Original subtitles

First of all, my mom.

There was a point where she was in the hospital

for, like, two weeks, and we really thought that was it.

She has this thing where her white blood cells go down

and her blood thins out into water.

You know, just praying every day, every day, every day.

You know, it might seem that God is choking you,

but it's just a test of faith.

By having my tattoo on the back,

it just feels that I have my mom with me.

I'm always gonna carry her with me.

When I pray at night, I feel like she's there with me,

praying with me,

and it's just this bond that I have with my mom,

and it's just faith.

When I was getting tattooed, I mean, I could just think,

Wow, this ain't even half of what my mom goes through every day.

It's just I feel her closer to me.

I know God and the Virgin Mary has my back and my mom, so...

It's just...

You know, I mean, I don't want to be like anybody else.

You know, I definitely want to have my own thing,

and we're all created unique, you know what I mean?

There's something different about each and every one of us,

and it's just a matter of getting to know who you are.

You know, I want to really tell a story on my skin,

so when people see it, they can more or less read

instead of having a saying,

instead of putting writing,

I wanted to put my thoughts, my story into it

but in images.

It was an angel. It was Cupid, and it just.

For me, it really symbolized freedom and the wings of an angel.

Being able to rise above the trials and tribulations

that you go through in life.

When somebody asks me, "Which one is your favorite tattoo?",

that's the equivalent of asking somebody like,

Which one of your children is your favorite?

You can't pick just one.

Tattoos were once seen as a sign of rebellion,

a middle finger salute to the rest of the world.

Outlaw bikers got tattoos.

Sailors in Singapore got tattoos.

Lifers in the joint got tattoos.

But now...

What do you think of all the ink that my audience has?

I love it! It's so good.

It's estimated 15% of Americans have tattoos

and that number rises to 40% in the age group 26 to 40.

Tattoos used to be a sign of rebellion.

Now it's just a sign you've been to the mall.

Everyplace you go, everywhere you look,

it seems like someone's wearing ink.

Why do you like tattoos?

I think everybody's got a way of expressing their feelings,

and mine is for my tattoos.

So what happened?

How did tattoo go from something that was put on you

to an expression that comes from within you?

- Hey. - What's up, Freddy?

How are you doing?

This is actually a design that Danielle came up with.

Now, this tattoo started out as a little cover up.

My daughter had said she had a terrible tattoo on her hip

that she didn't like, so she'd cover it up.

Sure, go ahead.

So I sent her to Freddy.

Just a generation ago, it was unthinkable

for a father to take his daughter into a tattoo parlor.

It was even more unusual for him to stick around

and watch her get one.

For years, tattoos have had an image problem.

In fact, not so very long ago, in many parts of the world,

tattooing wasn't just frowned upon, it was illegal.

Even though a number of brave service men

came home from World War II wearing fresh ink,

tattooers and their clients were considered by most others

to be on the fringe of society.

In those days, if you opened a shop,

you opened a shop in Skid Row or you didn't open at all

because nobody would look for you anywhere else.

A lot of times, tattooers back in that period

would actually adopt a needle name

to protect their family from embarrassment.

By the 1960s, many people got their tattoos in secret

behind closed doors.

If you were caught tattooing during the period of time

that it was illegal in New York City,

there was a $500 fine, a misdemeanor charge,

and then they would confiscate all of your tattoo equipment.

Well, when I started in Massachusetts,

of course it was illegal.

So I tattooed probably the first year or so

only out of this motorcycle club clubhouse,

and every time I saw a really amazing tattoo,

it seemed to be from the Pike.

I'd ask guys, "Where'd you get that?"

And they'd be like, "Oh, California."

I'm like, "Where?", and they'd say, "Long Beach, at the Pike."

The Pike goes back to the 1800s.

It was initially a fishing pier that they built off Long Beach.

People started building rides,

then concessions came in, restaurants came in.

At one time there was a dozen tattoo shops.

There were few that rivaled it

for concentration of tattooers in one place.

In those days,

you're talking about 300 shops in the whole United States.

So there wasn't that many choices.

Everybody knew the Pike was where to go get a tattoo.

There was all those military bases, training bases.

The 7th fleet was there in Los Angeles and San Pedro, so it was all.

You know, there was tons of military in Southern California,

so of course they were drawn to this amusement area.

There were not a lot of civilians getting tattooed.

It was military pay-day two weekends a month.

72 hours of just hardcore sailors, Marines, and military.

Sometimes they would work 24 hours, they would work around the clock.

Sometimes if the shop had enough staff,

they would actually be open for three days straight,

the whole weekend.

They wouldn't even close.

We were doing strictly what was on the wall,

and it was pretty eclectic.

You know, your basic roses, eagles, ribbons.

We did a lot of Marine Corps stuff in the '60s.

A lot of Marine bulldogs, and eagle, globe, and anchors.

We put on good tattoos, but we put them on fast

because you were doing Virgin Marys this big for $15.

You know, you couldn't spend two hours on it like you do today.

So we put them on in 20 minutes.

Most tattoos offered at The Pike

were in the style now referred to as traditional.

They were cartoon-like designs displayed on sheets called flash.

With limited choices and only four colors,

tattoo was a one-way street.

You went into a tattoo shop, you picked a design off the wall,

and you had it tattooed on you.

I mean, maybe you could change the color

if the tattooer wasn't too ornery.

We had so much business from just what was coming in off the door

that we didn't need to specialize or do custom work.

We used to tell people, "If it ain't on the wall, we don't have it."

Even with all that business,

Pike tattooers weren't likely to hire or train new talent.

For one thing, a lot of the older tattooers

wouldn't give up any of the cool secrets.

The guys would leave.

They wouldn't know how to make needles,

they wouldn't know how to make ink.

The guys they worked for would supply them with this stuff

because they didn't want them to leave.

I mean, back then you'd ask somebody to work on your machine.

If they would even do it,

if they weren't going to take it and fuck it up more,

if they were actually going to do something good to it,

there's a good chance they'd turn around

and, you know, kind of hide it

and do what they needed to do and hand it back to you.

And it was that mentality. "Why won't you show me?"

Cause if I show you,

then you're going to go do something on your own.

Most artists didn't talk with each other in those days.

You didn't go visit the other guy's shops.

If you opened a shop up within 20 miles of where they were,

man, they'd break your windows out or superglue your locks.

But in the 1970s, there was a place where tattoos were accepted

and tattoo artists seemed to flourish.

It was a place where the secrets of tattoo were openly shared

and the boundaries of what you could do with a needle and ink

were being tested day after day.

That place was prison,

and the inmates who were pushing the art?

They were mostly Mexican-Americans.

By the mid 20th Century,

there were hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans

living and working in the American Southwest.

As they came to the cities

and they established different barrios,

some in rural areas, some in urban areas,

some in suburban areas, different locations...

They were close to jobs in certain occupations,

and that's where you find Mexican barrios rising.

Some of those people in Los Angeles had ancestors in the Southwest

for hundreds of years when it was part of Mexico,

Yet they were treated as second-class citizens.

There was a segment of the population, 10-15%,

that lost out somehow and got lost in the shuffle,

fell between the cracks,

and that segment of youth within those groups,

they began to hang out in the streets more regularly,

and on the streets they created their own culture,

which is a syncretic culture,

part of the pachuco thing.

Pachuco culture had its own unique style.

Wide brim hats, suits with broad shoulders,

pleated pants with tight cuffs, zoot suits.

But it was the tattoo that truly bonded many of the men.

The pachuco cross was a symbol of belonging to a group

that others saw as outsiders.

It's almost like your baptizing on the streets

and you have the imprimatur of the tattoo.

And it started off with little crosses here and little dots there

and maybe a little heart with their girlfriend's name.

By the 1970s, pachuco was old school.

Their descendants called themselves "cholo".

As from the Spanish word "solo". Cholo.

That's the play on words.

In other words, you're alone, you're abandoned,

you're marginal, you're solo.

Pobrecito.

But there was a lot more to cholo culture than just attitude.

It was also the way you walked, the way you talked,

the way you dressed, and the way you adorned your car.

The lowrider car and all that goes with slow and smooth.

You know, laid-back,

sort of walking like you're leaning backwards.

It's all part of a new cultural invention and creation.

I grew up around East Los Angeles,

and it was pretty much a norm getting tattooed and seeing tattoos,

and everyone's dads or uncles or somebody in the family

always had tattoos.

People's older brothers or someone would come out of jail

and they'd always have a homemade machine around

and everyone would doodle with it.

Eventually you get good, you know, if you stick with it.

Prison left cholos with plenty of time on their hands.

Guys who had never even thought about art before

now passed the time drawing on letters and handkerchiefs,

but the ones who got the most attention

were the guys who could tattoo.

Well, in '65 and '66 in prison,

Chicanismo was just coming into play.

Cesar Chavez was banding together United Farm Workers,

and it was a lot of brown pride,

and so, people started becoming real ethnically aware.

They started putting tattoos of Mexican flags and Mexican women.

They were locked up, and they would, you know,

draw on paper and envelopes the images of what they were into,

which is, you know, stuff that made them think

of their time in the neighborhood

the Virgin Mary their mother had on the wall,

or, you know, that kind of stuff,

and guys would start doing it in prison and then they'd get out

and they started tattooing in the street a little bit like that

because you couldn't really go into a shop

and, you know, get these things that were sacred to them.

You had tattoos that identified you with a particular barrio.

And then when you went to prison,

the other guys that were part of that barrio would make you get one

to sort of show that you were part of their group, of their collective.

So tattoos began to proliferate.

Tattoos were illegal in prison

so you had to have somebody watch out for the guards.

I did a little Mexican lady with a sombrero.

And we started in Quentin,

and in '65, your little machines hadn't come into play yet.

So Harry "Super Jew" Ross, a guy from this neighborhood,

a friend of mine, he actually did the outline with needle and thread:

E-string of a guitar in a toothbrush

bang, bang, bang bang bang

which is probably the most painful way in the world to get a tattoo.

Little did Danny Trejo know,

but he was witnessing the start of an entirely new style of tattoo.

And one of the pioneers of that style was Freddy Negrete.

My mother was born of Jewish immigrants in Boyle Heights.

My father was a suave Pachuco,

and my mother also joined a gang,

and both my mother and my father ended up in prison.

So, my sister and I, we ended up in a foster home in San Gabriel,

and I would have to say that all that trauma

made me like a troubled youth,

and I was searching for identity.

Was I white? Was I Mexican?

So by the time I was 12,

I found security in joining a Hispanic gang,

and I went from juvenile hall to boys' homes.

It seemed like the only time that I was out,

I was running away from some boys' home.

And I'd go to my neighborhood and I'd be a crazy gangster,

and then I'd get arrested again.

I was in juvenile hall, and they brought this other guy in.

He was an older guy, maybe 15-16.

He had tattoos all over, you know.

And I was like, "Whoa, man!" I was so impressed.

He was really cool with me,

and he started telling me this is how they do it in prison.

That afternoon I got out.

I rigged up that little tattoo needle like he said,

and it wasn't long before I became like the neighborhood tattoo artist.

In prisons, one of the things that separates Chicanos

from other ethnic groups is their sense sharing things.

So that sharing notion, that collective notion

is part of the cultural heritage.

We got the plans from, I remember, Susanville Prison,

on how to make a rotary tattoo machine out of a cassette motor.

In the 1970s, California authorities saw

they could ease the tension from prison overcrowding

by allowing inmates to have cassette players to listen to music.

With a cassette motor, an ordinary pen shaft,

and an E-string from a guitar,

ingenious inmates automated the hand poke tattoo.

The slow speed of the motor allowed the ink to be carried

to the end of the sharpened guitar string.

It was fairly quiet.

It didn't take a lot of power,

so if you put in a good-sized battery behind, it'd last for hours.

To make ink, they'll burn different types of papers.

Bibles, pages out of magazines,

catalogues,

some departmental forms

that the ash, liquefied with water, would get different colors of blacks.

I heard about the fact that if you took the ink

and put it in the window,

it would evaporate and become blacker,

and that if you added a little bit of water or baby oil to the ink,

it would become lighter,

so we were creating black, dark black, grey.

These new tones of black-and-grey ink

gave tattoos a quality of shading and dimension never seen before.

If you were around the Chicano culture at all,

you had seen those images before,

and they were iconic, they were classics.

It was more the expertise that they were rendered with in the skin

that was the most amazing thing about them.

Actually, if it wasn't for the events that took place in youth authority,

I probably would have never become a professional tattoo artist.

I was in Preston School of Industry,

so they had all the trades there,

and I ended up working the camera room in the print shop,

and, you know, one of the homies, he was the foreman.

So he got me in on the print shop thing,

and so then we got a few other homies.

So we got all homies from our lodge.

And the teacher of the print shop,

he let us do all kinds of side projects.

I would draw these tattoo designs, all the Chicano style things

the "Smile Now, Cry Later", the charra, skulls.

You know, crazy tattoo stuff,

but it was mostly revolutionary stuff

girls with gun bullets and things like that.

I would draw those up on paper, a good size, we'd reduce them down,

and then we'd print them on stationary,

and down in the corner, there'd be one of the little tattoo designs.

We printed hundreds of thousands of copies of that stuff.

They'd write their letters home,

everybody would mail them to prisons and other institutions

to where my designs made it all over the place.

Jack Rudy grew up in the 1960s near Los Angeles.

When he was 17,

he turned his father's electric razor into a tattoo machine.

Yeah, I started tattooing by hand when I was 15.

You know, me and my homeboy Manuel,

we decided to tattoo ourselves one fine day.

And so, we're at my mom's house, you know.

Found a good sharp sewing needle,

and, you know, wrapped some thread around it

'cause that's what someone said to do,

and we he put mom on three of his four fingers,

and I did that tarantula.

That's the first tattoo I ever did right there.

Jack did have like kind of a Chicano background.

He was brought up in a Chicano neighborhood.

Ochentas in the airport area,

and that's how he got his nickname "Huero"

because he was a white guy and he was into the lowrider cars.

He was kind of like the non-gangster kind of Hispanic.

We used to call them Continentals.

My Dad used to call me Huero when I was a kid.

I was adopted, but my dad was Mexican,

and so he called me that because I was.

You know, and when I was 18 and went in the Marine Corps,

turned 19 in boot camp and got out with my friend, Terry,

who wanted me to tattoo him when we got out.

And my machine was like shocking me, kind of.

It wasn't working right, so I go, "Hey, let's go down the Pike"

and see if there's anybody good down there."

So we go down there, went into "Long Beach Tattoo Studio,"

where Good-Time Charlie just happened to be working.

We walked over and we seen this like long-haired

biker-looking dude, you know,

real cool-looking and stuff,

was like, "Oh, this guy looks cool, man. Let's hit him up."

Terry hits him up. He's got a design.

Hey, can you do this, and all this?

And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll do that for you, no problem."

And he goes like, "Yeah, but I don't want no color in it, man."

Is that cool?"

And he goes, "Yeah I like doin' 'em without any color."

So that blew our minds right there 'cause in those days, that was rare.

Nobody really wanted a tattoo without color.

I really always liked tattoos that were just black and skin

and whatever it took in between there in the form of shading.

Pretty shading to me made all the difference in the world.

Charlie was a hand poke tattooer.

He grew up in Kansas in a strictly religious family.

His father was a preacher

who came from a long line of Pentecostal ministers.

He wasn't too pleased when he found out his youngest son

was being tattooed by Charlie.

I was warned by him not to tattoo my younger brother again,

which I did repeatedly.

And he discovered it at some point later on,

and I was gone a lot in those days,

and so, when I did come back home to see the family,

I was met with an uppercut when I walked into the kitchen.

And so, to this day, my jaw still pops.

I slid down the wall, got up, and says, "Well, okay, I'm leaving!"

And he came after me a couple weeks later and said,

Your mom wants you to come home.

And I says, "Well, are we ever going to talk about tattoos again?"

'Cause, " I says, " I don't know how to explain it to you, Dad,

but I'm always gonna dig them, and I always will."

All right, folks, step right up. Step right up here.

When I came to California, I couldn't quite figure out

how to fit into the professional scheme of things, tattoo-wise.

When I realized that most professionals were quite Carney

in their approach to tattooing,

I just kind of was repulsed by it.

Charlie came to me for the first job that he got in tattooing,

professional tattooing,

and I put him with Captain Jim,

and Captain Jim put him down at the shop on the Pike, the 362 Shop.

He told Jim up front, he said, "I'm gonna learn this way"

because he had never used tattoo machines.

His hand poke was as good as anybody's machine work

any day of the week.

You couldn't tell the difference.

He said as soon as he got the information he needed,

he was going to open his own shop.

He was upfront about that.

So, Charlie tattooed my friend, and we hit it off real good.

He was over at the side doodling.

I picked that up, and I thought,

"Well, I'm probably looking at maybe 8 or 10 styles of gang writing,"

a real nice cursive name,

maybe a touch of realism in over here

and some cartooning, blah-blah-blah.

And I thought, "Well, this guy really has something to offer."

And at one point, I remember telling him,

"Hey, you know where I think would be a really great shop?"

A really great location for a shop?

And he's like, "Where?" And I said, "East LA, man.

Like, between the low-riders, and cholos, and people over there,

"man, that'd be a great, great place."

And he just like kind of smiled, you know, and he goes,

"Wow, man, I've been thinking the same thing."

I'm going to open a shop over there one of these days,

and when I do, you know, how'd you like to come work for me?

I said, "If you give me your grandma's number"

or your mama's number,

somebody who will always know where you are,

"and when the time is right, I'll break you in."

And he said, "Yeah?"

And I said, "But if you even ask me once",

'When are we going to get started?' it's off."

Charlie Cartwright, Jack Rudy, and Freddy Negrete

were on three separate paths that would soon collide.

In the 1970s, Whittier Boulevard was Main Street

for Southern California's Chicano culture.

Everyone brought their best.

David Oropeza grew up in Compton,

but on weekend nights you could find him on Whittier Boulevard,

Everything happened at the Boulevard,

and the Boulevard happened at night.

Sunday night was the best night, and you would start early

polishing the car, getting your clothes ready.

I mean, you've gotta impress.

When we came out here, it was almost like a competition.

Everybody wanted to see what you came up with.

Cars would line up.

Sometimes it would take an hour just to cruise the boulevard,

you would move so slow.

You bump your music.

If you wanted trouble, you would find it here at the boulevard.

If you wanted love, you would find it here, too.

It's here.

That was like a dream for me, you know,

to be seeing those cars cruising on Whittier Boulevard

and just seeing all of those crazy candy apple colors

and the guys walking up in between the cars

selling sherm sticks and marijuana smoke.

It was a beautiful thing over there, man.

Everything was here.

I mean, the boulevard, she gave everything to you, you know.

It's what you made it.

You wanted to have a good time, you could have a good time.

In 1974, Charlie Cartwright began cruising Whittier Boulevard as well,

looking for a location to open his first tattoo shop.

His friends thought he was crazy.

There was a lot of skepticism

because they said, "There's no money there."

And no one's tattooed in East Los Angeles

"since World War II."

And I said, "I know it's tattoo heaven right there."

And I looked every day for a year.

But when I found it, I just I knew.

I got shivers up my back. I knew that was the spot.

In the summer of '75,

Charlie made good on his promise to call Jack Rudy,

They started working together,

using an unusual approach with their customers.

I just thought, "I'm just going to do custom stuff, period."

Whatever they want. Who cares?

Whatever they want, just give it to them.

Give them the haircut they want, you know?

So I became the gopher, helper, tattooer, all in one,

and started that summer with him like that,

and, you know, man, it took off.

I remember this guy, Johnny Caranza,

the first guy I ever tattooed, was a friend of mine.

And he goes like, he goes,

Hey, you been doing a little practicing, right?

I go, "Oh, yeah, homes. Charlie's been bringing me some winos to work on."

Which was not true at all.

But it sounded good, and I didn't want Johnny to be too nervous

and go like, "Well, I don't want your first one, man!"

And I think I had the machine probably running a little hard.

And Johnny was talking and moving all over the place,

and man, I'm lucky that thing came out okay at all!

In those days, professional tattoo machines

usually had between three and seven needles.

Tattoo artists called them by the number of needles they had

such as "threes", "fours", and "fives".

But there was a lot pressure to make thinner lines.

It was our customers that kept requesting fine-line, single needle,

you know, like guitar string.

"Hey, can you vatos do, you know, like they do in the Pinta."

The, you know, extra-fine line action?

It was like, "Yeah, man, we're working on it."

So we tried making threes and really making them tight.

And in those days, you know, everybody made their own needles,

and, well, one day we just like, we're looking at a three, and just realized,

"Well, hell, if you just take one of them"

and pull it forward past the other two,

like, say a quarter-an-inch, there you go.

And so the two needles on the bottom, because it was like a triangle,

it helped feed that ink, and it worked like a champ.

So that's how modern single needle was born.

With a faster motor, Charlie and Jack's single needles

produced the quality of a prison tattoo

in a fraction of the time that it would take in the joint.

One of their first customers

turned out to be one of their most memorable.

He went by the name of Poco Loco.

Remember the time we did our first collaborative tattoo?

- Poco was this broad. - Yeah, and he wanted a big.

Roses all the way across his back.

Charlie was on one side, and I was on the other,

and we met in the middle, and Poco, his teeth were chattering.

He was just like, "Man." He couldn't.

Stereophonic tattooing in stereophonic pain.

In 1977, the second ever tattoo convention

was planned for Reno, Nevada.

The first one, held the previous year in Houston,

wasn't well attended.

This time would be a different story.

San Francisco tattoo artist Ed Hardy

was scheduled as the keynote speaker for the Reno event.

Ed grew up near San Diego in Corona Del Mar.

Knowing from a very young age that he wanted to be an artist,

he became obsessed with tattooing when he was 10-years-old,

He began painting fake tattoos on the kids in the neighborhood.

Whenever they could, the boys made trips up to the Pike

to see how the pros did it.

We'd go up on a Greyhound and hang-out all day,

and I'd watch these guys get tattooed.

And Bert Grimm's was the most flashy.

It had the most, you know, tattoo look to it.

The whole Carney kind of a vibe.

Big windows filled with super powerful flash.

The whole thing was mesmerizing.

Ed Hardy graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute

in 1967.

He turned down a teaching fellowship at Yale University

to return to his first love tattoo.

Inspired by Japanese tattoo collectors

who covered themselves with what they called "bodysuits",

Hardy's work pushed the boundaries of color and concept.

He built a reputation by introducing the Japanese style of large tattoos

with coherent Western themes.

Like Charlie Cartwright,

Ed Hardy thought the customer should have more say so

in the design of their tattoo.

I came back from Japan and opened "Realistic Tattoo,"

which was the first appointment-only totally custom tattoo studio

that I know of anywhere.

And my whole premise was, "We have reference stuff,

but you come in with your idea."

That's what my first business card, the punch line on it was,

Wear your dreams, and that was my attitude.

By the time the Reno convention rolled around,

Ed Hardy had established himself

as one of their premier tattoo artists in the world.

We decided to go to this convention.

It was really the first big convention that had been thrown,

and we thought, "Well, we want to go in there and really, you know",

strut our stuff and blow everybody's minds."

We had the ammo to do it.

We had people with, you know, extreme tattoos

that nobody had ever seen

in terms of the workmanship and subject matter and finesse.

They drew some good crowds there.

Back in East LA, Jack Rudy convinced Charlie Cartwright and Poco Loco

to go to Reno just to have a look around.

Chuck Eldridge was part of Ed Hardy's group.

It was a big deal,

and I think it was probably late Saturday or maybe early Sunday,

Charlie Cartwright, Jack Rudy, and two or three of their customers

came onto the convention floor.

And everybody saw them,

and all of a sudden there became this kind of crowd around them,

like, you know, people amazed by this tattooing.

I can remember them walking by,

and they weren't like threatening-looking guys,

but they all, you know, the beards and the whole.

They were just in a different world

than what us sort of art school escapees, you know, and hipsters.

Our street cred was a little different.

And these guys walked through,

and I remembered that I saw Poco Loco from the back,

and he had I think he had the end of the trail,

that classic painting of the Indian on the horse,

you know, with his lance down.

We just didn't know what to make of it.

It was kind of like, "What's going on? This is so crazy!"

You know, and we jumped out of the booth,

introduced ourselves to these guys.

They were all friendly. We were all excited to meet each other.

Well, as those guys approached us, and Ed tells me,

he says, "Well, this is just blowing my mind."

And I says, "What?"

And he says, "The work that's walking around on this fat guy here."

We had built a clever booth,

and we had presented it in a really killer fashion,

but it wasn't new.

Whereas Jack and Charlie's stuff was really new.

And it was like we had to reconfigure,

like, "Okay, let's set"

not change course at that moment like we want to do that work,

but it just made us rethink what we were aware of

that would be interesting and challenging

and beautiful and cool.

It was a major, major kind of sea-change in tattooing.

These guys were doing tattoos

that were the kind of the birth of photo-realism.

We had all seen that work come into our shop

on prisoners, ex-prisoners,

Chicano people that came from LA,

and big Chicano neighborhoods

where there were tattooers doing that.

But we hadn't seen it done in a shop.

Normally, you had to go do time to get a piece of that work.

So that '11 convention was a big pivoting point, I think,

in American tattooing.

And it so impressed Hardy,

and, of course, him being Mr. American Tattooer,

he was just all excited about,

Well, would it be okay to come visit?

And I said, "Well, yeah!"

And the next thing you know, him and Malone and Bob Roberts

came down to East LA and started getting tattooed by us

and wanted to learn that style as well.

And It was a trip because these were heavy, heavy hitters.

For them to be like the first legitimate tattooers

to jump on the single-needle bandwagon

that was history,

but we still didn't realize it

the kind of repercussions it was gonna have.

And I was blown away by it when I first saw how much detail

and just how clean and how nice this work looked.

You know, to us, it was really a whole new tool.

I mean, we just didn't do black-and-grey joint-style

or cholo-style.

You know, I used it for everything.

Bob and I immediately,

you know, learned how to do kind of gang writing from Jack

because I was fascinated with the whole calligraphic aspect.

I always loved writing in tattoos. I loved slogans.

I loved it from the old days,

you know, "Death or Glory", all that stuff,

and these guys were doing, you know, fantastic lettering.

I mean, huge letters with the gang in the giant block letters.

They were just such cool things as art pieces, you know?

So I was always very conscious of all the implications to this thing

above and beyond the tattoo world.

And so it was just me and Charlie six days a week

like 6:00 to midnight, okay?

And we never got out of there at midnight unless it was dead.

I was the kind of guy that would

I would stay there until the last dog died,

and if someone was in there before we locked the door at 1:00 a.m.,

we'd take care of them,

even if was 7:00 a.m. when they got out of there,

and that meant we'd be there, too,

so I spent many nights decorating the homies until the sun came up.

And then all of a sudden, Jack called me, and he said,

Charlie's gonna quit tattooing!

And Jack was just freaked!

He was like, "I don't know what I'm going to do, homes!"

And I was like, "Jesus! Well, okay."

Sometime in '77,

Charlie decided he was going to move back to Kansas.

Yeah, so I was...

I started on a kind of a spiritual quest there,

you know, figure out what it was all about,

because I already had the house on the corner,

and the pick-up truck, and the wife that loved me,

and three healthy kids.

I took about, well, a couple of years off,

to really get to know my family on a real a deeper level.

I had a little money stashed away,

and I thought, "Well, I don't want that shop to disappear."

I don't want that style to disappear,"

because that shop was the cookpot,

that was the witch's cauldron for this thing to be happening.

Ed Hardy ended up buying the business from him,

and then I think right before Charlie left

was when we were seeing this work from Freddy Negrete, El Coyote.

So after I got out of the Youth Authority,

I set up shop in my apartment,

all I would hear from everybody

was about this new tattoo shop on Whittier Boulevard in East LA

that was doing prison-style tattoos, because people would come and say,

Yeah, I got this at Good-Time Charlie's.

You know, "Huero did t."

So I noticed, "Okay, there's this guy Huero there",

and he seems to be on the right track with the homie tattoos, you know?

I would tattoo people, and I would send him to "Good-Time Charlie's."

I'd say, "Go over there and show him this."

It was just amazing!

And it was like, "Wow! Who is this guy? And is he on the street?"

And they said, "Yeah, he lives in Pico Nuevo or something",

and he's from Sangra, you know, San Gabriel."

And it was like, "Well, you know, hey, send him down, man."

"I'd like to talk to this guy and, you know, meet him and stuff."

Finally somebody came and told me,

Huero wants you to go to the tattoo shop, he wants to meet you.

The first thing I notice was that up on the wall in their flash

they had some of my designs, you know?

And I was like, "Hey, I drew that!"

And Jack tells me, "Everybody says that."

You know, everybody says that their uncle

"or somebody in prison drew this thing."

I go, "No, I drew that."

And I showed him the original drawing I had with me in a folder.

So he auditioned.

You know, I set him up some machines,

and he worked on one of his homeboys in the back room.

One of the tricks that I learned when I was in Tamarac

was that we didn't always have ditto paper.

And, by the way, let me just say that the whole ditto paper thing

started in prison.

That's what we used.

Now that's normal for tattoo shops.

Everybody uses ditto and ditto master,

but we didn't always have that,

and we had to use the dittos over and over and over.

So what I did was I found different ways to memorize in my mind

how to execute a design.

And, first of all, like a rose...

If I was gonna do a rose, I always started

with this funny E-looking thing in the middle

and then went around and around

so that I could actually do the design on somebody

without drawing anything, without having any stencil.

And another thing I learned, I taught myself,

was how to do a girl's face.

I would always start with one eye.

Get that eye perfect,

and then I'd know exactly where to put the nose bridge,

the other eye, the nostrils, the lips.

So, I would build off that eye.

So, I was gonna show off a little bit.

So, when Jack said...

Okay, so I brought my homie in there and he goes,

"Well, pick any design you want."

I want it to be kind of a good size or whatever.

And I was like, "No, no, I don't need any design."

He goes, "Oh, okay. Well, what I do a lot is draw it on first with a pen."

I go, "No, I don't even need a pen," and he's like, "What?"

He goes, "You're gonna do it just like that without a stencil?"

Ans just did a beautiful freehand piece of a girl's face

on this guy's arm.

No stencil, no drawing, no nothing.

Just started tattooing the guy,

and so, he got hired on the spot.

Now, for the first time,

tattooers were going to let a cholo gangster tattoo professional.

He was part of that culture.

He was a genuine, genuine guy.

Jack knew about it, and Jack was part of it,

but not like Freddy.

I remember the first time Ed Hardy came down to meet me, you know.

Boy, what a culture shock.

And I remember when he came in, and he's like,

Oh, Freddy, here's some of my work.

And when I saw these tattoos, this shit blew me away.

I almost came flying out of my socks.

I was like, "What?"

First of all, it was backpiece after backpiece.

I didn't even know what a backpiece was.

Our thing was this:

You put a tattoo here, you put one there,

you fit another one in here, one there, just like my tattoos,

until you're all covered with tattoos all around.

Little badges.

Ed Hardy's the one that named them "Badge-Style Tattoos."

But, you know, a whole back, one picture on a whole back,

a whole thing on somebody's arm, you know, these suits.

I never saw Japanese tattooing.

I never saw tattooness,

and then Ed Hardy's like, "Hey, look what I'm doing, homes",

with black and grey, mixing black and grey and color."

And now, all of a sudden, he had this crazy skeleton guy with his hair

and it was all in black and grey,

and he's stepping on these stepping stones

with rushing water and Japanese style of color.

I was like, "Oh, my God! I don't know shit!"

When the time came to relocate the business,

Ed Hardy found a small gingerbread-style structure

down the block on the other side of Whittier Boulevard,

And Ed Hardy bought that place,

and now, you know, before he bought "Good Time Charlie's",

and he never had anything to do with the shop creatively.

He never imposed his will on us in any way.

But now, Ed Hardy has a shop.

And he brought some of his friends,

and they built a tattoo shop all regulation, even the stations.

They were so tiny, but every station had a sink.

Ed Hardy's, "Nah, everything's gonna change."

You're gonna wear gloves, you're gonna use this sterilizer."

And he goes, "Yeah, and this place, it reminds me of like a little island."

An island shack."

He goes, we're going to call it "Tattoo Land."

And we painted it yellow,

and we put a big giant banner going across the front, "Tattoo Land."

I remember when he was saying, "You know what?"

This Coyote thing. This doesn't work.

The people you're going to deal with now,

"they're not all going to be gangsters from East LA."

He goes, "Yeah, your name's going to be Freddy Negrete from now on."

"And fine-line, that's too much like prison."

We're trying to do a new art style here.

"And it's going to be called black-and-grey."

You know, because you're using black, and you're using grey.

And Ed certainly brought all of the attention

that he had in the '70s and in the '80s

which was considerable to this new form of tattooing.

He catapulted it to a level that it would not have had.

So, when we reopened the second shop,

it was me and Kate and Freddy.

There was a party to introduce me to,

to welcome me to San Francisco,

welcome me to Ed Hardy family,

and to introduce me to Jack and Freddy

who drove up from Los Angeles specifically to meet me

and see this new member of their crew.

This white woman from Utah,

this farm girl who was educated in graphic design and advertising

suddenly going to be in their midst,

you know, practicing Black and Grey, single needle, Chicano tattooing

with no background whatsoever in it.

It was a small shop and we had small areas to work in,

but we had all that parking lot.

And so everybody would come in and just park

park their lowriders and stuff there,

especially on the weekends when they'd be cruising,

people would always pit stop right at the tattoo shop

and we blew that place out of the water.

You know, you had a lot of gangbangers,

and we were luckily sort of kind of in neutral territory,

but there were a couple of local neighborhoods

that kinda claimed our area as their neighborhood.

There were 27 gangs in that area at that time, I think

it was very turf-oriented.

Every block was owned by one gang or another.

They hated each other with a vengeance.

I mean, murderously.

Whenever I was in LA, I would go work there, sitting there, tattooing.

And she went, "Wow, what was that sound?

Sounds like somebody popped a beach ball."

And then, the cholos would come in from outside

all peppered up with shotgun pellets.

That's how it went there.

There are guys from different gangs that would have shot each other

if they were a couple of blocks away.

But inside the confines of that parking lot

and especially that little shop,

you know, that pointed roof made like a church, you know,

it's something about it in there.

At "Tattooland," Kate Hellenbrand saw that the choice of tattoo

could mean the difference between life and death.

A little 14-year-old boy came in.

He and his 16-year-old brother had tattooed themselves at home

because they wanted to be in a gang,

because that's what the people in that neighborhood aspired to be.

And they were walking down the street

and an opposing gang was driving by

and shot and killed the 16-year-old boy.

And so the 14-year-old came to me

and asked if I would cover these initials on his wrist.

And I told him, "No, I don't tattoo 14-year-olds."

It was 18 or older.

And then about two hours later, his mother came with him.

And the mother was crying and said, "Please save my son's life"

because I've lost one."

So I covered the tattoo.

And so when people have that kind of lifestyle

and that kind of closeness to death,

they get images that are about heaven and about redemption.

By choosing images that celebrated their neighborhoods,

religion, and loved ones,

the Chicano people of East LA

had a key role in elevating Black and Grey to an art form.

A peoples' art form.

My father died when I was young, and I've always idolized him

and thought that he was, even though he wasn't around,

he was still around.

And I just wanted to put him on me

because I grew up the way he grew up.

You know what I mean?

When he was in the war... He fought the war.

When I grew up, I fought to get a different route

but had to you know fight my way to get out of the place I lived

and move on.

It's soulful and very powerful

and driven by very, very deep things.

People commemorative tattoos.

You know, "In memory of...", and all that kind of thing.

And that had not been in tattooing very much before.

It seems like in the neighborhoods,

it's a beautiful art that came out of the violence, addiction,

long prison sentences,

the madness on the streets,

came out this beautiful art form.

That mirrors a lot of those stories.

Well, this one is just like where I come from,

where my city is,

where I've lived and grew up all my life.

Well, we're a product of our environment, you know?

But right here we try to go with a little culture,

where we come from,

showing the Aztec and then the Mexican heritage.

It's not just something that you just put on there.

It has meaning and it has a lot more to do with it so.

I really felt that that work was driven

by the people that it should be driven by.

The people that were getting it, the people that lived it.

It is a storyteller. Tattoos tell you stories.

Stories about the guy who has it.

A tattoo is the mirror of one's mind.

It's about life, it's about death,

it's about everything which is of value to a Mexican.

My first tattoo was my side piece

which is a Mayan blood ritual.

And the reason I picked Mayan artwork

was because of my spiritual upbringing.

I found this particular piece, the blood ritual,

when I was over in the museum of anthropology

there in Mexico City.

I knew this was a piece that I wanted to have a tattoo for,

and that's what I wanted to have on there.

And that's pretty much why I have this particular tattoo,

and what it means to me

is basically something that I can look back on and reflect on.

Mark, you ready for me?

I thought you'd never ask. Come on over, man.

Get stuff done here.

Yeah, it'll be good to get back on this. It's been a long time.

Oh, man, look at them happy campers, those faces smiling all over.

The kids are still happy.

In 1995, I picked up the kids and took 'em out of school.

Your parents taking you out of school is like a fantasy.

It's like, "Wow."

Every kid in that class is looking at you.

We came down to the beach.

And they were on top of the world.

Three kids ate hot dogs all day and cotton candy,

and just in love with being alive

and just being with their dad on that day.

We took a lot of photos that day,

but there was one photo that just captured all three of them.

I had that photo for years, and I always loved it.

I mean, I carried my wallet for years. It was on the wall.

You know, it's already all worn out.

I got the big photo, and I brought it in to Mark,

and I said, "Hey, what can we do with this?"

But I think the hardest thing is Danny wanted a benign Jesus,

like a happy Jesus,

not a suffering, not an angry, not a...

He just wanted a kicked back, surf Jesus.

A happy Jesus because he's happy,

his kids are happy, and my life's great,

and so that's why Jesus is smiling.

Those are the best kind of tattoos that go to the heart like that.

It's exact.

I just like the look of black and various shades of grey and flesh.

Even though everything is colored in real life,

it's just like when you watch a black and white movie

or see a black and white photograph,

there's a certain quality about that

that it just isn't in a colored photograph.

Jack was the kind of guy that wanted to develop as an artist.

He wanted to learn from me, as I wanted to learn from him,

but what really happened was this competition.

It was a friendly competition,

but I know we both felt the same way.

So Jack would be on his side, and I would be on my side,

and he'd be doing this tattoo.

And the thing is, every single tattoo we did,

we tried to make it the best.

Because you would do the tattoo and say,

Hey, homes, check this out!

And the guy would come, and I'd say, "Aw, man, that's nice!"

That's nice, Jack!

"You know, I'm glad you finished before me."

And I'd be like...

And like, "Jack, check this out!"

And he'd be like, "Oh, yeah, that's nice!"

But that kind of competition caused us to develop as artists.

So, here we were, me and Jack were great friends,

we were developing artists,

I was learning this great technique.

We had a great building on the best spot.

We had so much customers, and we were getting paid.

You know, life was good.

Now, Freddy actually was extremely interested in color tattooing.

Freddy was not just, you know, "This is my way.

This is the way of my people."

You know, with Ed Hardy's hand in it, I started to look at his leadership.

I gave him control of my career.

He goes, "I'm going to put you out there, Freddy."

Because I had the respect from him.

I wanted to learn from him.

So I would go up to San Francisco, and he'd let me stay at his house.

I didn't want to do what he was doing.

I wanted to learn how he was doing it

so that I could apply it to my style.

Another knock on the black-and-grey artists was,

Well, it's nice, but they can't do color.

Freddy was determined to not have that said about him.

I remember doing my first big back piece.

It was a Madonna, and she had her hands out like this,

and there was rays coming off of her hand.

And in the right hand, I put like a futuristic city in the clouds,

and then, in the other hand, put the planet earth in flames.

In between it, I put a big skull face.

And I took a picture of a real skull,

and it was the first time that I did realism with color.

You're talking another jump for color artists

because they'd incorporate realism into that color

where there's very little line work,

and they've taken that black-and-grey step in a color step,

which brings it out of the old Americana style.

You see famous traditional artists now

doing black-and-grey iconic images,

but doing them color traditional

because it's the black-and-grey style of California

that Southern California look,

but done with a traditional background.

So you have these bold lines and solid color,

but this is an iconic Southern California, East LA image.

I think that back-piece on Johnny

was the first real breakthrough with that.

And not only was the composition completely powerful, you know,

and played off all that heraldic stuff

that you'd see in medieval prints of the Virgin and all that,

but then put in with the skull on one side and the woman's face,

and his color work was magnificent.

That tattoo won best tattoo in the show.

I won tattoo artist of the year.

That was the only award that was given out.

Recognized as the top tattoo artist, Freddy was riding high.

But in 1980, tattoo was still considered

to be mostly for those on the fringe.

Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.

When MTV hit the airwaves in 1981,

many young viewers were exposed to ink on television

for the first time.

The following year, Ed Hardy published the first issue

of Tattoo Time Magazine,

opening this mysterious and secretive world.

Tattoo Time was one of them. They're both publications in the '80s.

Pictures of Jack Rudy's work, Freddy Negrete's,

other names you learn, Charlie Cartwright, Mark Mahoney.

I was actually shown,

I remember, in particular, Jack Rudy's work, by my father

and told to achieve this.

When we received Tattoo Time,

we saw that the thing jumped from fine to amazing.

It was like a razor blade. The line was so thin, so straight.

The shades were so neat, it almost looked like printing.

I'd not seen a tattoo that neat, that tight.

I just wanted to do something

from an informed, intelligent, inside viewpoint

that really presented this thing

the way it deserved to be represented

with a certain amount of dignity,

but also allowing for the fact that it's a totally crazy wildcat thing.

So we did that.

We did five issues of it over, I guess, into the early

into the '90s, mid-'90s.

And it had a huge impact.

But by 1984, East LA had fallen on hard times.

Gang-related street violence, always a fact of life, had escalated.

All the fighting and shooting and stuff.

So, they ended up shutting it down.

It seemed like everything we knew that was good

no longer was there no more.

East LA was played out.

The cruising was over. The cops stopped that.

There was no more cruising on Whittier Boulevard.

And I just thought, "Well, you know what,"

I've put in almost 10 years here.

"I think I'm gonna just try a different area."

So I decided on Orange County.

With the help of artists Mike Brown and Mark Mahoney,

Jack introduced black-and-grey to a new suburban group.

Everybody called you "homes" in East LA,

and then I got to Anaheim, and they were all calling me "dude",

and it sounded kind of insulting.

I didn't know how to take it,

but it took me a while,

and I guess that's just Orange County speech.

It just became a lot more diverse.

More people wanted color over here.

But since we were still known for the black-and-grey side of town,

that was still predominately what we did.

Jack kept at it

exploring the boundaries, attending conventions

giving more and more people their first glimpse of black-and-grey.

The best black-and-grey tattoo, first place...

Jack Rudy!

Over time, other tattoo artists and their clients embraced this style.

Starting with Jack Rudy,

he happened to be a hustler.

He happened to be that black-and-grey tattoo artist

that put his work out there.

So it takes one person to try something new

and maybe get a different shade of grey

or a different tone of dark.

And next thing you know,

it's kinda like it started Pandora's Box.

When those guys brought that stuff

from the small neighborhood areas it was in and the prison system,

when they brought it to the public,

it gave everyone this huge level of excitement,

but also gave us the template

for how to make these illustrative tattoos

which has led up the exciting times that you see in front of you.

It was the Rosetta Stone moment where it unlocked all the potential.

It was the final piece of the puzzle,

and when it added that level of excitement,

it made the clients themselves more willing to take chances

and more willing to be a part of something

bigger than they imagined.

I want to track my life.

I want to put everything that I love on me,

so when I die, I have everything with me.

In 2002, David Oropeza and Edward "Chuco" Caballero

put the spotlight on black-and-grey.

When I met Chuco, it was.

Well, first of all, we're talking about someone I've known

who was a homeboy of mine who I've known close to 40 years.

He's more than just a homeboy. We go way back.

There was a funeral,

and I hadn't seen a lot of people in a long time, so I went to it,

and Chuco was there, and I ain't seen him in a while,

and he had these new tattoos on him,

and he was showing me,

and he goes, "Homie, check out these tattoos."

He used to always admire me and my brother's tattoos

because we had them back in the '70s.

We were getting them from Good Time Charlie's,

the original shop in East LA.

So when I saw him,

he was excited to show me his new work.

So when I seen it, I was like, "Wow, who's doing this stuff?"

He goes, "This new kid. His name's Pint."

I go, "Man, that's some nice work."

So me and Chuco talked about it, I think it was the following day,

and I told him about my desire.

I go, "Chuco, right now I'm in my mid-fifties."

I'm up there in years."

I go, "I want to fulfill my bodysuit."

This is something I've always wanted to do.

And he goes, "Man, homes, let's do it, man."

He goes, "Let's go all the way."

This was new.

Unlike the Japanese who had stories told on them,

the Chicanos were telling their own story.

David and Chuco's bodysuits

became living tributes to their barrio upbringing,

reflecting pride in their heritage

and the art that came from it.

This s Chuco,

and he has agreed to model some of this gorgeous tattoo art.

Marilyn Monroe, and the Mexican Emblem,

Emiliano Zapata, the general, revolutionary.

The warrior, Caballero Aguila, skulls, death, you know.

I think I saw the statue of Liberty.

Yeah, right here.

In homage to 9-11, I added a statue of liberty.

Here's my family, my wife, my kids, my grandkids.

This is my son. He's dead. They killed him.

- You know, in a gang fight. - Oh, I'm sorry.

A couple of years back. My only son, he was 23.

This is my son right here.

Yeah, Chuco is pretty amazing.

When you think about this black-and-grey style

and you think about that cholo vibe and grace and honor

and dignity and all of that stuff,

and that was like a walking, talking representation of that.

He sort of made his way through the tattoo circuit

and the tattoo conventions

as kind of like a fixture of awe.

People would kind of just stop him and stare at his body.

I mean, I remember for years just going to conventions,

even before I met him,

just looking at him, looking at his tattoos,

and he couldn't go to a convention

without practically being naked 50-60 times in a weekend.

The black-and-grey community

couldn't have had a better ambassador of ink

because he wore his tattoos so well.

He started bringing unity

within the black-and-grey tattoo world.

He sort of would bring people to meet.

He'd say, "Hey, Chuey, this is Franco."

And we became friends.

And so he started introducing us to each other through his tattoos.

Over the next five years,

David and Chuco competed in tattoo competitions

up and down the West Coast,

winning prize after prize.

Artists and collectors from around the world

marveled at what they saw.

With the work that was on their bodies,

and the extent of the work on their bodies

showed people something that they had never seen,

to the number and the extent and flow of the tattooing itself.

Because if the tattoos don't flow, they're just pictures on skin.

That's what they had going for them that I think was different.

Especially with the quantity of the pieces that they had.

David and Chuco's image and design choices

pushed the limits for a new generation of artists.

I asked Chuey to do a rib cage piece on me,

and he goes, "Well, what would you like?"

Pint had this book of Michelangelo

and this book had all kinds of beautiful things in it

the Sistine Chapel.

It had a lot of nice work in it.

I go, "There's a piece I've always admired."

Now that I know I could choose what wanted was just amazing.

So, I go, "I want this one,"

and I showed him the statue that I wanted.

And it was the Pieta from Michelangelo.

And I was like, "Man, this is going to be tough."

What made it stick out was the depth and quality

and the arrangement of the lighting on the black-and-grey

that was put into it.

I think that's what stood out the most.

When I added the white, it just popped.

It looked like realistic, it looked shiny,

it looked like it was a statue.

And I was very satisfied with it. I was happy with it.

The images they became more crisp, just a lot more realistic.

It seems nowadays, things are just.

It's hard to determine from a photo to a tattoo.

I mean, back in the day, everything was done just hand-drawings

and people would use their own hand

and they would just go in and do their own designs,

but nowadays people are just really, really realistic

whether you're dealing with color or black-and-grey.

So, it's changed. It's changed.

The younger generation that has been tattooing for 10 or 15 years now,

they were the ones that have brought out the realism

to the aspect that it is today.

This art form, I think it's just growing.

You probably have right now

the biggest amount of Chicano artists ever, professional artists.

These kids are incredible.

I learned more about dimensioning

you know, where the light hits it.

Now I'm working on, like, maybe second, even third lights.

How it's gonna work, how it'll collide with one another.

It sort of opens up doors on your brain,

and, you know, once you open up those doors of dimension,

you can't close them.

You just they learn no matter what.

You can't become an artist and just say,

Well, I know this, and I know everything!

No, you just barely begin to know about art.

As I got into more of the professional tattooing

and understanding what it was to

to have that responsibility of cutting someone

and marking them permanently.

My mom always made sure that I approached it

in a way that was with some dignity, some honesty.

It's changed so much because now it's the norm

to be able to go into shops.

It's the norm to find really good tattooers,

and there are far more the level.

You now, more people doing great tattoos

than have ever existed in the history of the world

and by thousand-fold, thousands and thousands more.

I think what tattoo art gives to my clients

is the way they can express themselves.

What really means something, a marker in their life,

a moment in their life that they want captured.

Ever since I was a kid, I liked pirates.

The way they lived.

They had no allegiance to no king or government.

Living free, doing what you want.

It was my artist, Carlos Torres's idea

of how he was going to set it all up.

I just gave him the scenario, you know,

the idea of who I wanted in it,

and he came up with the whole design and portrayal,

and he sketched it up for me right there.

And he goes, "Let's take a picture of you with the wheel,"

and I actually had that wheel at my house,

and then I did a pose with that in my arm.

He took the photo and then drew it up,

added the pirate clothes and the hat,

decayed my face.

Our clientele nowadays,

they come in with a concept,

and generally, it's always hard.

People don't want simple tattoos really anymore.

It's always like they want a piece of fine art on their skin.

But that's what we do,

and there's a lot that goes into it.

We take their idea in their head,

and we have to not only tattoo it,

but we have to choreograph it

and we have to put it together.

We have to show it to them.

We have to make changes, put it on their skin.

And so it becomes kind of like a painting on a canvas.

My mom passed away when I was 13.

She had told me, like, "Play the drums."

Don't stop playing the drums.

No matter what happens, keep playing your drums.

Then I got to the point where I was 16.

I graduated from high school, and my pops basically said,

"You either get a job, you work 60 hours a week, and you pay bills,"

or you need to go,

you need to play the drums and try what you're gonna try.

So I moved to Laguna Beach, and I became a trash man,

and I started playing the drums.

I started getting tattoos because my dad would always tell me,

You gotta have a plan B. You gotta have something to fall back on.

And I basically that resonated, and I kept hearing that,

and I was like, "I don't want the plan B."

So I think in a year's time, I started documenting everything

from my mom's memorial

to big ass checkered flags and my car.

You know, like, my 66 on my neck.

I made it to where no one would want to hire me

and I couldn't fit in at your normal job

or work at your local Target or McDonalds or...

I didn't want any of that. I just wanted to play the drums.

I mean, two years later, I was sleeved up

and it was impossible for me to get a normal job

which was a job well done in my book.

Tattooing, I think, in essence is a people's art,

and prior to it breaking out into mainstream,

it was kept in confines of the artists themselves,

and then, suddenly, there were conventions,

and then there were magazines,

and the magazines opened the doors wider,

and then supply companies got involved in the magazines,

and that sort of really opened it up,

and then the television shows, of course,

now have broadcasted everywhere.

I think it is changing a lot.

I think a lot of people who are in the public eye

getting heavily tattooed helps a lot.

I think that was one of the few benefits of the TV shows

is that you were bringing decent tattoos into people's homes

and showing that, you know what I mean?

These are just normal, everyday, working-class people.

These reality shows were instantly successful,

finding audiences all over the world.

And in turn, TV viewers discovered black-and-grey.

When you watch these shows now and you see Corey Miller's pieces,

you see all these different degrees of tattoos,

it makes the general public, times a million, times a billion,

across the world go, "Oh, I never knew tattooing could be that good."

If that's the case, I want one.".

People that never thought about getting tattooed

are now deciding, "Hey, I want to go in to get my first tattoo."

We've got lawyers and doctors and school teachers

all these people that would have been against it.

In the television they can see that, "Hey, we can do portraits."

So the people want the black-and-grey portraits,

and most times pictures of family members,

so, children, babies, granddad, grandma,

father, mom, sister, brother.

And the most wanted portrait is Johnny Cash right now

the last two or three years.

So Johnny Cash or movie stars or something like that.

I don't like to outline

because the more line work you use, it comes out cartoony,

you know what I mean?

So it's more shading.

A lot of the artists nowadays,

we do nothing but shading, darker depths.

Everything enhances the picture, makes it look more real.

We're made of shades, not lines.

So it's based on the tones, the way the light source hits your skin.

You want to capture that, you know, make the tattoo pop.

When I saw Jack Rudy's,

he did a portrait of Rita Hayworth as an old photograph

with scotch tape holding it on a leg.

I just couldn't believe that level of illustration could exist,

and I think that's what really opened the door,

and now illustration is everywhere in tattooing,

in color and in black-and-grey.

Nothing will replace the excitement that Jack's tattoos gave people.

I mean, we didn't even know it was possible.

I believe it fell in the right hands with Jack, Freddy, Charlie,

in East LA and where they started

because they took that prison-style tattooing.

It wasn't the seven or nine

or thick fat outlines with just a little bit of color.

It was fine line, single needle.

It was the darkest black to the lightest grey,

and it was put into fine art,

and I believe that's how it didn't slip through the cracks.

I believe that's how it started off on a small string in East LA.

It wasn't accepted by anybody, really,

except for prisoners,

and it just slowly expanded and grew.

And over the years, other artists started seeing

what I feel was a challenging type of artwork.

And so I think that's kind of what triggered everyone

to kind of want to know how to do it.

As the popularity of tattoos has grown,

so have the number of conventions.

There are now more than 350 shows held each year worldwide.

Right now in Spain the theme people most ask for is Chicano.

Furthermore, I believe you can manage to do an entire body

with this style of mixing women, cars, buildings, landscapes,

and have it look really good.

Italian publisher and convention promoter Miki Vialetto

has earned a reputation for putting on

some of the most prestigious and entertaining conventions of all.

People come from around the world

to get work by Miki's carefully-selected artists.

I think the Chicano Style now in Europe,

it has a huge impact on tattooing since three or four years.

We start to see Chicano tattoos

from all the rockstars that Mr. Cartoon has been tattooing lately.

And since a couple of years,

Boog, Jose Lopez, Chuey Quintanar, Jack Rudy

I start to bring them in Europe,

in Milan Convention and London convention.

So, many magazines start to make articles about them

and now so many tattoo shops, they have and they do Chicano stuff.

I love that I've been able to take Chicano art all over the world.

I've done art shows in London, and Paris, Amsterdam, Australia.

I've also been to Tokyo and seen black-and-grey body Japanese suits.

By Horioshi three, incredible.

Really looks good in black-and-grey.

Now they're starting to experiment more with it

'cause they see how we do t.

I don't think a lot of people in Europe

know all the meaning and history behind the Chicano icons.

They see a lot of culture that comes from California, from LA,

the lowrider culture, the Chicano Culture,

and they take it even if they don't know the meaning.

But the new trend in Europe since two years

is definitely the Chicano Style.

In November 2011,

some of the worlds most renowned tattoo artists

met up in Amsterdam to celebrate the history of tattoo.

Henk Shiffmacher spent a lifetime tattooing

and collecting tattoo memorabilia from all over the world.

His vast collection was displayed for a year

in a museum located alongside

some of Holland's most prestigious institutions.

For many of the tattoo artists in attendance,

the symbolism was unmistakable.

It was an affirmation of their craft's rich history.

This is a pilgrimage.

We want you to come here as a pilgrim

and to learn about tattoo,

to pay tribute to those who gave us this art.

All the way down,

all the way to the first man and woman with tattoos.

All the whole history of tattoo.

- Be careful and be safe. - Yeah.

The culture comes from up. It comes from the bottom up.

It bubbles up, and it's stuff that is, you know,

percolated by people's soul and passion

and striving and what they really care about.

It's not some construct.

As much as I think my own work has evolved

and stuff I've seen other artists

that have taken black-and-grey to a whole other level.

You look and see what a lot of these young hot shots

are doing and stuff, and I tell you what.

It keeps us, keeps us old guys on our toes

because, like, you either keep up or you get left behind.

You know, it's how I look at it,

and so it is incredible,

but, I mean, see, tattooing in general has evolved incredibly.

Remember, now there's gotta be 15 or 20

very distinct styles of tattooing

that didn't exist 35 years ago.

Didn't exist.

It's just grown so much, you know.

I never saw I never thought it would be this giant an industry.

You don't have to be the bad guy anymore

to want to have a nice tattoo.

In my times I grew up in the '60s

to have a tattoo, to own a tattoo,

you either had to be a gang member, a drug addict,

or been in the penitentiary at least once.

It's all good art.

It's wearable art.

Correct.

Now, we're at the age of, like, art.

It really is an art

because there's so many artists into it,

and it doesn't matter what you like more.

It's just like this is their art,

and this is how he does it.

This is their art, and this is how he does it.

Before it was like, "Oh, wow, this guy's better than this guy",

and this guy's even better than this guy,

and this guy's better than this guy.

And it's not about that anymore.

It's about this person and their art and their expression,

and that's when you know that tattooing has arrived.

You know, 20 years ago when I walked into a restaurant,

everybody in the restaurant would start making weird noises

you know, you'd hear, "Tattoo this, tattoo that."

I know a guy whose got a tattoo.

You know, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

Whereas now you walk into the restaurant

and the waiter's sleeved.

You don't stand out like you used to.

The cops pull you over, they don't look at you

like you're some kind of criminal nowadays,

whereas 20 years ago, if you were sleeved,

man, they were, "What jail were you in?"

'Cause they didn't know.

They'd see the color.

They didn't realize that you don't get color in jail, you know.

Now if you're an NBA player and you don't have a bunch of tattoos,

it looks like you ran out of money or something.

Like, you're missing the accessory, you know.

They go from being a poor kid in a project

to getting a couple mill deposited in their bank account.

They're gonna go hit the Escalade,

they're gonna go hit the European car,

they're gonna go get their jewellery right,

Jordans, and their tattoos.

David and I became very close friends.

We had some great times together.

He introduced me to his mom and his family.

And she would always take me inside and say,

"Please don't tattoo my sons anymore."

They have enough tattoos.

I won't.

There used to be a guy that used to.

There used to be a couple of brothers.

They used to come in to the East LA shop.

The Diaz brothers, okay?

And one Diaz in particular used to.

Every time he used to come in, he'd say,

"Jack from way back."

He's older than baseball.

But he knew Moby Dick when he was just a sardine.

And he always said that to me.

And I was like, "That sounds pretty cool, homes."

I like the way that sounds 'Jack from way back'.

But, like, that's more of a like a name for a veterano, you know?

"A guy's that been around for a long, long time."

And he goes, "Don't worry, homes. You'll grow into it."

Was he right or what?