Maverick ZINE — Tattoo Culture, Art & Artist Stories

Cashed in our 401ks everything that we had saved up until that point in our life and we just said let's just throw this at the wall see if it sticks yeah it was a big ass Hail Mary here's what I'm excited to talk about today we have a really long history together personally I'm super intrigued to hear some of the old stories of us starting to tattooing you starting to tattoo the origin story is pretty fun and interesting you didn't have any tattoos before zero tattoos yeah so what was your some of your first like exposures to tattoo and tattooing and stuff and like fun little story that I was riding I had been riding motorcycles most of my life I think I started riding motorcycles when I was 15 16 years old yeah but I was riding at this point when we moved to Nevada pretty much Harley's exclusively I had gotten through all my dirt bike riding and all that stuff and was riding Harley so Becky and I used to go on these poker runs and so we would meet all these people from all throughout the Las Vegas Valley some of them were you know with uh Outlaw motorcycle clubs and stuff like that and then some of them were just Christian clubs all kinds of you know uh veterans clubs yeah we'd get together on it seemed like it was one Sunday every month we'd have what they called a poker run I don't know if everybody knows what that is but you'd get uh you'd ride from bar to bar and you'd get a a card when you arrived at the next bar until you got a poker hand and somebody would win I

forgot the exact details of how it works but that was the where I started seeing you know people take their jackets off and almost everybody I saw had a tattoo and I was like whoa that's I've never run around with tattooed people in I worked in uh civil engineering for 30 years so I didn't meet a lot of tattooed people so I was like oh that's kind of cool started looking at tattoos and started asking where where do you get your tattoos and everything led to this one shop um called Studio tattoo on Boulder Highway and that was like the place to get your tattoo at least from all the biker types that I was talking to so I don't know you know that was where my influence was coming from so um I went and got my first tattoo and I don't remember if you went with me when I got my first one I think it was the second one that you went with me yeah I went and got a tattoo of U an image that I always liked that my grandma had a picture of on her wallet was called all is Vanity super famous most people know what it is if they see it the skull with the lady looking in a mirror yeah her head is like the eyes of the skull and then all the perfume in the bottom or the teeth teeth yeah and so I went to this lady and I took her this image and asked her if she could could do it she did it came home we all looked at it and talked about it and we decided it needed some more stuff yeah and so the next time I went um we decided to put some Flames around it some skulls you went with me and you were

10 years old I remember very clearly that I was like I don't know I guess it's okay to bring your kid to a tattoo shop nobody said couldn't so you came along you watched the process we talked about it uh while we're talking to her and on the way out of that uh shop after I got my Flames added we stopped in the parking lot and um it we were I think both of us were you even you at 10 years old you're probably already thinking hey this would be kind of a cool thing to do yeah I remember asking her a lot of questions uhhuh and I looked at you and I said we should we should tattoo together and you were like yeah and it was like that was a long you know that was 80 it was 90 probably 9091 pretty early on in the 90s yeah yeah after we moved out here so that kind of then then I started I decided to add another tattoo some months later and I let you design it for me and it was a cool I got 54 Buick from Gilla which kind of faded out right now but look at the line work how sweet it still looks Flames all those used to be color anyway that was uh my second third session of getting tattooed and and then Austin went along I you went with me several times yeah I remember I don't remember what else you got from her I don't know I remember being there a couple times for those yeah this was that first one with the everything had had Flames back in those days if you didn't have Flames there was one time that I was with some Hell's Angels at a party and they had a guy in a corner that had a

tattoo machine and a setup and uh I would never forget walking in there Becky and I rode all the way over to Henderson off Boulder Highway somewhere a lot of bikers out there yeah and we'd been invited to this party with a friend of mine Clancy and we walked in and I had a really heavy leather jacket and I'm in a room full of real intimidating looking bikers and stuff and uh they had a hall tree where you hang your coat yeah and I hung my coat and it fell over in the middle of everything everybody's kind of like whoa I was like I'm sorry and then the guy tried to tattoo my head he wanted to Flame my head and I was like I thought about it for a minute and I never flamed my head I'm so glad I didn't I think I would have probably reg good that

I don't look I don't look I don't look as fast as I to used to so I don't need flames on my head a full head of hair then so that's yeah yeah I had a long ponytail and stuff uh yeah you had no facial hair I had maybe a mustache long ponytail kind of a Leonard Skinner look back in those days yeah yeah yeah before I uh before I got robbed by some gangsters and shaved my head and grew a beard so I could change my look so then from there we went on to basically starting to kind of like cruise around and check out other tattoo shops in town venture out of that one yeah and then um trying to remember like all over those years yeah I think we kind of put that on the back burner for a while obviously you were clearly too young to be into tattoo and

wasn't until you were in high school you were drawing some tattoo designs for kids that were getting tattoos Yeah well yeah so I remember I definitely remember you bringing home tattoo magazine tattoo industry magazine I I can't remember which ones like uh and then I started looking at those and just drawing all of that stuff out of there anyway and then we slowly yeah then like in high school I personally started getting kids asking me to draw their tattoos for them um and then I remember one day in like my sophomore year in class this kid came in and he was like Hey I want to get a tattoo I'll give you 50 bucks to draw me something and I literally took that I took that 50 bucks and sat down and Drew through that whole entire class and completely ignored the class and I gave it to him and then he came back the very next day with this Jester tattooed on the side of his leg that I drew and I specifically remember thinking like damn that is like I mean I remember seeing my tattoo or my drawing on you as a tattoo but being I don't the fact that you made money at it for the first time yeah it was like a different kind of experience and the fact that I I got paid 50 bucks and that's usually what I would work a full shift for like tips after school and I just did it during school and so what were you getting tips for where where well yeah just busting tables at M or something you know a little bar and then um but anyway I I remember specifically being like so pumped that I got

paid 50 bucks to draw that and then it turned into like oh my other friend told me that you drew this and you know then I drew a tribal arm band for Tony a good buddy of mine and he got that tattooed on him and then I just started going and I was like can I go to these shops with you guys and I would just go in After High School and like there weren't that many shops in Vegas at the time and they were pretty rough and we went to let's see docs was down on the Strip where the Pawn Stars is now yeah they leveled that shop and then there was one on Spring Mountain where Dave who apprenticed us eventually yeah I can't remember desert in desert no desert Charleston yeah but there were only there was probably less than 10 I would say seven tattoo

shops in the valley at the time yeah not much I don't definitely remember remember there was like one called tattoos are us and that's where like kids and my co-workers and Friends started co uh going down there to get tattooed and that PL place was hella sketchy yeah but may have gotten uh burned down or something by remember doc used to or somebody yeah make tattoo shops eliminate the competition I guess they called it but then where did we shortly go like like in high school yeah I started watching them get tattooed and then I it kind of took a break there for a little bit and then uh like 18 or 19 I started going with a couple of my buddies up to this shop that was near us called uh Pricks tattoos and I went in there and watched them get a couple of tattoos and and started like talking that was the first shop I went into where I felt like oh I can talk to these people and they're they're like nicer to me and that's where I met my mentor Dave but but Trey was first remember we yeah we both tried to Apprentice under Trey and he was surrounded by some interesting people and we just didn't feel comfortable yeah and we moved on to Dave yeah and then Dave like Dave asked you to offer him or something but he wouldn't he wouldn't like give me a tattoo apprenticeship until I got tattooed and then I was like oh okay okay well I want to do this so I want to like so then I went to the library and I got all did all this research on the uh God of uh I don't even know I'm forgetting

it right now the elephant uh oh the Ganesh the Ganesh yeah yeah which I can't even remember the details of it but that's how bad my memory is but anyway I just really was just attracted to I was drawing a lot of elephants Hindu yeah some awesome stuff and uh so I did uh some a bunch of beautiful drawings of the ganes and and and I brought them into him and he was like let's do this and I was like okay cool he goes like right now I was like oh okay um yeah all right and I just remember getting all clammy and like super nervous and scared and then I got up in his chair and he freaking shaved my leg and I just remember like I don't know why I specifically remember that like wow I've never shaved my legs before like that's so feels super weird uh and then he was nice and approachable though like some of the people we were meeting weren't that approachable and you know almost like a it was a thing to intimidate people when you were a tattooer back when we started that was like the way tattooers felt like they I don't know if it empowered them somehow but I heard that from many tattooers they enjoyed intimidating people yeah it just wasn't seemed weird to us we like I don't know why would you want to intimidate somebody I was like a nerd from the suburbs I always said and I just like I just wanted to draw and too so that's all I wanted to do so what we did from there is like we kind of we made that connection with Dave and it was awesome and uh he offered to teach me how to tattoo

and his goal was to like open up his own shop so then from there it just turned into this like fun crazy adventure where you started coming up away asking hey when you're done teaching Austin can you teach me and he was like absolutely yeah because at the time if you remember there were so many people waiting in line to get tattooed there was a serious shortage of tattooers yeah I think that's why we had a real easy not easy entry but um easier than you would today for and a few of those shops like Tre uh they started really like opening up their doors to a more in a more friendly manner kind of you know and like throwing parties and doing events and promoting themselves so it was but it was also flash too when we started it was all flash yeah when we started tattooing Dave and Aaron delova were probably only two guys in the valley that actually designed a tattoo and Drew it on somebody I don't know maybe a few at least one to but we we worked in a Flash shop our first Pricks was all flash remember yeah all the walls were cover in Flash and um that's what we did you'd crank out how many tattoos did we do a day I don't know I used to do like a dozen a day Cory Miller Flash and all the um uh what's Cherry Creek the fair the girl that did the fair yeah K Bar um yeah a bunch of like real fun Old School artists and they would come through that shop actually got to meet a lot perfect Flash and yeah that was one of my favorite flash artists we didn't we didn't at the time know

about Phil luck but um yeah there were so many really good flash artists around back then nobody realizes that now the Internet is just flash it's just come off the wall and now it's on your computer you know no but still you're still copying images that other people have done so nothing's original you know yeah so then from there we started getting let's see I I went with Dave he he decided he was going to open up his own shop so we left there and I went over with him and learned how to tattoo and what was the name of that shop uh mach five originally though oh accents and art accents and art we called it accidents and art because so many weird things happened in there yeah it had like a weird rumor back in the day of this they had an artist that the guy with Bob Bob was really nice guy who owned it but he I guess his son was a little wild at the time and nodded off during a tattoo and just literally drew a line down this person's back while he was doing this tattoo and I always heard that story and years years later I randomly ran across this guy he's like oh I I got tattooed on that weird shop down on Charleston or whatever it's like it's a different now you know and uh I was like oh really what you know he's like yeah my artist like fell asleep on me and you met the guy yeah and I was at a party or something never know that and I he turned around and pulled up his shirt and sure enough he had this shitty half-done tattoo and this line that just turned into dots like

jamming down his back that was just an end of his back piece and he just kept it yeah he never got it cover yeah so anyway that place got the you know hence the name accidents in art which was pretty funny the owner of Bob was cool he was the one he he took me in and when he fired son I think that's when Dave got his spot in there I think so because that's he needed to hire other artists and stuff so uh yeah so Dave got in there and then brought us and it was a small like maybe 12200 squ foot little rectangle space that had six artists in it that rotated in and out of like three booths but there would be like four or five on duty and they would all be smoking in there not on duty but you know just hanging out Wai playing with handguns smoking cigarettes in there so like it was so NY in there it was so nasty smokiest place ever um yeah so that's where I did my Apprentice ship I just remember all these it was like Tattooing in a bar I remember w i remember this Tater that would never change wash his hands and he would just put new gloves on and we wore powdered gloves back then so he would pull them off and then just uh slowly pick off all the caked on Powder off of his hands all day long and put it on the floor I'm not going to mention his name like somebody we still know yeah I was like that's most disgusting things I've ever seen but oh I know who you're talking it was some awesome I know who it was never mind long haired long hair Matt he was cool as hell man he he

they call him low rider Matt he was he did all black and gray stuff and had long hair L went all the way down past his ass and he was he was super sweet but uh yeah so we we hung out there right for a while and and then we ended up there's like I don't know why I'm forgetting like went from accidents in our to to um Mach 5 yeah okay so he bought bought it he ended up buying Dave ended up buying that shop and then transforming it into Mach 5 then that's when we were we were full-time tattooing by then yeah that wasn't very long it was early 990s still right I'm sorry but I still had a job late 90s wasn't it yeah because I was like it was like 99 98 was when we started apprenticing yeah so we were full on tattoo in part sometime in 99 yeah at

MCH five yeah and then from there I went up I left there because I really wanted the tattoo full-time and I still had a full-time job so I went from there up to Pricks because Pricks they had some guys leave or something and I went back to the shop where we started hanging out at at the very beginning to do our I remember tattooed at tricks and I well I remember when we were apprenticing we had to draw all the that was how we kind of learned to draw some of the we would customize some of those flash pieces or um Jesse girl and you and I were always back there drawing little pieces for people and I guess that's kind yeah so that that's like where I went full-time there and um I was really excited because I was tattooing all the damn time that shop was super busy the guy Trey was a great promoter uh wild ass Human but he could promote the hell out of the tattoo shop people would wait six hours to get tattooed yeah no appointments you just walked in and waited everybody would just smoke out front and hang out and drink or all the time there's always different people answering the phone and hanging out in the shop like there was lots of crazy transactions we'll call it going down and there then a lot of cops too and a lot of weird interesting yeah yeah yeah so I don't know so then like when you one one unique thing about you is like you obviously didn't start at a young age you started tattooing like I was about 45 yeah you and you had already had a full career as a as a land

surveyor so you worked in Houston and uh out there in the Sun for a long time so a lot of the I remember a lot of the decisions that came into play for you uh getting out of that career was to was because of the skin cancer sun exposure so you had some pretty gnarly surgeries go down and uh you ended up kind of like just kind of spontaneously deciding yeah my oncologist told me if you don't stop working in the sun it's going to kill you and I was like I have another option yeah and then that's what when I had already started I remember uh I would go to work surveying at 5:00 in the morning I'd get off at 1 I would drive to Pricks and I'd work from about 1:30 1:45 until 11: or midnight and then do it over and over yeah we did it every day almost you know Trey ran like a really tight ship he was definitely like a guy who pushed me I look at it now and in such a good way to like never turn down a walk in you always were you like if your shop closed at 10:00 at night and 9:45 a tribal arm band walked in you better sit down and do that tribal arm band back in the day a tribal arm band would take me three hours you know I was like very slow and meticulous and uh we did a lot of late nights long long days yeah we did a lot of that stuff there which is really great and super fun um so then from there you kind of you know you decided to go full time so you you quit there and then you came in to there full I went fulltime at uh I I don't remember why we deci oh Dave opened up so then

he asked if I wanted to come down there because I he knew I was not doing yeah I wasn't doing bad there but I just didn't I felt the smoke and that the parties and stuff I kind of wanted to get focused on the tattoo thing and not so much the party do we I love how we can't remember sh really then we ended up back at like Maverick or I mean Maverick at um at Muk five so there was funny cuz we kind of had these these two shops this is kind of funny two shops that we had our our relationships with tattooing or intro relationships were just between these two shops and we went back and forth and the ownership changed yeah on one tattoo shop the ownership changed like three times of me working there so three completely different people were there

running it accid art Mach 5 Bad Apple yeah whatever but it's still bad apple now yeah so um so that way that was kind of wild because then we bounc back and forth there and then it just like there was like always like some owner kind of turmoil between both of them so we ended up just decided like all right we just just got to go do our own thing um and you know it was not like a you weren't supposed to do that back in the day no we we were we were only like 3 years in at that time I think two and a half years before we opened up our own shot which is was a culturally a big no no and still kind of is a big no no or whatever but like nowadays I guess it's not but everybody's do that like yeah you open up a shop in a second you learn how to tattoo um but and our adventure you know if you could make it work it's not a bad gig yeah and like our the whole reason why we did that is just CU we didn't have like a healthy space like a place where we were like that we felt it was like as healthy as it could have there were times when it didn't even seem safe no for sure we saw lots of violence and craziness yeah over those first few years first three years yeah so then we kind of like went into kind of survival mode and we're like all right well there's no other place that I would and be interested in working at because there was no options yeah so we decided to open up our shop and we opened up a little tiny space so that back then like the zoning wasn't wasn't like yeah before we

opened up remember the what we were talking about earlier about the naming it I thought that was an interesting story yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean we sat down in your living room and came up I think everybody wrote like 50 plus names down and I feel like I kind of walked in and we were all just sitting there discussing just frustrated we just had so many stupid names and at that time everybody was naming their shops like really Rand yeah yeah Chrome donkey or whatever and like silly all the names were so weird yeah they were real off thee wall so I just was like all right I don't I don't seal any that like we need to do something that stands stands out we being in Vegas we there was like a number that always popped into our heads that was like culturally is just a big number was 21 you know you gota you gota pretty much be 21 to live live the life of of that Vegas provides and gambling Blackjack and everything so 21st century it was the beginning of the 21st century yeah 21's everywhere yeah so I was like why don't we just call it Studio 21 and then we just it clicked immed you like push your away from the table I remember we were all frustrated you just went let's just call Studio 21 and you were just like almost pissed and we're like yeah that sounds great yeah and it was just like a real simple I don't know I didn't like at the time we made fun of all these other shop names that had a little catchy weird characters and stuff it was like too easy to make fun

of them I was like I mean I don't you can't really make fun of Studio 21 it's just blah like not blah but it just is like at the time my favorite shop name was Avalon down at s Diego I just love the name of that shop and I love the vibe of that we we did we both did we got T down there we like great shop that was like I mean kind of jumping all around but like back to that was like a big part of our youth and intro into tattooing was our trips to San Diego because like you ended up getting your sleeve Ouran tour was close with Aaron delova they both had tattooed out of Vegas or did their apprenticeships here in Vegas I think so then uh Aaron moved out to San Diego and we were introduced by him from Dave and I was just like so incredibly impressed with both of their tattooing super nice guys super talented individuals yeah so then we started like we get tattooed by Dave and then we were like Dave did most of your left lead right and then we started making trips to go to San Diego and you started getting your sleeve your other sleeve done out there yeah so that was back when he was at Avalon on in Pacific Beach there on Garnett and then later on he went working for Patty Kelly was that shop and there was so many legends that in that shop she was the of moose Kelly who was like a super famous artist back at the you did album covers oh that's cool know that rock and roll artist she was big time she was a badass though and then um but anyway so back to so we kind of like back

to Vegas we uh where were we at open in the shop we were talking about yeah talking about stud one yeah and then so we picked out a small little location we looked all over and we were having a lot of trouble with u any property managers tattoo sh um so we kind of settled on a place that was down like in between two casinos and uh it was on a main D called light industrial remember you had to you had to be in light industrial so you're around strip warehouses and strip clubs oh yeah and at that time none of those were desirable places to tattoo after dark yeah massage parlers and stuff and yeah it was like a a heavy cab cab thr or whatever which all ended up working out great for us because we got a ton of exposure we were right off the strip and all the cabs use that road to cut through Off the Strip so then it would Expos us to like a lot of tourists and then they would always bring people to us we were super busy we opened up in 2003 just the two of us but we built out uh four four booths or the two up front we had the two three in the back and two up front one was the mom's office yeah so that was like a whole another thing my mom was actually she still had her full-time job and uh she was a graphic designer and illustrator she came so once I came up with name then my mom we we sent it over to her to get all the logo done and she's the one that really like led us on and educated using branding and uh clean legible logo and really like elevated us as far as other tattoo

shops at the time on a professionalism and the way that we U you know ex not exposed ourselves but you know just like just our ourselves yeah she was really good at the obviously she's still still is really good but uh yeah she was certainly an integral part in both of our shop so she brought the logo and then and the name and was there and then we just basically needed to build out our shop and we had I think you had sold a couple of Harley at the time uh I decided that it wasn't worth the risk if I crashed and broke a hand or something yeah it was not a good time sold those and used some of that money and Becky and I cashed in our 401ks everything that we had saved up until that point in our lives which was we had worked a lot of years before that yeah we were 40 we were in our mid-40s and we just said let's just throw this at the wall as see if it sticks yeah it was a big ass Hail Mary it was scary as hell like I luckily was like a pretty you know I uh you know I was like well networked and I had a lot of young friends and stuff too that all wanted to get tattoo so I jumped right in there um well Vegas at the time and I guess it still kind of is it's like small town like everybody knows everybody once you get a circle of friends going that know you and trust you they send people to you yeah when when I was tatto when I just like I just started tattooing there was only like one other young person that was learning how to tattoo that I knew of in the whole entire city yeah

there was my circle became huge you know like everybody's a friend of a friend of a friend came in and we were we were so busy and I started tattoo and like six seven day well we did seven days a week for like the first like nine months I think that was our goal was to do the first year and we worked 12 hours a day seven days a week and we made it seven to nine months we didn't make a year but hell that was so take it like one day off each you know to where there' be like one person would be in the shop basically worked our tails off we were just had Tuesdays off or something like that it was cool but um and then we brought in an I brought an inance pretty quick which which was again probably shouldn't have that we had to we needed help yeah we needed help and you couldn't hire anybody so you had to teach somebody yeah and all the guys that were coming in were pretty rough and ra really wild yeah um so the stories that go on with that go for days about like just our initial like we were our shop was right and when you walked out of our shop there was a freaking tunnel at this giant water drainage tunnel that was full of homeless people and the homeless people criminals hiding from other law in other cities and it was insane they would all just basically crawl out of this cave and walk into your shop and just ask you for or try to sell you stolen goods I had I'm just standing there like treating everybody like a great customer when they walk in there I remember two women

walked in and they were like yeah we want to get tattoo I was like oh cool right on uh you know here's what we want to get like cool I can do that I can draw this up for you and I was like that it'll be about like $250 and they were like $250 like what you like how about you get some of this for free and they both lifted their their dresses up over their head butan I was like what in the what is going on so they closed their they I was like no AAL day that's not how we operate around here so you know have a good day like a normal day at Studio 21 thanks for the offer um the the crackheads and like the the rattlesnake Tamer guy don't were him he got bipped he was just this weird homeless guy I don't know if he's homeless or what but he looked like it he was a Desert Rat yeah he got bit by a rattlesnake and told came come in to tell me the craziest stories about most disturbing he ever did with his thumb you always had your your video camera ready and fil all that footage because I I'm not sure we should even tell some of those stories there's a lot of stories out of the early Studio 21 yeah we you know should repeat yeah we did bring like Aaron Jackman did a super good job he was our first Apprentice yeah he was a manager at a skate shop and just did like these real small Doodles but he did them like really clean and very accurate so good job ride in and he was a hard worker a real smart dude reliable yeah so he came in and he stayed with us for years uh before he left

and then oh over those years and we developed new new relationship of new people and we ended up like that was 2003 to like 2005 we started getting to the point where we were outgrowing that little shop and we started working with uh somebody that kind of like motivated us to make some bigger decisions and we decided we wanted to build out a big shop that had six stations and everybody had their own booth and we had this very very detailed idea of how we wanted to be done and we wanted to have the nicest shop in Las Vegas we went from, 1300 square feet to 2600 square feet yeah just double the size of our shop hired an architect hired an architect borrowed a ton of money borrowed a ton of money it's been built out and what Las Vegas hadn't seen any shop I'll never forget the the day our opening day we've been anticipating for I a long time six months and the health department notorious for being uh bullies I guess you could say they sent five inspectors to inspect our shop on opening day and they found like a paper towel rack wasn't in one of the booths and wouldn't allow us to open and we had people waiting outside Becky's running around looking for a paper towel rack said let's just get the thing screwed on and they would they just didn't want us just open up easy so they they made it interesting for us it was it was a great exciting day but paper towel rack really come they were also flattering Us by like they had never seen plans like that done for a tattoo shop that came

through so then they wanted to also like share with everybody and they kind of turned us into of this like oh okay well these guys do it like this now I don't know if they raise their expect or what but we had to like we had to do more it was almost like oh okay well then you're going to have to do this like the salons do or something I don't know whatever we had to they they got Becky to write uh the safety manual for tattooing which the health department made everybody have in their shot going forward we we could yeah I don't even think they do that anymore we had to hire somebody to produce that we also what else did we have to do they they had us jumping through hoops just to get open but we were the largest um tattoo shop in the state of Nevada for several years after that yeah around that time was a really interesting time too because like right when we opened up in 2003 at our old location 2003 2004 har and Huntington opened up their tattoo shop inside of the palms and launched a TV show like at the same time I think Miami at was but anyway it was like I don't know if it was the first or second that's how we were able to expand once they open the zoning changed in yeah uh Clark County and we were allowed to be in C2 zoning no longer in um you know light industrial C2 zoning is The Strip Center um that was the beginning of a big change which we kind of saw it coming we knew it was going to happen yeah I said to Austin one time when he was pretty young I said there's

going to be one of these shops on every corner it'll be like nail salons and here we are yeah you know 25 years later yeah we got they're everywhere yeah so that basically but like they got a lot of overflow from there too if you remember like there would be like all these like Canadians at that time were tourist heavy so they would put in there they're like oh we want we don't want to wait like four hours in like the prices and the prices so then they randomly would we were just happen to be right there like all can can I tell a story about the girl we put in there is that okay one girl a girl that worked wanted to work counter for us we didn't we didn't give her a job a little blond ha girl so she got a job at AR Huntington and we gave her a a box of 500 cards and she ended them out oh to like all the Overflow i d remember that if somebody didn't like the price of the tattoo she would just go here's check these people out and it was just all day she sent us business which I'm sure they had plenty of business Carrie I remember him saying after they opened up he's a t-shirt business you know he's more of a brand I don't think he was that into trying to compete with the tattooers in Las Vegas he just wanted to build a brand yeah which they did and they're very successful at it yeah so then like see so it's was like 2000 back to like 2003 2005 we yeah or 2003 we no I'm sorry 2006 we opened up our new shop yeah and then that we were still kind of like having some interesting

run-ins with like different people in the area like some biker groups would come by and they didn't like our that we were opening up a nice big shops tried to intimidate us like all back their bikes up in front of our shop and then walk through the shop and like just go beyond the front counter and into the booth and I was just you know like I don't know kill with kindness attitude so I just sit there and like oh hey guys yeah thanks for coming to check out our shop you know like cool you know all right and then you never would never say to me for some reason because like a skinny ass kid and then they would just turn around and walk out then I would like hyperventilate and just decide to go back to my tattoo do everything we could to keep the doors open no that was the last time we ever it was 06 we didn't have any problems with anybody after that no at that point in time it was like now we were tattooing like soccer moms and um lots of firefighters and tons of uh industry was like huge at the time so like you know people were making a ton of money in Vegas and the casino industry coming in you know dealers and freaking nightclub people how wide open it was going to be but you could kind of feel it you know at about the time that we opened our first shop you knew it was going to get way bigger than it was yeah you could just tell because people that did like you said like nurses were getting tattooed it wasn't just gangsters and really like in that short amount of time we

just saw like I guess just TV helped to like kind of bring to everybody's uh I don't even know when that Miami or something was first one that drove a lot of business to that was all pre social media too so everything we were doing everything pre- Yelp preg gooogle reviews like we had no online pres I mean we did we we built a website remember like we put a ton of money into like hiring some guy to come over and build us a website we put like 15 Grandin or on a website which you know not anybody was doing that at the time too so that helped us out a lot with um I don't think a tattoo business could afford to throw that 15 grand for a website anymore yeah maybe I don't know but just like our security system whever we we had a security system

there cost us 10 grand for a security now it's you buy cameras for at Costco and put them up yeah so yeah lots changed there which is really funny but uh I know this the the we're like then we also didn't we only dealt with like the Great Recession all of a sudden we were just crashing it and then 2008 we got through some disasters remember we when we first started it was Y2K and we were only like two years into tattooing and this everybody's like oh the world's going to end everything's going to shut down power is going to go down we won't be tattoo made it through that and then we went through 911 yeah and 911 drove a lot we it did exactly the opposite you would think well we did a lot of patriot iotic tattoos after 911 tons of yeah and that just increased our business instead of what you know costing us business yeah but the Great Recession was another story that kicked our Bots we were we were doing really really good and we decided um I don't know I don't remember really what was going on I think we tried to invest in some other stuff and then just everything took a so then he had to like clean house and just really get down to the nitty-gritty and like show up and work every I mean at that time we were always still working every day but that was a pretty tough time we through a tough time a lot of ters sitting around with nothing to do and everybody gets tends to get like pretty antsy and you feel guilty if you can't can't keep somebody busy you know it's still that

way I mean it's like yeah if you're not keeping these guys busy it makes you feel you know not it's not a good feeling you want you want these people to come work with you and make money and yeah that's one of them that's probably the hardest part of the tattoo business or maybe that's anys any business I mean you know you feel this great sense of responsibility or you should when you you know open a business and you bring people on you tell somebody you're gonna they can make a living working with you and then you can't help them yeah it's an awful feeling but we've gone through many yeah well the Great Recession and then we went through covid which was the first time in our lives we'd ever had anybody tell us we couldn't come to work yeah

the government just shut us down like everybody you know but that was a weird weird time and a very panicking time pain right around when I started Maverick Supply Co and we had just invested in all of this product and it just got here and then I launched my website in January and I got a couple sales in January and then February came around like couple more sales and then March and it was Zero the whole entire industry shut down which was terrifying terrifying you know so yeah then it was like all right cool well I guess I'll just hang out in my house and DM people and this time Instagram was you know kind of still strong and stronger than ever I guess when everybody was in the country was sitting around doing nothing so I remember I putting up to like 18 hours a day dming people yeah just on trying to get them to like educated about havick and yeah and so then Co but who knew that people were going to save up all so much tattoo money while the lockdowns were going on because we came out Gang Busters after they opened us back up most insane two last two years ever yeah so and then now it's like the driest slowest winter anyone has ever seen so so we're you know full circle so yeah it's just like a cycle here we are it is life is like a roller coaster yeah and I think it's probably always been that way for tattooers from as far back as you can go yeah we've met some of the old ass tattooers from you know historical taters like phph Eddie bow Stan Philadelphia Eddie those

guys have been through so much they're they're gone now but they were super influential and uh to the whole tattooing industry yeah in this country in the world Philadelphia EDD has started the tattoo conventions and we actually got to go do conventions with him which was really fun and educational I thought yeah I had yeah really good we get to have lunch with Philadelphia Eddie and uttle we got we I think we had lunch with was there we're all sitting around the table we're in Vancouver Washington Vancouver Washington having a brunch and Lyall Tuttle he always had a cane at that time he was getting pretty old he was like 85 he sat out at the table and he was talking to us all he goes you guys want to do some lines and we all looked up and went no that dude was still and Chase like super hot young girls yeah same with Philadelphia Edie every time my girl that I was with at the time would like hum her out he just wouldn't even pay attention to me he would just stare at her and talk to her same with your sister they they always yeah we remember the time that uh we we had some ads and some tattoo magazines and we had Courtney in know like a kind of a outfit yeah my sister wasn't too racy but it was racier than we didn't realize how racy it was until we realized that uh tattoo magazines were going to prisons yeah and uh we had prison ERS contacting us telling Courtney that when they got out they were going to come to the shop and meet her so we had to pull all our ads because

we're like they were leaving messages on our machine that of how hot she was and I'm like what the is going on so weird we've had some super you just learn as you go you okay didn't that didn't really come into my mind I thought tattoo magazines okay nothing wrong with prisoners look at tattoo magazines but they'll put your daughter in there yeah kind a racy outfit what what some of your favorite like stories of working in that first shop back in like 200 jez I don't know you know just like I mean I I don't know about favorite stories but I I think I laid on the floor with a 911 operator probably a half a dozen times for I remember one time I got off the plane I flew to Denver for some reason and I got off the plane and Y Becky called and there was a truck had driven his truck up to the front door and had you hostage inside the shop I don't know what that was about I don't remember either I do remember that though yeah and remember a lot of very uncomfortable moments with people in the store and then them like being drunk at like after hours demanding that you tude them or what whatever and their friends were all there and then it turning into this real hot situation where trying to like I don't know I've always been kind of good talking people out of being super violent and angry and somehow and the total opposite I just get right in their face and trying to talk people down and I'm like come on yeah yeah we had some fun times there at that shop though like that's when we

were throwing some really crazy parties and that was when there was like no rules man we would throw like a Halloween party and I decided I wanted to come up with you know I was I was pretty Corky with some promotional ideas so we I decided all right it's Halloween and I went around and I bought like 75 pumpkins and I took this my uh roommate up to time him with a drummer and he had a drum stage it was just a basically it was like 2et of plywood and I put a blowup pool on there and I gutted 75 pumpkins and threw all the guts in the pool and it surrounded the pool with uh all the pumpkins and then we had a pumpkin gut wrestling contest where with a bunch of strippers yeah these you know very nice young ladies that were my clients and we had guys we had ramps guys like on mini bikes jumping or doing stunts and yeah there was a bar next door called The Royal and they open their front and back doors and let us race through with the minibikes through the bar I don't know if they let us do that or we were just doing that I think they liked it it was oh they never had anybody in there and then all of a sudden there was like 500 people in there I'm not sure if they wanted anybody in there yeah there was something going on over there we can't talk about yeah but then we had some we did some fun promotional shows though we had this trucker hat art show where we had an 18-wheeler uh pull up out front and I don't know it was a client of ours like yes and then we distributed like 150 um

trucker hats to artists all over the country and they sent them back to us and we had them all painted and then all displayed in there we did a um a silent auction so they were all uh auctioned off at 100% of the proceeds charity we did a lot of Charity stuff too which is awesome that was remember everybody being really drunk at the end of the night there we had a space behind that shop that was a big parking lot and it was off you couldn't see it from the Main Street so we could do anything we wanted back there so I had a friend that was an electrician that um lighted the uh convention yeah yeah he would bring out all those we'd bring towers of lights and generators and just make that place so cool back there it was a lot of fun yeah we had numerous events in the early days we did piercing so we had this guy Kane FZ and he was a he was a street bike stunt dude like back when that didn't even it wasn't even like a thing yet and uh he ended up coming and being a piercer at a shop for like two or three years two about two years or whatever until I we ended up having to let him go cuz he was he was obviously like needed to pursue what he wanted to do with the street bike stuff but anyway he had some pretty crazy stories where him and all his friends we would all come up and then we would block off the street which is like a five Lane Road and block it off with cars and then have like 10 street bikes doing stunts like burnouts and wheelies up and down the street till the cops

would like raid it and then they would all just take off and run from the cops and there would be like smoke and burnout everywhere we would just go back in and act like we're just like yeah that was just our day you know I don't know who those kids are we tattooed a lot cops too so they kind of let us get away with some stuff it was pretty fun yeah we had the trucker hat art shows the the Halloween things we we just did a lot we had a grand opening too there the first party where Ben remember uh Ben dos Frank yeah who's now do Frank yeah um he was our MC and we had uh Kelly and Andrew who had oh yeah there were sword swallowers they were Sideshow people so they would be hanging out they were so good at entertaining and I remember I had to get up on stage and drink a cocktail through uh Andrew's head like he threaded a hose through his nose brought it out of his mouth yeah of course cleaned it put it in a drink and I stood there and drank a drink on the stage threw his head grossed everybody out I thought it was well even grosser is he would drink a bag of his own urine through his own head so he would put the straw through his no came out maybe he did that on the stage no I don't know about on the stage he used to do that weird urine drinking like at the shop he would bring it by you got a video of his wife drinking his yeah he had where they would shreded ears and he stuck his penis through the hole in her ear pissed in a cup and she drank it and he yeah I am all that on

video so if we can get a hold of that that would be real sweet that's some crazy times yeah nothing like that happens in Studio 21 anymore assure you yeah that I know yeah he used to hang himself from his chest big hooks in his hang himself from the stairs right in front of the shop and like I used to help Kane do the piercings for that that was pretty gross I'm glad do that he talked to to get your nipples pierced too yeah he did yeah I never would do that hurt yeah well he was having a bad day he was grumpy because he wasn't getting any tips and I'm like well I I guess I numerous times I I actually did took one for the team I guess you I said okay just pierce my nipples I don't have anything else to Pier yeah that hurt yeah I remember Mom

uh so my mom at that back this was back in the 2003 to 2006 era my mom uh still had a full-time job she was a graphic artist and uh she had this young guy that worked for her for a little bit and he was obsessed with getting his penis pierced and he kept coming to our shop and like I don't know why that's like around the time I specifically remember like I'm not even into piercing like why do we even have this here and this is weird now mom's co-workers are like coming in and getting their wieners pierced and I'm like does do I want the Spencer family to be like known for getting your wiener pierced no fence pies but I'm like I just it just wasn't my gig yeah so and uh we also had some weird ass we had her accountant from her work ended up doing some accounting work for us and he came in and we had to fire him because we caught him photocopying all of the penis piercings out of the penis Port uh portfolio or the port and then we a bunch of the penis portfolio porn on the on Becky's computer he was doing our books and downloading porn at our shop on the computer we're like you gotta go dude yeah we we can get somebody else to count the money yeah I'm not yeah looking back I'm like why why was our account even in the store yeah I guess he was doing it on the side or something and do our for us it was weird we learned a lot over the years from those kind of experiences our new shop was much more tame than our first location yeah I think the whole industry is more tame than it

was yeah thousand per yeah tell was more tame I mean we didn't we don't have nearly as many people that would do the things that they would do in the old shop now yeah I mean the exhibitionists and the you know we that symbolism yeah remember poor all Phil luck having to do a consultation I sent him out there to talk to these people I knew they were gonna be characters and I knew something freaking weird was going on and they had brought a portfolio in of pictures of like his wife's genitalia and close-ups and they had drawn all these pictures all around like little detailed floral designs all around her genitalia and they just came in and they just wanted to show this to a tat to get an idea of how much it cost would and then make Phil extremely uncomfortable and then they basically I don't even think they had any interest in getting the tattooed she did it and in the booth that is now adults not yeah a Pidge pides yeah yeah sorry Pidge just went blank for a second there Phil luck had to tattoo that girl and he said I'm only going to get so close to your butthole and then that's it I'm not going to go any closer but he did that tattoo and she laid there spreading will Buck Naked for about 4 hours while people are walking by and he goes I'm going to go have a smoke you can get up you can cover yourself up and she would never get up cover herself up we were like weird characters people out there yeah yeah yeah that was like what we were talking about earlier too is just the

getting to know people in the most intimate long form kind of content way tattooing provides you like just can sit down other than barring those kind of stories uh the fun part of tattooing I think what I like most about it was meeting people and talking to people from all over the world we had people from everywhere and just the conversations and the things you learn from people about how they live where they are I I really enjoyed that I've never been a super big traveler but I I traveled through them you know to learning about them I thought it was pretty awesome to still I mean we still being in Vegas our our audiences worldwide so get some very interesting folks in there yeah tattooed billionaires I've tattooed you know fourstar generals and all kinds of people yeah that you would tattooed an astronauts sister one day um Astro Kate was her name her sister came through on the way to Florida to pick her sister up when the U uh space shuttle or landed they're going to get her out there and she told me she would be sick for about two weeks so she was getting some sort of tattoo to commemorate that wow that's pretty crazy CRA to talk to somebody who's going to get her her sister with on the space station and she literally was showing me videos of her talking to her sister I think she actually called her while I was tattooing her and I'm talking to an astronaut while I'm tattooing her sister on at m space station weird it's the you get these kind of opportunities that

other people just don't get industry yeah well I mean in tat Las Vegas too I mean I remember just having the weirdest like I'm you know a client that's like I'm a dolphin trainer you're like Is that real I didn't know that that's a thing or a l you know I work with the lions at the zoo at the you know the tiger SE show and stuff so had a lot of professional athletes and actresses and actors and yeah musicians which kind of brings me up to into like also like we've done some interesting things like we never had a um TV show take off but we have been under contract with multiple uh production companies and filmed multiple Pilots over the years like we go back to like TV taking off we were getting hit up weekly by people like production companies and stuff they were like whoa a father son and then my sister ran the front counter for seven years so then and then my mom later on she quit her full-time job and and came on with us like around 2006 or something like that the m a little bit Yeah but uh so yeah we did some really interesting like we went out to LA and got to like sit down with Kat Von D's agent at these big ass tables this big beautiful& History Channel all those we did like seven we pitched to like seven different networks all and uh I think at that time we were kind of that was like towards the tail end on that specific pitch but we were just kind of tired and didn't really think that it was they they want to to do drama we're really not drama people yeah it's

hard enough like obviously working with your family and you know running a small business so the last thing we needed was like people like throwing gas on yeah yeah so we did do a I think the biggest television thing we did was The Biggest Loser we did an episode of The Biggest Loser yeah yeah yeah I never forget the day that occurred I was tattooing somebody and the I saw a man and a young lady behind him with a clipboard walking through the shop and I I saw them meling around and I was like what's going on there you know and finally the guy came to the door and tap tap tap excuse me it was uh I I have a television show called The Biggest Loser and uh I was wondering if you guys might be interested in letting us use your shop and film here

yeah and I looked up at himone I said I'm not sure I want to have anything to do with the something called The Biggest Loser you know it doesn't sound I didn't know anything about it and he goes I have 13 million viewers on Prime Time CBS or whatever it was I was like hang on a second took my gloves off and the next thing know we're on the biggest lizard was pretty cool yeah which we had for years like people coming in we saw you the Biggest Loser oh people would bring me they I stuck this card on my fridge eight years ago that thing created business for a long time Biggest Loser and then we had a bunch of other shows uh Becky and I were going through some old pictures and I was like oh we did we were on some sort of a West Country West L show I remember walking into Best Buy one day and you were tattooing on all the TVs because you did we did that poker there was like a poker show and it was part of a bet where they lost a v yeah and then you had to do a tattoo on somebody or something like yeah there was some super famous poker players like those guys were called the Young Guns of Poker and we had them all in there yeah were fun yeah we did a lot of that was a good show so we're still open 200 um what's what's this month or this year 20 24 we're going to open 21 years this year this is our 21st or yeah this is our 21st year yeah so are you still tattooing much uh not very much but U I'm still willing to but you know what happens when uh somebody comes to me and wants to

get tattooed if someone else can do it I give it to them because we want them to be busy so as long as I can filter My Tattoos to them that's good is there anything out there that you'd be more apt to say yes to I like to do chest pieces if somebody comes to me for I I've always thought those are some of my best pieces my chest pie yeah just big like orc you know I like I like the symmetry of it I like you know traditional chess pieces let's yeah keep it traditional style or neoc um but fism too I don't really care to do anything bigger than that hurts my hands too much I think I'm old yeah so well cool I think that's about it I think we'll wrap it up but um I think what is to date yeah that's about it we're up to date and if you have any tell all the stories we got a lot of more stories we'll we're gonna do some more stuff we'll do so some back stuff but yeah so anyway thanks for having me yeah yeah yeah thanks Dad thanks for coming it was fun but anyway uh yeah stay tuned and we're going to have some more fun guests coming up and we are super excited to share this with you so have a good one thank you so much bye