Maverick ZINE — Tattoo Culture, Art & Artist Stories

I feel like that's the problem with tattoo is is you get pigeon hold and you just kind of stay there until it pushes you out of the business because you're sick and tired of like we have the ability to change we have the ability to go you know what I'm okay with this I'd like to try this I'd like to work on this I'd like to do that and that's another thing is like with Instagram you have the opportunity to be more than one person what's happening everybody Welcome to support your local tattoo I'm Austin Spencer today's guest is awesome today's guest is not only the oldest tattoo alive he's one of my favorite people fantastic illustrator tattoo collector my personal historian of tattooing my go-to my plug Phil luck he the man what's happening say yeah how are you dude thanks for coming down I'm psych to be you I'm glad we finally connected on this we've been talking about it for a while so we squeaked you in here you're you're just in town for like the week two weeks home and then I'm back to New York so you've been doing Road road work back to New York now no more road work just New York and then I come home okay like one shop or you got two or three shop just just scenes just scenes yeah okay well that's awesome then last year I tried last year I spread myself too thin drove myself up a wall so this year it's just just seemes cruising yeah yeah and you you've only been tattooing a couple years right yeah yeah I got a few months on my belt you know what you think

about coil tattoo machines or you seen them before yeah you want to try those out yeah so heard a couple of good things well man you're uh I'm your hands down like one of my favorite dudes I appreciate that I love heing that your we we had some fun stories uh some history I think I've fired you and hired you like 12 times no you never fired I nevered my dad told me the other day like bro we fired him like 12 times and then you know my dad stories get super aggressive no I never got fire I don't remember that so funny cuz I talked to my dad years I got reprimanded for coming in late I think twice that's good s years that's it that's good yeah we had a time together man and it was always fun my my dad was telling me too the other day about this the story of when my sister she used to manage the front counter had you put your hand on the Bible and that was when I came back yeah I had I had to make a whole bunch of swears then I wouldn't mess with any of the floor girls show up on time it never happened it never happened I'm late all the time I got a good reason to be late you know my late story if I was on time I would have been in the World Trade Center when 9/11 happened that's a big deal 15 minutes late for everything all the time if I would have been on time I would have been dead this is the that I go with I can't possibly skip that story so what yeah that's a real story yeah yeah I was on my way to redo my board of health certificate it was and uh me and my buddy Ralphie

was supposed to meet up at that time we never called it the World Trade after you called it the Twin Towers oh okay and we were supposed to meet up at the Twin Towers I was running late he beeped me it was before cell phones yeah and he was like turn around man plane just flew into the Twin Towers what the so that's my excuse for always being late now for on time it was meant to be me to be damn that gives me a chill that's crazy yeah you have you have we have so many more stories to jump into um so one thing we like to do is I know you've got a fun origin story but we kind of always like to hear like where the hell did you come from like how this is going back to like tattooing was illegal right before when you were getting into it like how for me it was and that's why I have such a hard time these days because it's so mainstream CU I got into it for the taboo aspect you know what I mean I got tattooed to keep people the away from me not to have everyone come up to me in Walmart and go do you tattoo are you cheap like I did it to keep people away from me this was my armor you know and these days it's kind of backfiring facts facts I want to get the removed nobody even pays attention um I don't even know like it doesn't even still it's still to me it don't make sense to how I got in the tattoo one because it was impossible to find yeah you know there was no there was no tattoo shop like you had to seek these people out and that was the nice part of Tattooing in an illegal

environment was the fact that you didn't get them look he lose you know you either were totally serious about this tattoo or you gave up looking for someone 3 weeks earlier you know because it would take you months to find a tattooer in New York city so I was dealing with a clientele that was serious about what they wanted to do it was when legalization happened that the whole dynamic changed and all of a sudden I was dealing with people that were like oh maybe I want a tattoo you know I don't know what I want that was unheard of you had years to figure it out and that time you were looking for me you figured out exactly what the you wanted you know D yeah so I feel like that changed the seriousness of the people that actually showed up changed you know but in the last few years the whole dynamic has changed yeah I I mean you know like I said I I before like you know I got tattooed for armor like I feel like a lot of people got tattooed for that same reason or to St out in the crowd and these days people get tattooed to fit into the crowd that's a different part of the brain being worked there yeah you know someone trying to stand out and someone trying to fit in that's two completely different animals the clientele has changed drastically you know I find myself fighting to find common ground with the younger generation all the time that was never part of my job before no you know I was never part of my job before trying to trying to get you to talk to me you know like

even like scheduling a a a tattoo and you're trying to get what the they want but you just can't they can't verbalize yeah you know their social skills a total me I'll go all day I got diarrhea of the mouth this new generation it's hard to get them to say anything and when it's something as serious as you're about to put this on your skin for the rest of your life but you can't verbalize with me it's weird yeah yeah so it's probably better off that they all pick the same tattoo same exact Google image well we're or now we're getting some AI images yeah yeah yeah I try explaining that one to them that's not a real tattoo you're saying yeah but look at how good it looks it's not a real tattoo so what were some of like your first exposures to Tattooing in general like when you were growing up yeah you were attracted to like I got no memory whatsoever of anything that happened in the last year yeah but I remember like that from when I was I remember being 9 years old my little brother he's also a tattoo artist he was still in a stroller and we were at the Coney Island uh aquarium and all of a sudden this dude comes walking around the corner looking like a wizard like long gray hair and a long Gray beard and just covered in butterflies and that was the first time I had ever seen a heavily tattooed person yeah skip ahead six seven years I'm cutting out of school with my girlfriend we're watching TV and this guy shows up on TV and I remembered him immediately you know like it was

like holy that's the guy from Cone Island and that was Huggy beerris who did my first couple of tattoos with fake ID yeah how old were you been uh for my first tattoo was 14 years old and it was a girl's name Lisa still got it we won't get rid of it yeah dude that's a wild was he working out of an underground yeah working out of an apartment in Park Slope brookly okay yeah so at that time nobody was and that was that walking into his place that was it my the day that I went to go and get that tattoo everything was solidified from that point on walk into the joint 5 minutes in I was like this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life and it and that was 34 years ago you know spent two years trying to get an apprenticeship finally got an apprenticeship with Delgato when I was 16 not a not a formal apprenticeship or anything like that you know but it was uh just by lingering and hanging out man I'm sick and tired of covering up your garbage I better show you some you know so you got a whole collection like pretty young yeah yeah yeah I mean I don't get tattooed any everyone asks all the time you know like how often do you get tattooed and it's like not since my 20s I got a little these things you know I did your stomach right so yes one of my favorite tattoos my son who is now big into PeeWee Herman realized last week that that's Peewee Herman's bicycle was like right right away mom mom that was PeeWee Herman's bicycle dang we just watched Peewee last night with we watch

the newer one which is so so good yeah so sh you jumping around getting tattooed like all the every time you got tatto is probably in somebody's apartment in New York yeah like what what like what area were you getting tattooa were you traveling around all over New York mostly with my mentor Steve Delgado I started getting tattooed by Huggy Bear Ferris like iide down and then my mentor Steve dogado did the bulk of my work uh who else in New York was tattooing me back in the day what neighborhood oh that's uh uh H Brooklyn okay yeah that's Benson Hurst just a couple of blocks away from the high school that I got kicked out of a few years earlier yeah so uh' you get kicked in high school for can I ask uh what didn't I get kicked out of high school for I was a truant more than anything else I was a truant so they were pushing me out they were pushing me to do the GED thing which I never did do anyway yeah the city was calling you yeah just want to go around and around you know that's it I learned more than most other kids because I was out in the world you know I ended up going to a high school a very Italian neighborhood and and not dealing with the highest of intellects so I wasn't going to learn much to begin with you know so it was better off that you know I was I I read a lot I've always read a lot you know so I feel like I educated myself and all I wanted to learn about was the city that I grew up in yeah so the city became my school at you know 14 15 years old I learned

Common Sense yeah you I ain't books smart but I got a little bit of Common Sense up there get on the train before that door closes over that's it that's it yeah yeah you learn who to stay away from that's it you learn when to stay out of yeah did you get with a lot like growing up or when you say armor like I was just wondering no I just didn't like people I just didn't you know I I didn't like people when I was younger you know which is funny cuz you're on the phone more than anybody I ever met and you have so many friends yeah yeah yeah I got you know everybody you you were more like a loner though when you were youngster no I always had a type n crew I I always had someone that I was pounding around with you know my brother Leroy was along for most of the journeys yeah you know we cut out of school together yeah somewhat for me to blame it on when we got caught that's awesome so tell me more about your Mentor though like how was that like so that was N I started going up to Delgado in 91 okay um I started tattooing I I say March 23rd 1993 is the year is when I started tattooing that's when I went to go work in my first shop yeah but I started with Delgado in in 91 Delgado he's got a I mean he's we got a great lineage Delgado learned from Tony PLO Tony pedo learned from the moscowitz brothers the moscowitz brothers learned from their father s willly s willly learned from Charlie Wagner you know so I mean it goes right back to the beginning of the electrical tattoo

machine and of course Wagner learned from Samuel O'Reilly so I got this great history you know and Delgado passed along a lot of great stories and nurtured that history aspect for me which was a big deal because history I've always been really big into history if I get into something I want to know everything there is to know about it where it's started you know yeah which is another big issue that I have with this young generation of tattooers we have this beautiful amazing history and nobody gives two any longer about it yeah you know and I feel like a lot of mistakes being made these days with tattooing could be avoided by by the younger generation educating themselves you know how the do you know where you're going if you know way you've been yeah you know just from my personal experience what I've been exposed to with younger guys they don't or gals everybody who's getting into the they're just reluctant to like dive all in like I don't know you and I are like we just put our all into it like I personally didn't really know too much about uh history but I dove into the understanding of how the business worked how how the community worked how why are people drawn to us and like how do I get people to come get tattooed by me and just kind of watching that was like my passion so I wanted to know everything about it how it worked and then also the artists like so right I was I don't want to say it wasn't like super historian driven but I definitely wanted to know the

artists that learned from the artist that art you know and just get deep into that and F like go meet them like get out of your city go go go talk to those people they learned that story yeah yeah just sit there and shut up and listen you know cuz most of all everybody was extremely open and talkative so like the Wilder generation used to be interesting yeah what happens at conventions now everyone just stays at their phone I been to a convention in a minute oh yeah so my personal Outlook the the convention thing is definitely I I was doing them a lot in like 2011 and 12 and 13 and even then that they had it evolved a lot from obviously the past but the um the fact that like now nobody even like hangs out after the convention unless you're in your little click cuz they don't even go to the hotel cuz they stay in the hotel it's attached to the convention and then Uber all separately so like the last couple conventions we worked we sat in the lobby on a Saturday night and there was like three people there and I was like what the that was the draw for me to the conventions was the social aspect in the morning like everybody come down in the morning and all eat the same buff so you had the opportunity to bump shoulders with some legendary and like in the elevator or whatever and just be like hey man like y I just want to introduce myself real quick or you know try to break those little circles but now it's like you can't even yeah that's you just have to work a lot harder at it

so I'm not saying like if if you if you want to meet those people you literally have to go up and wait for them to take their headphones off and like you know do that whole thing but I don't know just it is what it is like everything evolves yeah is it evolving I don't know I guess it is you know it's just I don't know I feel like we hit a pinnacle a few years ago yeah it's pretty it's the hardest game right now ever than I think has ever been in insane how many people are in it you know so talented yeah so young oh I see so many beautiful tattoos these days you know I could spend hours on Instagram just liking beautiful tattoos and there's there's no shortage of them no shortage overwhelming and discouraging but you know in the beginning it was definitely a discouraging situation for me like being like holy this this many doing killer traditional these days in the beginning it was definitely discouraging and then I learned to use it as I I I screenshot a ton of all day long going wow I want to I want to drill something like that I want to do some like that look at how this guy approached this you know that's great so no I I absolutely enjoy Instagram I I I can't talk on Instagram you actually all I do is talk on I know I was doing a deep dive through all your social media or you mainly focus on Instagram right so yeah and now all you've got these like real fun like talking basically just talking reals you know just Brant and they're doing really well right yeah yeah yeah

you gain like a a Mor I one video with like5 million views yeah yeah Jes and I sit there going so let me get this straight I'll spend 20 hours drawing up a design right I'll spend another 20 hours executing this tattoo I'll get 200 likes yeah I say some stupid and I get 35 million views yeah I don't know what's wrong with this is it me but at least you know that's what I love about you too is like you're you see that and you're like a I'll give it a sh I guess keep saying stupid on Instagram as far as evolving I mean that's evolving you're pivoting you're seeing like opportunity and jumping on it I don't know if it is opportunity or what but I don't know anybody it's fun it's a good good way to meet people yeah I like it it's fun as well tell me more like so I don't know like when you were there in New York like I I I just really want to like hear more about to your transition of becoming a full-time tattooer your crazy you had to have some like real fun apprenticeship stories how was your apprenticeship as far as you one thing that people don't take into consideration is the fact that we we didn't start till 5:00 p.m. yeah you know because you didn't you didn't open until the Board of Health closed down because they were the only ones who could do anything and all they could do was hit you with running a business without a license $500 fine call it a day but all tattoo shops in New York City didn't open until 5:00 p.m. because of that so they were legitimate like

advertised you know they were open like it was word MTH no there was Word of Mouth it was in apartments there was VAR the first place that I saw with a sign was the first place that I worked at and that was custom Corner tattoo in Storia queens and I started there in March 23rd 93 but no it was most most people were just working out of their Apartments you know have one room set aside for tattooing in yeah and that's basically the way it went now I figured out a couple of ways to advertise in that situation I was kind of a doing a lot of figuring out ways to Market at that point yeah and there was so few ways too because you didn't want to get caught but what I was doing was I was putting my business cards I was going to all the magazine stores in Brooklyn and dropping my my card into the business into the magazine I remember you telling me that story that was a great and all of a sudden one day and I go to the same magazine stance over and over again a few in Manhattan but mostly all in Brooklyn and I remember walking into this one joint in Manhattan and the the the guy behind the counter going oh wait don't you see what they did now he was like they know you're doing this and then I had all the magazines in plastic and I was like son of a and he was like you're the reason so I'm the reason that mag that tattoo magazines came in that plastic cover so that people could I still figured a way out I just walked around with a box cutter yeah yeah so I still got them in there

now they weren't going to fall out while you were walking at home that's hilarious but yeah it was expensive to advertise in those magazines and I didn't see the point this way you know you open the magazine it falls right out you know I'm in town so that's how I advertised for a couple of years and that phone number led to that you know this beeper it was all beepers okay you'd beat me I'd call you back I love it I I kind of want to go back to that a it was nice it was nice you know and like I said these people were serious because it took them a while to find you you know oh yeah yeah you're like yeah that's awesome yeah I wish it would still like that it was so and and the other funny part is the the fact that the clo the further we get into custom tattooing the less people are I assume that when custom tattooing became a big thing I'd be doing new and inventive every day and it turned out to be the complete opposite yeah instead of them picking Off the Wall they' go on Google type in and pick one of the first three images that showed up yeah one a black and gray owl with the clock yeah yeah Cloud background yeah sometimes it's a stopwatch sometimes it's a it's a Compass you know but it's all the same elements yeah you know sometimes there's gates to heaven you know but it's always some birs and shitload of clouds yeah yeah and this has been 10 years of this being the sleeve yeah I feel it's pushing a flashback into the game though that would be nice it go well also it

makes it so incredibly difficult now to get tattooed by all of these big name custom tattooers you know n the street shop could come back I personally think it's like helping Street shop culture come back but somebody's got to be there to manage those Street shops and keep them open and be willing to sit there the like you said with flash the funny thing is the fact that they're they're afraid to go near flash they're afraid to pick something off the flash and it's like I don't understand you have no problem going on Google and picking one of the first three IM you type in butterfly and you pick one of the first three images that shows up but you're standing in a shop you know like a million people a day you're going to see that image on Google you type in butterfly tattoo a million people a day is seeing that if it's if you go to a tattoo shop where the owner or the artists are painting their own flesh you're lucky if a thousand people a year are going to see that painting yeah but you're going to talk on I would never get anything off the wall because you know everybody's got it when meanwhile you're walking around with an upside down breathe on your wrist you know and you got you know an infinity symbol and it's like really yeah you know maybe they're overwhelmed since sensory overload no they just can't I just I find it funny that they a celebrity will get a shitty tattoo and the next week that's all you're doing is that shitty tattoo on Mindless individuals and like

they'll sit there and act like it was their idea and it's like no I was around for the Dust Till Dawn oh yeah that was a good one at least that was at least a good one you know that one and then the saying that the two the two like British guys they were like Robin oh my God why I'm brain farting right now it's I cuz I don't even know what that means it's like sees the day or some but it was like on a finger huh yeah it was it was something in the movie where they using it it was a trigger finger I don't know oh my God I know why I'm terrible yeah what other good movie ones were there there were a bunch of good movie ones a good anything that Angelina Jolie ever got became Trend immediately yeah what's the the squiggle I never looked at you

know something like that I learned about that through Lars Lou that tattoo out of Berlin loose lips oh he's killer you got some work from him right what did you get from him I got this like this bird yeah killer tattoo he's a crazy dude right I went there to get a skull with flow and he told me no you didn't get it no I was like all right and I left with the bird he actually I flew over there and he told me uh let me sit down sometime this week and have lunch with you and decide if I want to tattoo you and I was like okay yeah super eccentric oh my God to the the the most the most follow social media but he don't post very much but what a great tattoo talk about too like the whole entire industry is basically built around like what he was doing right as far as like new traditional right right he brought it to that next level the giant female faces yeah gorgeous now every way you look yeah definitely super influential yeah he ended up tattooing me luckily after uh 20 different weird stories that happened yeah what a again a character that's the type of person you want to get tattooed by you know you're can enjoy the whole thing that's the thing man this is all an experience we're selling an experience yeah you know like when you get someone in the chair you got to roll out the red carpet you got to tell the good stories and how disappointing it is when you sit in the chair and the customer puts headphones on and you're like ah it bothers me when I was younger I would be like

ah no no no and now that I'm like older and have a lot more going on in my head I'm all fair enough I ain't got much going on these days I need this I need this yeah right like at least tell me some up weird stories yeah that honestly my favorite part of one of my favorite Parts about about tattoing is the interaction with the custom yeah they I feel like I learned a ton about life and all these opportunities and all these different things that you can do different people's careers and learn a lot of what not to do yeah there's some up people out there that are using tattooing as their weird kind of go to for therapy and I don't know why I just thought about this like when that lady that couple brought in those pictures the close-ups of her

genital oh my God and the more I was like I'm not comfortable with this the more she'd bring me more up pictures and like I'm trying to tattoo for you I don't need 18 close-ups of your I remember walking by the booth while you were doing it and you were just like sweat on your head and I was I just kept chugging you know was like you know those were some of the the best that's an easy way to really to really make you uncomfortable yeah you know did you end up tattooing her I did one tattoo on her which was in a very you know private area to begin with but then she was she was just like oh I want a tattoo around this and around that and just and they would bring in 8 by10 pictures of her folders of her genitalia and then they would handdraw like this is how I wanted to look I wanted around here and it's like yeah why but why he pictures why and the husband's just like staring at you like all excited to hear and see your reaction while you're staring at and the more I let them know I was uncomfortable the more they pushed to the point that I was just like a I'm sorry I'm not that toing your I just died just can't do it we just had some really weird uh only fans action go down in the shop oh brilliant yeah and we're not going to do that anymore yeah but the craziest the craziest person that I tattooed in that in Studio 21 was when I tattooed Michael Jackson's dad I know I bring that up creepy creepy situation dude I remember him pulling Two Pistols out of his pockets like three

cell phones that dude had more guns on him than a yeah he was like an army little 83 years old 83 years old he was a g dude I saw him in Like Home Depot like a week later that was an intimidating situation and the fact that he wore so much Foundation like I found out that day everyone talked on Michael Jackson bleaching himself no he had Vitiligo cuz his dad has that's a gen disorder and his dad was white as cuz it took me like three paper towels of green soap and three paper towels of alcohol just to clear off the foundation from his face to get to the whitest skin I've ever seen in my life oh oh I remember how stressed you were so I I didn't want to with you that day you know that was an intimidating and even for like months later all I could think was yo with all that foundation on his face how is this tattoo not going to get infected yeah ever see it like Howes this still sh through like no absolutely not not with the amount of foundation that he was and I did explain it all to him I did say you know you're wearing a lot of makeup I ain't wear no makeup and I was like oh okay I ain't going to question you his mustache was penciled on his eyebrows were penciled on yeah he was an intimidating intimidating old man small Dude too yeah he was like not a big man and but probably one of the more gangster figure and I remember how it happened your sister came in the back and she goes there's some old pimp up front jewelry looking to get tude and I was like she was like are you

interested and I was like yeah and I go walking up front I recognized him right I didn't recognize him right away but he looked very familiar to me I knew that he was somebody and then he put his hand out he was like how you doing man Joe Jackson and it was like a this is going to be weird yeah yeah that was that was wild I Jay swarm had the best quote of the day he said the moonwalk came from his dick good Lord BR J SW I got to get him on here I talked to Nick Nick Ms this week too so he's got some fun stories yeah yeah I know that we all have fun stories about that shop it was a good time and other shops like so you were I mean how long did you tattoo in New York like you said you started on that corner shop yeah yeah I was at custom corners for a year underground but at a commercial space yeah is that when that was the first one you that was the first one that I saw that like that was a 90 that was in a storefront it still was on descript like there was no signage out front okay you know um but it was two big glass doors right on the corner and as soon as those doors opened it was just flashed out there was no guess work how many guys are were in there uh it was normally me Gallow and his wife Tony and then on weekends we' nor have another tattoo there was this one guy tattoo Al clar from Queens tattooed too yeah yeah his wife Tony she was good I'm sure I'm assuming she's a badass she was really good uh she quit she didn't tattoo for very long maybe 10 years oh okay um

he's still t as far as I know Gallo still tattooing uh somewhere in Upstate New York any I'm always fascinated with any woman female that tattooed in those days r as really strong yeah not enough people give Jackie GR him enough credit not just being a female Tater in the 70s ' 80s and early '90s but being a black female Tater at that time she was in New Orleans right New Orleans yeah she's still tattooing she's still putting away she's got to be close to 50 years if not more I want to say 72 71 or 72 so she's got over 50 years tattooing now that's awesome God bless I just saw a cool little video that some like vlogger chicken did on her about awesome she's just cool people yeah I'd like to get tattooed by her someday I've never never had the opportunity I have had a million opportunities but I I'd love to get tattooed by the atmosphere in those shops was like pretty rough or like good kind of oh in New York yeah I mean that like it would no it was pretty it was pretty you know I mean the clientele was was an interesting you know I mean this was a point where not everyone got tattooed where you tattooed pretty interesting people you know um but they were there for that common thing so I feel like as even when I was in the roughest of shops everybody was still to be there you know it was rare anybody kind of I think I think I had more fun at the rougher shops you know tattooing behind bulletproof class in the South Bronx you know yeah tell us about that Uncle Angelo shop

Champion tattooing man we tattooed behind bulletproof glass it was an interesting interesting situation giant names he did uh the Harlem World on mace that's a $60 tattoo that's his whole upper arm it was $30 per word and Angelo had a way of doing these names it could be like a 16l name and he'd still get it to look right as a sleeve as a half sleeve you know he'd fill up the whole top of the arm with one word never used a liner always Shader for everything the lines were clean as yeah uh he had an interesting approach to tattooing you said handdrawn on or no yeah everything was handdrawn on everything was wasd drawn on by hand as far as the lettering went and I was there for a couple years it was it was tough gig you $30 names $30 names you know so two names that that Harlem World was 60 bucks you know yeah um and it was yeah just bang him out we'd have a a list of you know who was next and it was just sharing them out you know it was me uh Uncle Angelo Angelo scato and Jasmine who had the Tattoo Nightmares television show okay and that girl could tattoo oh way Beast fast as and that's what it was we were just churning these tattoos out that was early 2000s 2000 2001 2002 I worked up there um interesting situation you know uh tattooing a lot of Jamaican gang bangers you know and I remember Angelo being like you better be nice to these people cuz all the women they carry acid in their purses and I was like come on and one day this lady goes she's I'm tattooing and she's

like oh man they mess with me me throw the the ocid in their face and I'm like what she opens up a purse she got like a little baby food jawer like some clear liquid and I was like what is that she was like it's acid oh I was thinking acid like no no no like legit with I know it had such a gangster face off acid not burn your face off acid burn your face off acid yeah know it's obviously oh now that was it man I was like man this is a scary neighborhood little little old ladies walking around with jaws asses in that person dude you got to do what you got to do man that's yeah that was the South Bronx that was the South Bronx that was an interesting situation throw acid in their face then you just throw the glass on the ground and then there's no proof of anything that's it that's it yeah oh another time I had a lady tell me she told me she wanted to get her tattoos done before she went to jail so I was like who I'm just going to ask I like what are you going to jail for she goes to get me te did and I was like don't understand what that means so she leaves and I go Jasmine what is to get me Teeth did mean she was like oh she caught a case so she can go and get her teeth fixed on fixed for free oh I was like so you just go to jail to get your teeth done just do a little time apparently this is a thing be able to eat clean when I get out this isn't thing new teeth I might catch a case pretty soon I could use a few teeth fix so how many did you tattoo like all over New York

all five burrows yeah I tattooed in all five burrows I feel like I remember you telling me that story it was kind of fun to say but Brooklyn I've never tattooed out of my apprenticeship I've never I've I've I was and that's funny cuz I was always Associated as a Brooklyn tattooer CU I'm from Brooklyn but I never tattooed past my apprenticeship in Brooklyn I learned in Brooklyn and out of respect for my mentor left Brooklyn immediately oh okay kind of common yeah I haven't tattooed in over 31 years in Brooklyn haven't done a single tattoo in over 31 years in Brooklyn was that a mutual agreement that you guys just a respect thing just a respect that was a time when tattooers respected each other you didn't dare open up on someone you know even someone you didn't know it didn't matter if you had beef with them you just didn't open on on on another tattoo yeah you know and in the beginning there was you know there was a a group that took care of tattooing before before it went legal a bike club that that handled all in New York City tattooing and if you did have a problem they'd come and they'd shut you down you know I had them show up when I was a kid tattooing out of an apartment out of a friend's apartment and they showed up and they were like well you first off they were not expecting to run into a kid they were expecting to beat the out of some older dude you know and they were like well who's doing the tattoos and I was like well I am and they're like who's doing the

tattoos I was like no no no it's me yeah and they were like you were supposed to take your like find a mentor find somebody who can vouch for you and that's when I found Elgato and and no he started helping me out and we telling me every day I'm not going to teach you I'd only teach my kids you know and then like two years later when I'm putting out killer work he was like taught him everything he knows oh so is he still around or yeah he he actually just moved to Florida he was in the same location in Brooklyn the same apartment he was tattooing out of until two or three December December he left Brooklyn but he was that working out of that same apartment on 81st Street and 18th Avenue since 81 82 yeah long time to work out of a little corner of your kitchen yeah that's wild and just put out some of the most beautiful beautiful work imaginable you know killer killer traditional stuff damn so like around the time like when did you start meeting like bow Stan and bow Stan was early on in Bow Stan I met him the first time 94 94 or '95 and I had already put him up on a pedestal you know I had already heard all the stories about Stan and him Tattooing in the bowy and shadam square and the 40s and 50s yeah so I had already put him up on a pedestal and was expecting this this hard exterior dude and that's not what I got I got the sweetest guy you ever want to meet who became my biggest fan overnight you know and I remember him calling my house one time and it was like if you're

a guitarist then Jimmy Hendricks calls your house like it was like really is this really stand like you know and he was just my biggest fan you know dude would would tell everyone would just sing my Praises my whole career you know I remember one time going to a convention and I was entering that Mickey Mouse back piece into the convention and he sees me and he goes are you entering a piece into this show because I'll make sure you do well but I got to warn you there's already a winner somebody did this Mickey Mouse whole back piece and I I was like that's me like oh you won oh it's funny cuz I we digging through your Instagram yesterday I saw that and I that piece specifically still stands out to me this day like I remember it was one thing that I looked at at your portfolio when you came to look for a job I was like oh like it was just so simple and fun I mean it was my favorite tattoo I can't look at it without SM size was so next level I can't look it without smiling I'm still good that was done in '96 I've never seen a Mickey tattoo that big before no and you never will he's a huge man yeah you're so used to seeing that tattoo done this right right and that was the point was we we'd always joke about it when a small tattoo would come in we'd be like it's a little Mickey Mouse tattoo so I was like you know what I want to do the biggest Mickey Mouse tattoo possible so like I said to the floor guy I was like yo try and talk someone into a Mickey M I knew it was going to

take months and months for him to find somebody but I was like you know try talk someone into a Mickey Mouse tattoo like two hours later he's like you know that dude Dill that hangs out across the street at the beer distributor he's down to do a Mickey Mouse back piece and I was like well I thought it was going to be a normal size that dude's a monstrous human but I still see him pretty I saw him last year the tattoo still looks amazing so solid yeah that's my favorite tattoo I can't look at that without smiling yeah I love that tattoo yeah I want to see that in the wild just on the beach yeah from a mile away yeah yeah totally yeah you can see it from the sky yeah I'll check Google Earth next time when he's at the beach brilliant so you got to build up a good relationship with uh moscowitz and like so you you kind of mentioned you got to meet him as the kind guy but he has some like on him he was a hard ass braw I mean he was he was one of the Bowery Boys you know he was pres the it's so fun to like meet somebody and then you hear all these stories all these crazy stories about and but he was a tough mother up until the day he died you tattooed all the way until the day he died too or you you tattooed we had a friend uh Baja bill that built machines and him and his wife used to do conventions with Stanley Stanley would go out and work at their place in ball ber main during the Summers CU he like the fish that was his his thing so he'd go out the ball Harbor and fish in his

free time and tattoo at the shop all day but they were working a convention together and she had gotten into the elevator alone they were cleaning out the booth so they were coming up you know just bringing stuff up handful at a time she in the elevator two guys got in and held her at knife point when the doors open to the elevator she screamed and she said literally Stanley was there with a knife in his hand in no time she said he knocked the one guy out and had the other guy up against the wall with a knife to his throat Stanley was like 78 and she was like I've never seen somebody work that quickly she was like the look of fear on those guys faces and she was like they weren't small men you know they didn't know he was just a braw brawled his whole life you know and he used implements of torture you always talk about hitting people with hammers and yeah I was Hammer thing cuz he tattooed me and I've got the the fish with the hammer really I never got the logo off of him I never got the logo from him I got a bunch of cool tattoos from him but I never got the logo from him think me and Bob Tyrell are Blood Brothers cuz we we did those right next to each like I jumped in right after that and need to change the needle yeah I watched the uh you know the old you know the first time I watched him tattooed now mind you like I said this was 94 995 so I mean we were already in full swing with cleanliness and tattooing so to see somebody tattooing with no gloves was a trip for

me yeah you know and it wasn't just the fact that he tattooed with no gloves it was the fact that at the end of the tattoo I was studying his hands and being like how is there no blood or ink on your hands okay he'd wrapped the fing he did the old school wrap around the pinky so that was his dabbing hand you know but no blood no ink the only Trace was his thumb which he had the acetate stencils he was still using acetate stencils so he put the chalk all on with his thumb so his thumb was permanently black yeah but it blew my mind that I put on a pair of gloves I do a tattoo I'm coverting Within seconds and this guy did a whole tattoo on me and there's literally not a trace on his hands you know and that was something that I'm sure you had to learn tattooing with no gloves yeah cleaner like not overfilling your yeah but I remember the first few times Civ had taken him on the road to a bunch of conventions and I remember Stanley being like yo I got to wear gloves at these things and it's like how's that going and he was like it's terrible he was like I my hands don't feel right I can't I don't know I I I can't feel my machine correctly and it was like yeah I bet that would be you've been tattooing like this for 40 years 50 years at this point yeah you're about as in tune as it gets there's nothing in between your experience no so yeah that was that was it for him was and and and and it was funny how when he tattooed me with gloves on his gloves were spotless you know because

he was so used to tattooing without gloves and not getting anything on his hands that even his gloves was spotless when he tattoo you know he was an incredible incredible person I count April 11th 2020 as the death of tattooing because when we lost him we lost a huge part we lost all connection to the old school the guys who knew the guys who invented all of this yeah I mean he was friends with Charlie Wagner Ace harand Bob Wicks Bill Jonesy you know he was friends with all of them and that was the last connection that we had to that that whole era of tattooing yeah so losing Stanley was a big was a rough one for me if I had to put a death date on tattooing it would be April 11th 2020 because of that I love it that's one thing I love about like you I just love your your passion about the history and everything too but I love how you'll dig into other people's history too like you you broke down for me the uh my personal L absolutely like I don't know how tra y need to drive back to the pike that's big that's big yeah so you learned from Dave log Dave log and Dave log learned from Hing hinge Rob swingle I don't know if he's still I feel like Rob swingle passed away recently he was a a Pennsylvania guy originally I thought he got killed no know he I'm sure he got shot in many garages but he was another talking about huge men that dude was like a mountain yeah I never actually got to meet him I saw saw one picture and then heard a lot of St a big scary gangster type Vegas dude

yeah uh spent most of his time in Vegas but originally from Pennsylvania from small town in Pennsylvania yeah okay so then then that goes back you said went back to the pike yeah so he learned from my buddy Jim Hodgins Jim Hodgins was a Pennsylvania tattoo matter of fact Jim's in the hospital I got to give him a ring tonight Jim Hodgins learned from a guy named Fat Mike Tandy Fat Mike Tandy learned on the Pike oh so that's that's your lineage there so that goes right back to if he learned on the Pike that that that completes your connection to uh that Chestnut Street Tattoo Shop um that Carrie bber owns now I got my name on the wall in there that me too I I was so psyched about that yeah she kept the original name on that or whatever it's now Twilight fantasy but it was originally called well it was Bert Grim Shop I think it was just called Grim tattoo oh okay I think dang I want to like sit down with you one day and actually look at the pictures too and like really go through that for me personally but yeah but you can trace yours back for right back to the beginning right back to charie Wagner and Samuel O'Reilly so cool I and I don't feel like I hear Too Many people talk about their lineage ever as T Well because most people you know I mean these days it's you know a two-month apprenticeship yeah you're learning nothing you know how many times a day I'm going through Instagram and I find people tattooing over moles like what did you learn in two months like you didn't

learn the like there's rules there and there's rules for a reason you're tattooing over pre precancerous skin I'll see a tattoo where like 15 lines are over moles and it's like you could have Twisted that image an eighth of an inch yeah right yeah and missed every one of those moles so so you got to wonder do they just not give a or were they never taught that you don't t had two over precancerous skin sh I mean I've accidentally hit one before and you see what happens exp I remember when I very first started I was working on this big piece on this guy's back and it was just like a real light skinn Mo I don't know it just I for thought you were going to be good yeah I didn't see it I just ripped right on through it and then it was his back through that like 3 hour tattoo was just a stream of blood all the way to his ass crack coping it with ointment yeah I'm over there with my elbow or you know looking around that's what every other T wants to stop into Booth to talking you they know exactly what the he did you know oh good times good times I don't know why that reminds me of so many up stories of just being in that position where a mentor or somebody around you or your co-workers are standing over you and just you know it's going right now and you're stressing why are you here now out of here you haven't stopped in my booth in 3 weeks feel like you're doing you're doing this on purpose that but that gave you that grit though too is like when you're stressed out of your mind

you just had to keep that straight face and get through that tattoo customer your client didn't oh yeah he's a bleeder yeah yeah you blame it on them or some we drinking last night stressed how many and do you got any fun stories had fun stories about just up a tattoo like yo I totally misspelled a back to a shoulder toh shoulder lettering oh my God it said like big ass block letters yes okay like uh Old English it said remembering never remembering never cuz it was one of those things where I mean this was before I not that I use an iPad now but I had to do it on like a perfect tilt so to get it to fit I redrew it like 15 times at at one point and it was just the outline cuz it was shoulder to shoulder you know yeah and dude calls me up and goes hey man I think you may have misspelled this on my back he was like but I have an idea on how we can remedy it and I was like this guy this has got to be a joke like this guy is way too nice about he became one of my best friends he was actually was actually a best man in one of my weddings no joke dead dead ass uh and I was like how are we going to fix this and he was like well if we put across to balance it off on this side and and I forget how we fixed it on this side but we covered it up and I have photos of it I got a bunch of photos of it we turned it into a full back piece yeah of course a good ass deal too like if you look at it like even to this day like looking at the photos of it I'm like wow I really covered that well

now mind you he didn't pay for that whole backie yeah dude nothing motivates you more than that moment of life but it was the fact that he was so cool about it as I'm losing my mind going oh my God what do you mean yeah and like he was like no dude I got it figured out like this is what we need to do to fix it and it was like why are you so cool about this you should be freaking out on me oh man my praying hands with six fingers was a good l the biggest inting dude ever too oh really yeah he was same though he was incredibly cool about it but I was I was doing those like I oh I do these dotted lines right that's where you shade off of well you know stencil got a little messy and I just hard lined one one of my reference lines where start fing yeah it's better than missing a finger the worst thing is he came in right while I was sitting there in a empty quiet shop with my boss sitting right next to me and I was a skinny ass little kid and he was a big old Samoan dude and so of course I gave always works I fixed that for him obviously for free and then I also I was like bro anything you want he goes he goes okay you know and then they just jump right in and get tattooed by you again why not yeah why not but damn there is there's cting the fingers yeah there's no motivation like the attempt to not get your ass beat by a your boss or your new client but yeah I get did this Savage giant black and gr pitbull on his back with the biting through chains and all this three sessions

of work and I was just like oh happy to do the best to do it yeah I didn't tell that story for like the next years oh yeah no doubt no doubt has some man we all got them it's just a matter of admitting it yeah you know we all got them uh so you got some fun relationships with so many other fantastic old school tattooers too like I mean you introduced me to like Phil Eddie ah Eddie's another one what an amazing human being yeah like tell tell me about Eddie cuz like you got to travel I got a great story about Eddie actually before I knew him before I was born probably he had he had moved to California doc dog had a shop in vanise California okay and he wanted to move to a town and the rule at this point was 10 miles away was the rule you didn't open on anyone who was less than 10 mies away from you so he went to Doc dog first and let him know hey I'm opening a shop it's 10 mies away doc dog was like okay you do you the day that he opened doc dog shows up on his motorcycle and said Eddie I just clocked it you're n miles away from me and Eddie reached into his pocket pulled out the keys handed them to Doc dog and said it's your shop now and that's the way things were done he invested all this money into building this shop out had it all planned that he was moving to this part of California from the east coast and just like that handed him the keys turned around and went back to Philadelphia oh he didn't even like re no re that was it okay and that was the respect that

tattooers used to have for each other now at this point they didn't know each other from Adam yeah you know they ended up becoming very good friends because of that situation but that's the way things were done now if you opened on Eddie he put a cinder block tree window yeah right you know he was telling me some stories about how many shops he's opened up over the years and was like an an absurd amount of shops right yeah and then the crazy part is when he retired all of the people who worked for him were under the impression they were losing their jobs they didn't know what was going to happen he's retired he's going to close up all the shops he called a meeting where all of his employees showed up and he said everyone who's been working for me for 40 years on want stand up half the room stood up 40 years or more and he said you guys all own the shops he said you guys got to pay for the lawyer bills but you guys all own shops like we're going to figure it out some of you are going to have to double up you know some of you it's going to be three owners but you guys all own these shops now damn and I talked to a couple of them that were like yo I walked into that meeting thinking it was I guess I got to find a new job and then I left owning a business damn you know but that's that's proof of what a great owner he was that 40 years was half of his employees damn yeah yeah how many shops did he own when you when he did that jeez you know Eric that's another guy you should

interview Dr Eric Eric knows exactly how many he had like he said at one point Eddie sat down and really did the paperwork and figured out how many shops he's owned and it was over 100 yeah like throughout his lifetime it was over a 100 shops remember he had like a well-tuned formula for opening them up you know what it was real simple through clean the flash that was going up if you walked into any of the shops it was basically the same Flash and same places he knew what sold what to put up front you know he he knew how to open a shop and owning the supply business I mean he people forget he was Nationals in the beginning yeah and then he was United after that him he opened Nationals I want to say 73 or 74 I want to say 74 was when he opened Nationals and that's when it was in Long Island New York him and his sister went Partners eventually he walked away she she bought him out and uh in the '90s he opened United tattoo supply which was basically the same type of stuff as as Nationals you know all the machines had their their intended purposes you know they were manufacturing those like all in the states at the time what they I'm pretty sure everything was their catalog and Nationals catalog were almost identical I'm trying to think if he had anything different everything was better everything was a little bit better the only thing that he had an issue with was he went with a different size with tubes I think the tubes were a little bit bigger so all of the machine Mach

wouldn't hold regular sized tubes everything would slip with a regular sized tube you have to buy his tubes for his machines yeah you think that was on purpose uh yeah absolutely absolutely Absol 110% he was a smart do I have any other good Eddie stor I got a bunch of good Eddie stories here's a funny one concerning Eric Eddie used to talk about when he'd retire you wanted to sit on a bench and feed ducks that's what you do when you retire you're an old man you sit on a bench feed ducks so when he found the retirement place that he wanted to move to he was like there's a pond Right Out My Back Door he was like this is it I will spend my retirement feeding ducks at the pond so Eric goes to visi him he had been there a couple of months at this point Eric goes to visit him and Eddie always always referred to Eric as his son so Eric says he gets out of the cab in this uh this this uh retirement community and these two old ladies come running up to him and they're like are you uh Eddie funk's son and he's like yeah yeah yeah and they were like we want to talk to you there's signs all around the pond and we've been explaining to him please do not feed the Ducks but he just continues to feed the Ducks so Eric goes listen I'll talk to him but I can't promise anything yeah so with this he goes in he goes as he opens the door there's a pallet of duck food at his front door like literally a pallet of duck food at the front door so he says Eddie the he was like a what am I I'm an old

man I have beat Ducks it is what it is he says next morning like 7:00 in the morning he hears the and he hears Eddie Shuffle over to the door and he hears hello ladies and he goes it starts Mr Funk we've asked you numerous times can you please stop feeding the Ducks they're on a very special diet they can't be fed now mind you they're they're standing at the door with the skid of duck food right and he goes oh no I'm not feeding the Ducks and he goes there's like this silence he goes and I know they're looking at the bags of duck food as he's saying this he goes I'm feeding the elephants the problem is these Ducks get here before the elephants all the time and eat all the food he goes total silence and they just walk away dude I'm feeding the elephant he he was a ladies man too oh oh my goodness oh my goodness I got some fun he was a trip yeah he he you the time you brought him into our shop he sat there I was all excited to show him around the shop I'm like hey Eddie you want to you want to go a tour or anything and my sister was working the front counter there and he goes no talking to her like okay right on man and that time I was getting that tattoo by Stan in Vegas at the biggest convent you know Mario convention uh I was sitting there my the girl I was with at the time he liked blondes apparently but he I was sitting there trying I was getting a tattoo standing on one leg with my other leg like on the chair and just getting all sorts of and it it didn't matter it

didn't matter the age he knew how to talk to women of all ages I have pictures of my of three of all three of my daughters with with him as an as infants laughing hysterically the first time my daughter Charlotte ever smiled and laughed was interaction with Philadelphia Eddie he knew how to talk to women I was I was all excited to talk to him again and he just shut me down at everything I said and then he had my chick laughing her ass off she's over there giggling and like he's like you know just touch I'm like he's great he was amazing and smell amazing always smelt amazing you could smell him from a mile away oh the suits and everything he was a Class Act biggest personality tattooing has ever seen Philadelphia Edie hands down Bar None again another one that we lost and and so important I just came across a picture of Miu my dad him I think Gil the drill and S I don't know speak characters yeah yeah yeah cuz he was like he used to dress real wild back in the day too and I remember seeing him at some shows in Austin Texas in like the early 2000s a trp he was cruising with a little tiny puppy he had a little miniature Chihuahua and just his gold teeth a trip he had like I'm pretty sure he wore a suit like a big ass suit most iconic skull tattoos to this day yeah to this day you can pick his skulls out from a mile away and that just so true cuz I just started I dug through his Instagram the other day and it always it reminded me of like I started when I started drawing my

skulls they were real different and I remember him saying something you do it wrong for long enough it becomes a style and I always remember like every time I would draw my skulls they were real different than every but I liked and that's just how I wanted to fing do and people talk a ton of man and then sure enough like I did it for 10 years or whatever and then I was like doing day every day yep and they translated well the tattoos you kept them simple you kept them raw and simple and that's what will always hold well for tattooing yeah and I think later on I I really just tried to simplify everything I was doing and tattoo like what you would do or teach me to do too at times like real traditional but just with my own illustrative style you know so I just changed the the way the lines flowed and then everything else was just packed a black in leave the skin open so let me ask you a question so your mom was always super artistic yeah what how did she how did she Artic yeah artistic how did she nurture that in you when you were a kid she just always like always exposed me to everything as far as just kind of naturally maybe not even like intentionally she was just always painting she'd be in the kitchen airbrushing when cuz she wanted to learn how to airbrush she was um always we did a lot of like hand painting and when I was a little kid or there was always like a oh do you want I I learned how to make uh paper you know and then I I just thought about that the other day I

was like I want to do this for my kids we were taking a bunch of newspaper ripping it up into a million pieces and then putting it in a blender and making the pulp and then taking the screen off the house the rental house we were in and just smashing it through the screen and putting all my dad's weights and like old piece of wood on it you know and then pulling it out of the in the sun just letting it dry up and then we would try to paint on that just fun little things like that like really teaching you about more than just the surface of anything that we were doing is like and that's kind of where you know I guess we both talk about just diving in man get into it get whatever the you're into learn how to do it and just go deeper and deeper yeah yeah it's fun man it's like I don't know yeah you know a lot of people are blown away when I when they find out that I use these rotary pens these days yeah and it's like you know that's another thing from my lineage was all these guys wanted to try new Delgato was buying when when RH re first became a thing he was buying them up left and right Tony pedo same thing you want to learn about this stuff you want to know what's why yeah you know and like these days I mean the convenience aspect of these pens is one thing but what a difference it is from the coil machines you know a huge difference huge I thought it was going to be like oh you know it's just no yo completely different ball game yeah but just my switch from uh coils to

Rotary was mind-blowing right you know like I got like I think one of my first rotaries are like neot shag buils right right I remember that oh these these this is it you know and then I later on was like that kind of I guess was a stepping stone to try the pen stound machine after I was guilty of making fun of my peers for using them for a little bit and that was my point was I wanted to I wanted a I was like I'm going to use this thing for 3 months so that I can learn more to talk about with us it as ammo to talk you know what this is good this is a good tool that I could keep in my Arsenal you know and it's been a permanent part of my Arsenal ever since it's wild you know did you ever have any like physical issues from tattooing for so long like when I are you kidding me my posture I guess uh anything that stands out other than just slowly like I went through corpal tunnel in the 90s okay yeah that was pretty rough like where I was putting my hands in in ice buckets every night at the end of the day really and then I was dating a nurse for a while who put me on all of these vitamins and it ABS I was about to get the surgery and I'm glad I didn't because at that point the surgery hasn't wasn't as advanced as it is now oh yeah yeah yeah and like I heard a lot of horror stories about you know people who ended up with so much squa tissue that they couldn't do anything with that hand any longer yeah so was going to say or you just end up so as n Phil these days it's nothing

these days it's noninvasive you know it's it's weird how goes like I when I made that switch from coils to Rotary my shoulder like gave me for like two months dude it when you made the switch to coils yeah from coils to to Rotary huh I don't know if that was just my own I find more hand now remember I've I've always used smaller grips I've always like that's the one problem that I'm having an issue with with the pens is the fact that that's it's you're you're stuck with that one thick ass grip and like for fine line stuff I prefer a a pencil grip you know the th grip on your hand though see but I find the opposite I find the opposite gangster bump or no I I had I had the the money bump yeah that's long gone that's long gone yeah that I still got the the pin and uh burning hole in my finger naked needles you know like soldering all the way up and you're like it's melting my skin and that's another thing that's another part that nobody even realizes anymore was the flux intake oh my God you can taste it you taste it right now that's salty yeah yeah burning your nose and how you'd have perfect needles all the time because the ones that weren't perfect you threw the away yeah you knew exactly you inspected them every single yes you knew you knew you knew that your needles were going to be made exactly the way you wanted because you were making them yourself you know and it and these days you're you're kind of at the mercy you know and that's what I like about your stuff is

the fact that you you got the loose and the tight like nobody does that like how many times I'll deal with another supplier and it's like Ah that's way too tight for me and I'm in a jam because now I ain't got and I was hoping you up and I'm sitting there going how the am I going to tattoo with these tight ass needles don't I'm going to give you some samples of our Hollow liners today too oh right on right that's a challenge the whole actual switch from needle on bar to cartridge was still is like it's just takes a lot of experimentation to find your your right fit like there's I'm using groupings now that I didn't even know existed I was using the very limited groupings of needle on bar then you jump to like I thought a loose nine was like

the biggest thing you ever had now I'm like using tide 11s and they're like typ fives on needle on bar but they also provide this like kind of different touchability yeah fun and you I can still kind of taper in all my line work like my whole career I've never been able to like connect from point A to point B it's like taper in taper out and I'll connect that with shading I don't know that's just my weird little style it's come a long way a long long way it's G you so you're also a collector like I love like you I'm like I want to jump all over the place that rotary thing that you posted that Stan mosit made that's real that's real it looked I was like did you make this being a bullshitter what and he invented that in like the late 60s early' 7s so people talk about you know all the first batter that was the first battery powered rotary machine dude I want one of those I'm can't imagine there's there you could still find them really you could still find them they still pop up that one that I posted last year I had literally just got my hands on earlier than that and even the cartridges it's got cartridges on it it's so wild so it's like you know we look at this as like a new thing and it's like Stan had this idea in the late 60s early' 70s so he was just cutting the whole bar off essentially but where the needles mounted weird yeah they they would actually they fit into the the like the cartridge is actually permanently on the machine and you'd Slide the needle grouping

into there and then there was a screw that would tighten the the needle grouping down so basically the plunger is what you were connecting your needle bar to your needle to yeah yeah um I I could bring it by one day and take a look at it it's interesting as but it's just the point that he had this idea back then again this is why he's the most important tatto of our time that's cool he had these ideas a long time ago and tried them out you know for everybody that's interested in like learning more about them or I don't know where are some links or like where is there books or documentaries unfortunately he's one of the ones that there's not too much out there about you know Phil Philly Philadelphia Eddie he has a real good documentary that's just about him right oh well it was supposed to come out it never came out but there is how did I watch it uh probably through Eric yeah cuz I remember really enjoying it and I feel like I got a copy of it at one point in time hopefully it's still in my DVD collection cuz are you sure you thinking of that not the S of Jerry documentary I think I might be thinking of the S of Jerry cuz I've never seen the the Eddie one but I do know that it was in the works for a while but we got the books we got seven volumes because he had a big part in the seeven in the Sailor Jerry thing yes yeah he was in the they J that though yeah yeah cuz we used to play that in the shy smoku great documentary great documentary I should Replay that we used to

just kind of play it on a loop like in the lobby for the customers yeah that was a really good documentary yeah the eddie1 never came out but we like I said we have the seven volumes of books that you can still find pretty easily yeah um Stanley unfortunately no we're going to lose we're going to lose his stories and that's another thing that bothers me like I said like there younger generation don't care to even hear the stories let alone pass them along you know so it are his stor going to end with my generation I hope not you know I talked to enough young tattooers that I hope they're going to continue these stories on and tell these amazing stories about about him because right now there's nothing about him I'd like to sit down with you

and just do this more and Doc that because if anything that can be a way for it to carry on you know and just out of passion and interest it's fun as and like you know who cares if anybody I at least it's there and hopefully they'll come full people interested I got my fingers crossed Hardy Mark books is reproducing everything now so that's a huge part because there's a lot of people that we need to know about in those books those tattoo Time Books I'm sure he's going to redo those I know he redid just recently they were promoting there's a handful of people promoting the tattoo Dragon Tattoo book is that the one that he read yeah yeah just just recently yeah yeah so that's coming out and hopefully he just continues to reproduce all of those books because those books were important I remember trying to track down that Dragon book The New York City Public Library had like five copies what and I went all over trying to get it of course nobody had it it had been taken out there never brought back but I tried tracking that book down for a minute I remember going all the way out to the Staten Island library and going out to the queen library trying to find that book there and they were like no it was borrowed once and never brought back dude damn huh yeah yeah so then like and Eric didn't he I I thought he was going to write more books about Stan not he was going to do Stan he was going to do Rambo he was going to do Gil Monty and then it just he did spent so much time working

on the Eddie thing and it took so much of his time to promote it and everything yeah and the books you know I mean it's hard to sell books yeah you know and like the first couple first two three um volumes flew off the shelves but then when you're coming out every year with a new book yeah people don't really keep up as much and then when there's seven volumes people are like well I'd have to buy all seven volumes yeah I think I have all seven I think yeah I have all seven and I have all seven audio and that is amazing that's funny amazing to hear his he just had the greatest voice he narrated the whole entire book the whole thing whole thing we need to get Eric in here yeah yeah so does he still have the books I want to say he sold the rights recently oh no yeah no he didn't sell the rights he sold the last of his stock recently oh okay that's a whole different book game yeah yeah he still has the the rights but I'm pretty sure he's done like I've said it numerous times like yo in 10 years you're going to put it out as like one big book and he's like I don't know I don't know if I want to and it's like you need to make sure that his his story keeps going yeah I'm just so yeah I if I can help in any way that would be really cool too cuz I I got to be there I got to go do shows with Eric and him we traveled and S next together I got to have lunch with him and Lyall Tuttle and and Eddie I I can't remember Stan was there I don't think he was at that show it was like a

Vancouver Washington show and we sat on the river in this little restaurant and I didn't say a word you know I was just like so enamored and just sit there and listen to Lyall tell all these crazy stories about smuggling cocaine and all sorts of wild and another Ladies Man like the dude's those dudes just you know I learned early on with Lyle i' bring everything that I had Lyall Tuttle related the conventions knowing that eventually he was going to find his way to my hotel room and smoke all my weed okay and as long as there was still weed to smoke he'd stick around and just do whatever you asked okay so I'd show up with like 40 different items and be like can you sign these for me and as long as I had weed for him to smoke he would was more than happy as soon as the weed ran out he was like well I got to go one time I got a good story about him one time I ran into him at a Lobby of a a convention in California and he goes to me Philly did you hear I I quit the nose candy now mind you he was like 80 at this point yeah and I was like did you how long has it been ly he goes it's been about 20 minutes but my guy should be here any minute God damn character yeah character yeah there's not enough characters any longer there's not it's wild it's definitely a lot more mellow which has its you know pros and cons but damn so yeah but so back to you collecting like you've got like a beautiful collection of I used I used to have a great machine collection I got rid of a bulk of the

machines my flash I sold off most on my flash what do I I got I got a great power unit collection okay I saw that the other day too on instagam okay I have a great power unit collection I still held on to a bunch of stuff I bought a Jonesy off of at one point I had 17 Jones's in my collection original Jonesy I got one these days and that's the one that I got off of Stanley that they told me um it was built by Jonesy would sell packages as well you could buy you could buy the machines already built or you can buy like you know it sell you a spool of wire and all that so Al Neville would buy them as in that state and build them himself throughout the the winter this way come summertime he didn't even have to tune a machine it would go out of tuny Thro it in the garbage cuz they were that cheap at this point w so he said one morning he woke up to his mother this is Stanley Stanley and and Walter said they woke up to their mother screaming at their father because Al Neville who was staying with them had used all the contact paper out of her cabinets in the kitchen and wrapped the coils with them so when he sold me the machine he was like this is the like him and his brother looked at each other other and chuckled and they were like this is the last one with Mom's contact paper what and it was like what so yeah that that so I'll never get rid of that machine that one's probably going to the Grave with me yeah that's an early 40s Jonesy so you sold off the rest of the stuff to just

like other collector yeah yeah you know as times got harder I'd let go here and there one of my uh dude Eddie that that learned from me years ago in Jersey he he was smart enough to buy up a lot of a lot of stuff off of me he's got all my flash collect a lot of my original flash too he picked up off of me see yeah I I don't I have a handful of original stuff of yours but I would like to get more yeah I got boxes of it where's like big booty girl collection yeah oh yeah yeah yeah the plump rumps yeah that was a great show dude you know I hope that my kids want it but I'm afraid to think of what happens to it after I'm God yeah you know is it going to be place mats yeah huh dang well so you were you're also an inventor you you invented a uh a

dual grip tatto machine what was that tattoo just back to some of your brilliant idea though right Am I Wrong Am I Wrong we in all reality we use it one hand it was good so so you're tattooing on the road now are you were you going to tattoo in Vegas or no no I'm done with Vegas okay so you just come here and hang out with all the saturation has killed me I'm here strictly to spend time with the kids yeah yeah and you're out of scen shop yeah which is another whole another character we didn't even bring up like inventor of I me he was definitely the beginning of new school tattooing nobody was calligraphy in lines before richy scene you know he brought that graffiti art element to tattooing when nobody else was and gave so many people ideas

no you know when you were a graffiti artist in the' 60s 7s and 80s that was it that's as far as you were going to go was scrolling your name on trains yeah and then in the late 80s early 90s when Richie became a household name and tattoo and every graffiti artist you'd run into it be like oh oh there's a there's something else I can do yeah and in by the end of the 90s the bulk of these new school kids came from graffiti backgrounds because Richie made it okay for them to do that you know wild and just rewrote tattooing you know the most unorthodox approach to tattooing I had ever seen yeah like what was it about it you know obviously like his Ting up your lines to begin with and for and for so many artists that sets because you'd see them pull that fresh line and you like hope you're going to cover that but not with him everything was crisp and clean so he was like why are you calligraphy those lines you know but even like I remember the first time he tattooed me he was doing a hard on my stomach and he used instead of going black and then doing your red over it he was mixing the red and the black and the cap to get this brick red and it was like i' had never seen that before yeah you know I'd never seen a tattoo or approach it and and mix like that you know and and it was like hm so you're not going to use black shading you're going to use this red shading instead and then put the other red on I had never seen that before that was unheard of for me and you know everything

every time I'd watch him tattoo i' I'd find new and it was like oh you're not supposed to do that but why is it working so well as an entrepreneur too and him isn't is his spirit is strong like the dude the funny part is he's that guy that gets to the Pinnacle of something and then goes well now I'm done yeah you know I've seen him do it with a million things his motorcycle collection I going to bring up motorcycle collection was the most amazing motorcycle collection I've ever seen in my life yeah and like just one day he was just like okay well I got the greatest motorcycle collection in the world so let me get rid of it yeah did he sell all that oh God he's still holding on to a few I know he still got um big twin he's got a few of them I want to say yeah he's got a few of them left but at one point it was like 40 motorcycles and a 100 of them were show quality you know been on the mag been on covers of how many magazines even if you didn't know a damn thing about motorcycles you stare at that collection you're like what the so beautiful but that's the way he is with so much stuff he gets to the he gets it as far as it can go and then he walks away with tattooing yeah he became a household name with tattooing and then was just like ah it I'm done too many people around me that's it that's it how many shops does he have still just the one okay well that's actually owned by his brother now but he still has a huge part in it but at one point he had there was the shop in in

Manhattan there was a shop another part of the Bron I'm going to say there was probably altogether six or seven different scenes over the years okay but that one has always been there he did some wild as far as promoting his the truck yes so I'm actually working on a book right now Bo I'm not working on it yet but right now it's in the infancy stage where I'm just getting a lot of people together because the shop has been there almost 40 years there's been well over 400 tattooers through the shop yeah and I'm try and compile a book with you know just funny stories about the shop you know the history and and I mean it's all the personalities yeah the amount of people that have been through I mean I got pictures of Big Pun in the waiting room

that's crazy you know like the amount of people who have been through that place and the tattooers that were through there you know just in the time that I was there and then 90s I worked with Amy James Darren brass Lucky Bastard you know so many killer tattooers you know yeah interesting shop so I'm I'm going to try and compile that book and have it done in time for the 40th anniversary which will be the 26 will be the 40th anniversary so I got two years to get it done I had like a lot of goals to do something for our 21st anniversary and I just just drop the B I know the feeling I know the feeling I got enough people involved in this already that know it ain't going to go away easy good yeah focus on it keep I've contacted too many people

about it and they're excited so it's not going to be an easy one to to not do with yeah yeah but yeah I mean when I'm there that's it when I'm at the shop I'm living in the shop you know so it's like I could stay focused yeah when I'm home I'm all over the place no I'm all over the place I can't get nothing accomplish I'm trying to learn how to like compartmentalize myself like if I'm here I'm working here if I'm at the shop I'm only working on if I'm at home I'm only being a dad and maybe a husband a little bit of there just trying to do it all is really hard but if you're in one place and that's all that's around I just feel like I have that the thing that gives me the ability to focus yeah no no I have a hard time focusing at all I do I absolutely do well what else you got going on with tattooing like what do what do you kind of honestly I'm I'm working on a new style these days like I don't want to talk about it because it's a completely different name nobody knows that it's me but I'm working in a completely different style of tattooing 30 years 30 years of working in one specific style pushing one specific style I'm good I set out to impress several tattooers when I got into tattooing and I did it at a very young age yeah you know Stanley moscowitz Tony pedo Steve Delgado you know I I set out to those were the people who I wanted to impress Angelo Scot and I did yeah and now I want to do other because I'm so here we are years later and I'm still like okay well I'm good

at traditional yeah 30 years of working in one style pushing one style I've worked in you know I I do a little bit of everything but I'd like to to become known for other right you know I feel like that's the problem with tattoo is is you get pigeon hold and you just kind of stay there until it pushes you out of the business because you're sick and tired of it like we have the ability to change we have the ability to go you know what I'm okay with this I'd like to try this I'd like to work on this I'd like to do that but and that's another thing is like with Instagram you have the opportunity to be more than one person yeah you know what instead of having that portfolio with 10 different styles why not be 10 different tattooers right you got 10 coals in that you know you got 10 irons in that fire yeah so you got a much better opportunity of pulling more customers if you're 10 people as opposed to one dude with a very varied portfolio you focus mainly all your time and energy as far as social media goes just into like Instagram or yeah no I don't mess with any other that's too much this is too much for me Instagram is too much for I put up a real in weeks I'm like what am I going to do yeah how do you go about writing those just ideas pop in your head and yeah uh smoking weed talking that's it yeah yeah one of my friends complaining that's the big what's everyone complaining about this weekend normally I'll be able to get an idea out of that yeah but it's hard it's hard you

know and then I'll have an idea that I'm cultivating for weeks then somebody else puts it up and I'm like I slapped I slept too long the the Instagram God say just redo it do it in your own St yeah it'll pick up I'm having fun with it though I can't complain I'm having fun with it I enjoy this IG when something gets viral like that I I get so excited I get so excited you stoned by yourself like bumped on it that's it that's it you know I love it I blame myself when goes wrong yeah these days I've learned that when goes right to Pat myself on the back yeah do you know that's really that's a big deal because I I've never given myself credit for anything ever I always just try to keep my head down and just work and I I'm learning to the older I get the more I'm like well I mean I actually did do something here you know and like yeah I don't know you know keep St still stay humble obviously proud of yourself kids are a big part of that kids are a big part of that they help you ground I've learned to like myself being a that it's the best you know it's fun it's hard as a tattoo or two though and like a business owner it's like I mean I don't like to say anything's hard because everything can be hard but it's a challenge you know like I want to work all day long and then but then when I get home I'm like oh work I want to do this forever like we shouldn't be working so much and then I got my my 15-year-old who's like why I think I want a tattoo and I'm like no absolutely not yeah

Nick BS is teaching his kid out tto I know I know dang yeah that's a tough one that's a tough one so we've I don't know man I mean I I want to talk about so much stuff but I I think we're pretty good here right on there's always always round too there to down I want to do a bunch of other fun stuff with you yeah I want to I want to hear more like in depth stories about specific you know people that have influenced you in your life and motivated you through tattooing and oh there's so many of them yeah there's so many I like that so I've been blessed to have you in my life and you got to work I feel the same way I feel the same way I love your family yeah it's good I appreciate it dude thanks so much for coming down and doing this thank you for having me what uh how does everybody reach you Instagram Instagram Phil luck tat Phil luck tat F Luck tattoo watch some stupid yeah I can't promise you going to see anything good but you'll laugh well thanks for doing all those and thanks for doing this me right on man I appreciate you brother love you too all right guys thank you so much for tuning in this is it man be sure to check out filuck and all the fun that he's doing so thank you guys we appreciate it have a good day peace