My journey to become a High End Tattoo Artist… part 3

Life Decisions and Loyalty

I have to say that during the whole period, I was doing time, I just wanted to avoid California Parole altogether. They make it so that can’t happen now. In retrospect, it was the parole situation that saved my life I think. I’m not a fan of government, especially the California Government, but I must say, it was the revolving door of the parole system that let me experience both worlds in tandem for a while and that led to my willingness to sacrifice everything to the gods of art and tattooing. I’ve always said, “Tattooing found me broke, naked, and alone. Everything I have is from tattooing”, but I don’t always talk about my promise to myself and the Tattoo Gods, so to speak, that I would work every day to stay out of that little cement box. I had a 4”x36” window and my seat was a blanket rolled up in a way that I could sit on it working off a lower bunk which is basically a flat cookie sheet. I’m in a great big grey box now that could hold my whole house but my true goal and purpose is to bring back tenfold to tattooing, what tattooing has given to me.

The first time I got released after a parole violation my plan for success was to do home invasions on known dealers. A friend of a friend had even taken me to look at a house in the Hollywood Hills but the way he described the logistics threw so many red flags, I put it off. That same week I went to Dusty’s spot in the center of the SFV and he let me catch up with some clients there.

One day we were just tattooing and chilling, drinking and watching movies and things you do in that situation, all of us on parole when a fully dressed police officer walked into the garage. We looked at each other, he asked for Dusty, and I sent him to the main house. The rest of us thought for sure we were getting busted but he just left and that was it. Turns out he wanted my boy to start a shop in the Rampart Division. The one caveat was that if the neighborhood boys came in shooting, we had to shoot back.

For the first time in my life, I had made $1000 in a few days just hanging out and drawing on friends who had waited for me. I knew immediately that there was something there and I never needed another felony.

Shortly after that, I did go to work on a buddy of mine at his place. I had worked on him before but I went to check it out and it wasn’t really good to go yet. I decided to hang out for the day anyway. My guy was sort of the guy on the block if you know what I mean and he had to run a mission later in the day. I volunteered to roll with him and he had some time to burn so he offered to take me to Best Buy. They were having a sale on DVDs, knew I like to watch movies with my clients, and wanted to tip me for work prior. We pulled up to the Best Buy in Porter Ranch, CA and I got out of the car to find 2 guns in my face. Of course, I was additionally holding things that weren’t mine. The police were getting agitated as all that I would say was that it wasn’t mine until my boy stepped in and claimed the cash I was holding. I did 7 months on that one, but at the end of the day, at least they got us going out and not coming back. I’m thankful for that, blame the tattoo gods but it is ALWAYS better to be cash-heavy than dope heavy. This time, I had only been out for 2 months.

The first violation was my first trip through the Ventura County jail system. I met one of the youngest HA’s ever at that time, it was a much nicer trip and the day I woke up in jail, I was thankful to be back. Life is so much simpler inside. Find the line and walk the line. Get off first if it comes down to fighting and stand up for yourself. All EVERYONE needs to know is that anyone else is an easier target.

It’s much more confusing out here. Well, aside from shower time in reception when you have 3 open cells, 6 shower heads, and not much choice outside of that, and you end up lathering up next to the bearded dude with the biggest tits and dick you’ve ever seen. Mind you this was like 2007, I went back to the cell ready to take bird baths for the rest of my life.

This next trip was my second trip through LA County. Still old County but 3000 floor this time. When I was going through intake there was another kid with me about my age. Kris. I say kid, of course, we were men, but it was half a lifetime ago. We were the only white guys and we were tattooed AF. This deputy, Luna, called us out and made us strip. Chris’s work was all from the streets. Mine was all from doing time, and I was….. active, let’s just leave it at that. I thought for sure I was headed one way to single-cell housing.

Luna pulled me aside and sat me down, sending Kris back into the cell. I knew this was it. Then he told me, “Look, the Blacks and the South Siders are at war so we can only hire White Boys and Paisas for the work crews. We need a regular to keep an eye on these 6 or so guys we have in this dorm upstairs. (Meaning they needed someone already familiar with the system). It’s a pretty clutch spot, you want it?” … … What in the fuck do you say to something like that? A 23-year-old white kid from the mid-west, about to be thrown into the dungeons for the second time. It’s not even a real choice, obviously, you say yes.

There are no positive things I can say about LA County Jail. Never go. It sucks, don’t do it… That said, this time may be that which I romance the most about all of the time I served. When I was in Susanville the Norteños there were all off the books and that meant the South Siders didn’t have a legit enemy there and that the yard was pretty chill all in all. On a lot of 3 yards one or the other of the groups would be dropouts at that time and that did help to keep the tension down.

In LA County, it was war. I have seen worse shit in LA County than I would wish on anyone. I heard a guy get his head kicked in for a good hour 30 on one of my first days and I saw the deputies give out some mag light therapy and throw a man down the escalator behind me once. I even was in the Twin Towers once and the guy in the cell next to me died on the toilet in the night. I could see it over in the reflection of the pod windows. His celly tried to call for help all night and they ignored him. In the morning when they found the body they drug it down the stairs as his head bounced off of each of the steel steps.

On this second trip through I had pull. Because I was cleaning the halls, I had a lot of access. First and foremost, my job was to bring the newspapers to the cells. This gave me a bit of clout with the heads of the tiers and also access to medical which meant I was one of the few people who could get to and from the guys who could get syringes. When a load would come in (meaning someone had smuggled contraband) I would be asked to get it to the important people on the other tiers. Of course, it was always a lot and I would have to give up my name and # in case anything happened. Each time I was delivering before the guy on the delivery end could even pass off my info. Sometimes I would even get chunks of dope big enough for the whole dorm just as a tip.

One of my jobs in there was having to clean the recreation yard on the roof. For the life of me, I can’t remember the CO that was my boss up there. But she had a Jerry Curl like Easy E and wore bright red lipstick. She was pretty fucking dope to me. If I came and cleaned the exercise yard on time and with no issue she would bring me basically whatever I wanted from the officer dining. That wasn’t the best part though. The good…. The downright fucking beautiful part about that second trip through LA was that this cleaning I had to do took place before dawn on the roof of LA County Jail in LA (3000 floors in 2007) and you could often see the lights from Dodger Stadium as they were shutting down after cleaning up from a game. When you are housed in an extremely treacherous and violent warehouse and have an opportunity to be completely alone pre-dawn outside to watch the sun come up over a place your grandfather used to take you when you were a kid… That’s G.O.D. Speaking to you. The Good Orderly Direction of the universe, giving you room to take a breath. A lung full of Downtown Los Angeles never tasted so good to another human being as in those moments for me. I had it made.

Another thing I will always remember is the Friday night talent shows. Both at LA County and Chino. On Friday nights (at least in the early 2000s) the Whites and Mexicans (Wood Pile and South Siders) would say their nightly respectful goodnights. After that the Blacks would start yelling “BRING IT TO THE BAAAARRRRSSS” shaking the bars of the cells until it sounded like thunder. There would be singing, rapping, jokes, talent shows, and all sorts of other hilarious things, pretty much everyone would be drinking. In Chino. Once a month the white guys and South Siders would get involved too. Oddly enough this was where I got into county music. We had a white guy who went by “Country” that sang "Ole Red" and “Don’t Chase the Girl”. I had been asking relatives to send song lyrics and, as I read them, I could hear the music. Reading all of the songs I loved and learning what some of the lyrics were conveying definitely upset my connection with some of those songs. Even just being on the tier. Sycamore Hall was the Overflow at the time for Palm Hall. Palm Hall was “the Hole” of Chino. When you are paroled FROM the hole, and you get arrested again. You go back TO the hole. So, everyone in Palm Hall was pretty much a shotcaller from some SHU unit or gang throughout the state. When you are 19 in Sycamore Hall (Styc’m more hall) listening to the biggest true gangsters in CA talking about how Snoop Dogg is full of shit, that the CPT and LBC were NOT getting together again, and things like who pulled the trigger on Tupac. Being into gangster rap and pop culture at the time, this shined a light on things for me. It was all bullshit. I was there on a “90-day option”. You go to big-boy prison and talk to a counselor and a psych. They write a report as to whether you belong there or not. During this time I saw two different attempts at what I would call “slicing a face-off”. The first was for talking/disrespecting the [group] workout and the second was a Sergeant stopping someone and searching them after chow time. If you have ever seen the movie American Me, at the end, Edward James Olmos gets shanked and thrown off of the third tier. I was about 2 cells over and one Tier down from where that was shot. Hollywood man, I couldn’t escape it.

I saw Kris come through again and got him pulled onto my crew but he got into it with one of the cops and I couldn’t control it. I went back through Delano that time.

A few months later I was out and I went back to the original 5150 in Van Nuys where I had met Rick. They let me try out at the Reseda shop and ultimately let me work at the North Hollywood shop. If you are on the West Coast and familiar with Trigz, he got shot there a few months after I ultimately left and has a really dope tribute portrait in the alley back there. I knew him in passing but not really well. He and everyone else there were always pretty good to me.

During this time Kris got out and visited me. I did a bunch of black and grey sorta traditional shit on him but a lot of that time he was nodding out. I wish I had been able to save him. To teach him to hide out from all the bullshit weighing him down in the study of art. Dreamer got out too during this time. Feeling grateful for him offering me his old equipment, I gave him a power supply, a Mickey Sharpz liner, and a Brass Swing Gate from National along with a Thunder Bird. There was some drama he got into with some people who were looking out for me and I will not say too much on that as I warned everyone on all sides that it was not going to be a fruitful partnership. That said, I do remember him telling me later that he had sat behind the shop, high, doing speedballs and tearing up because he didn’t want to come in to face me. I wish he had. I wish I could have saved him. I would have given up everything to keep a brother with me. But, he also told me I was the only one that followed through and did what I said I was going to do while I was down. You get this sort of survivor guilt. You want to help and accept everyone. But, you can’t control them. Ultimately, we are each in charge of our own destiny. We all have to accept that. It’s not that YOU can do anything. It's that everything you want to do HAS to be done by you. You can find comradery, but there is no shortcut around the personal steps you have to take and the work you have to put in to un-fuck yourself.

I had a customer I’ll never forget during my time at 5150. I would be doing the world a disservice if I didn’t bring it up. I can’t remember her name but it was a middle-aged woman getting an anklet of dead-head bears. During our conversation, she told me she was getting tattooed as a celebration of graduating college in Psychology. I thought that was cool as I had been a Sociology Major and Psychology minor previous to getting into trouble. It was only a semester but that was the goal. She told me a story about a little old man who used to teach at the university she attended. As an older student, she didn’t fit in with the rest. She would see this old man eating alone and started to eat with him on occasion. Then, one day he was gone. She didn’t think much of it until someone brought up his obituary. Turns out he had written a pretty famous book. “Man’s Search for Meaning” It was Victor Frankl. I didn’t go back and connect all of the dots, so don't ruin this for me if you know differently, but that was the conclusion we came to at the time. “Mans Search for Meaning” was a book that I read in prison. I really didn’t appreciate it at first. The whole first half of the smaller book was the man's trip through and surviving the Nazi Camps in WW2. Being in prison at the time this was not the most comfortable group of thoughts but the second half was really good. Changing perspective to ease suffering and find meaning. Essentially that’s it. But this book has continually popped up in my life. My belief is that it pops up to let me know I am on the right path. It shows up in therapist offices, on TV shows, and in self-help articles. Last week I was talking to Jake Meeks of Fireside Tattoo during a group discussion and he even quoted the book. It’s a ready I highly recommend to anyone dealing with life issues and willing to listen.

I did get busted again when I was at 5150. I was sitting in my garage smoking a bowl and heard the knock. They didn’t ever test me for weed, but the fact that I had the paraphernalia of the pipe got me another 5 months. I knew then that I couldn’t even get away with hanging out at home. By the time I got out they had no more time to fuck with me really before I was off parole. So at least that was nice.

While I was down I had some gnarly experiences for another story, however I did do this cool handkerchief for Mark Mahoney at Shamrock. On my way home I stopped by 5150. They had saved my spot even though I had told them they didn’t need to. Of course at this time loyalty was everything to me. Eventually I met and spoke with Mark Mahoney. He said “ Oh, damn, you’re white?” And invited me up to teach me how he mixed his greys. He invited me in, made me feel like it was home, asked a lot about how I was doing and how the shop was treating me. I like to think I could have dug an offer up on that day. In the end, for better or worse, I chose the loyalty. It didn’t last forever, but it felt right at the time and I’ve never regretted that. A stint at Shamrock would have been about the dopest thing I could imagine at the time though.

During this same time I started taking classes on different art topics, mostly portraiture stuff at the Westlake School of art. Also down at Coast Airbrush in Anaheim. I would say those two places opened up my mind the most when it comes to art. Just before that violation, I met Mikaela Tomassini who used to paint the storefronts for tower records. She was actually my first foray into learning about airbrushing. We sort of traded information on tools and how to use them. At the time it is always hard to appreciate the chain of events, but in retrospect, that was the universe opening doors for me. At westlake school of art I worked under Glenn Orbik, whom I love but he hated me. There is a book/event each year called Spectrum for concept art. I had one of these books at 5150 and had found 2 or three pieces from some Pulp Artist inside that were really awesome. I went to the Westlake School of art and took a class for pinups. On our first break the instructor passed around his portfolio and 2 of these pieces I had picked out from the spectrum book were his! He hated me as I would often be sleepy by the time I got from the shop, through the hot ass LA traffic to the school, Live speaking would just put me to sleep. But I would learn even as I would be drifting off, I remember him calling on me once. I had to describe the anatomy of a shadow to the class. I’m not sure how much of it I learned in his class and how much I learned reading books in jail, but I hit the nail on the head, and he was not too happy about it. The thing he taught that I will always remember….. Doing pinups is about beauty. Always Idealize. Don’t get caught up on realism when you can idealize a shape, shadow or color. Mother nature already did her thing and it’s already perfect. Focus on what YOU can do to make the shape/person/idea idealized to convey the story. Really the perfect leap from portraiture to fantasy or surrealism.

I even flew out to South Carolina to the Dru Blair School of art to learn more about color theory. I highly recommend this to anyone who has an issue with color theory or wants to become a cold-blooded-assassin with an airbrush. This was probably one of the craziest educational experiences for me. I went and stayed in this guys studio and we did a deep dive on color theory. I had read a lot up until that point, but a lot of pieces fell into place on this journey. Things look natural when a repeating texture is randomized, the color wheel is a lie, color is a lot easier to understand when you think of everything as muted or a blend and very rarely a pure color from the color wheel. My favorite story from this time was this… Dru told us he used to make 10k per painting from his agent. One time he had some left over reference photos and decided to do a painting on his own that was not commissioned. He went to sell it to his agent, but his agent told him that he had no use for it. Mind you these are paintings of realistic military equipment in action. Instead of making 10k, he spent 10k on a printer and a scanner and a booth at an upcoming military air show. On his first trip out, he said he sold 1000 prints at $80. Even if you consider that learning the machines may have had the same value as owning the machines, AND he ate the original perceived value of the painting, he would STILL be 50k to the good. This is where I started to think about the business of art. Being able to repeat a sale amongst a specific group of interested parties. Supplying the demand if you will. It took a lot of years for me to process, but that is where the foundation was laid.

When my time at 5150 came to an end. I remember driving around and ultimately meeting Baby Ray at Spotlight in Hollywood. One of my favorite connections over the years. I remember walking in and someone else, also looking for a job came in right behind me. As I tend to do I shut the fuck up while this other guy was shooting his mouth off and referring to the traditional flash on the walls as cartoons. Personally, I don’t get too caught up on labels. That said, it’s good idea not to tell the old timers that they are doing cartoons. The flash in Spotlight was all yellow. This was because it had been rescued from a shop fire back in the day. It’s history. Anyway, Baby Ray threw this guy out on his ear. I just sat and watched it and kept my mouth shut. I came back to this place every few weeks for a year before I had the opportunity to show my portfolio. At the time I ended up moving into working privately and airbrushing a ton. Painting Murals and cars and bikes, tattooing out of the saddlebags of a ‘94 FXR. It was such a struggle then but in hind sight it still seems sort of romantic. That’s where I really learned to embrace the struggle you are in. Too soon, you will be in a brand new struggle and it will be much more daunting. Having no money is one thing, having no money and kids is a whole different monster.