What was my first Tattoo done as a "Professional?"
Story Time.
A few months after my initial training. Don had me start by tattooing a handful of the hobos that were hanging round during the beginning of my apprenticeship. These guys did odd jobs, keeping an eye on the shop, acted as our bouncers, cleaning the shop up after hours for a hot meal and a place to stay. Some of them were pretty rough characters. Listening to their stories were life re-evaluating to say the least. Names like Hop-along-Tom, Gorilla Bisquit and Indian-Joe. Until social media, I didn’t know the majority of my friends full or legal names. It’s just how it was. These guys told very colorful stories of hard lives lived. I felt completely safe with them. I knew them as friends. I trusted them. And they trusted me to do my first tattoos on them.
Working at this incarnation of Sea Tramp was truly a remarkable experience. The walls were layered thick with years of drawings and memorabilia. The lobby itself, was covered from floor to ceiling with mostly Bert Grimms work and a handful or more of other worldly tattooers flash.
Mostly all originals. Everywhere you looked, there was Art.
I don’t know what the dimensions of the shop were. But, long enough to do an eight wrap coil by hand. Starting from the front (locked) door handle to the rear of the shop and back again. It had multiple side rooms. One was Don’s personal office. The other were for private sessions or used for storage. Don Nolan had done a full scale painting of life sized hula girls that wrapped around the inside of the walk-in shower. Yes, we had a shower, a bunk bed for travelers and a common area for us and close friends.
Walking into Sea Tramp was like walking into the bowels of an ancient pirate ship.
Don was Captain of course and the rest of us, were his crew.
Just getting to the front door of the shop was a feat in itself. The streets were littered with vagrants, drug dealers, addicts, hookers, punks meandering with or without a purpose, shadowy folks lurking in doorways and feisty sailors on ship leave during certain times of the year. Not a place for an innocent person unfamiliar with this type of world to be walking around by themselves.
Most all of the tattoo shops were not elevated to the trendier parts of town like they are now.
MaryJane’s shop that is across from the Galleria, was the first attempt to open a boutique style parlor in a less seedy neighborhood that I know of during this part of my career.
So, getting to our shop, was an adventure to say the least.
Having a young suburban woman from Hillsboro enter the shop was unique.
I recall her coming into the lobby, with the door shutting the chaotic rush of the city streets behind her.
Don, told me I was up. As in, this was my first customer.
”Big eyes! Yicks."
Doing my best Don impression.
I greeted her with a warm smile and a compliment for having made it!
I asked what she wanted and after some time surveying the flash off the walls.
She chose a Chilly Willy figure.
Her name escapes me now. I am sure I have a photo of her and the tattoo somewhere in my archive. I am surprised this event still holds up in the front of my brain files.
But there she was. Wanting to make a mark to commemorate her newly found freedom from a bad relationship and initiate a reclaiming of herself.
My memory of this woman, holds to a feeling that she was like the phoenix that had risen from the ashes, a new. She had come through the veils of chaos and survived the fires.
I was happy to have helped her in her personal pursuit. And thankful to her for being my first client as a “professional” tattooer.
