 6. Dogtooth. Greek film. Very unsettling. Couldn't believe they nominated this for an oscar. What's on your list?

I think I see where some of your issues are coming from, Pauly.

At my business, I always say: The customer is always right, but management decides when you're a customer. If the man with the money is an asshole, he's not the boss. He's an asshole who we eject. As an ownership team we decide what's best for the business. If someone comes in with a swagger and is disrespectful of our business or staff, we don't need their money. We have pride in what WE do and don't sell that out to the highest bidder. We had a gentleman in last night who was screaming "I pay your salary!" He was saying that from the street, cause he certainly wasn't coming back in.

You might as well be asking "how long is a piece of string" Pauly. I know some great tattooers who are absolute D-bags. If they were dentists, they'd be d-bag dentists. Tattooing is a hustle to them, and yeah.. you're the mark/trick. I also know some great tattooers who have so much humility that you want to smack them for being so dang nice. And while it may sting to hear, if you think that everyone treats you poorly, it might make sense to internalize the situation and see if you may be contributing to it in some way or the other. Sure, I've had counter people ask me if I want anything on a store run (one got me bbq ribs once) but that's not a make/break situation for me.

Consider the $1.53 the tip for the tattoo, cheapass.

I'll pinprick that som'bitch on you man. Free of charge. That will make me a tattooer and I can use jargon with full autonomy! The original art is available for $5000, but for you... for you I can sell it for $0.47

When I was just getting into getting tattooed, I was getting worked on by Bud "Just Plain Bud" Pierson of Ancient Art in Orlando. This is... 1990 maybe. When I first went in I was pretty young, but we hit it off pretty well. I was worried that I wouldn't be taken seriously by the "collectors" or the "serious artists" due to my age and my lack of large tattoos. Bud was about as politically incorrect and offensive as they came, and he summed it up like this: "I'm just a guy who does tattoos and you're just a guy that gets them. That makes us as special as the guy who fixes the toilet and the guy who uses it." At the time I was all butthurt that he equated tattooing (something he had been doing for 20+ years, but my 16yo pride wanted to defend) with that, but as I got older, I totally got what he was saying. So yeah. God I miss Bud.

The way I wrote that could leave it open ended wether or not he was trying to seduce me. he wasn't. Haha.

This isn't preferential treatment, but I blew a tire once on I-95N and pulled into the PA Welcome Station to wait for a towtruck. (someone had borrowed my jack). I was sitting by the car grumpy, and this older gent came up and started hitting me up. Given that it was a rest stop, I assumed he wanted a little roadside fun and cold shouldered him a bit... until he showed me his full DON FUCKING NOLAN backpiece that he got back in the day. We ended up talking for two hours, traded info and all that, but I never heard back from him. Shame I never got pics. I always said tattoos were passports; sometimes they take you to Tahiti to sit on the beach and lounge and sometimes they take you to some god forsaken hellhole, but if you sign up for an adventure, you're likely to get it.

I get objectified for my tattoos all the time; where I work it's sort of meat market-y so you just sort of take the creepy comments with a grain of salt. I draw the line at touching, but usually have to chastise a time or two.

Say what now? (ps: this drawing is still better than the tattoo I posted earlier. As such, I get a free pass to say "I wanna use my tatgun to tattyzap this, bro".

That's a sweet tattyball, Erica. :D