Street Style

The Good Ink

In a city of over 19 million people, and being a global hub of the arts world,  it’s a given that much of the world’s top tattoo talent would be concentrated in NY. Shops such as Last Rites, Flyrite, Invisible, Saved, Funcity, Fineline and Daredevil house some of the world’s top artists, often with almost legendary wait lists. Although it was never actually enforced, tattooing was prohibited til 1997 and consequently, tattooers were operating underground. They worked mostly by mouth, or strangely enough, old timers such as Mike Bakaty at Fineline, put small ads in local rags, while  Jonathon Shaw defiantly put home-made advertising signs up in public spaces.  Since being legalized, tattoo shops have mushroomed all over the State, however, as with any city, there is the upper echelon, and the mediocre.  Most artists agree that there is more of a community feel in NY rather than other American cities where the atmosphere is more territorial and competitive. Out of this healthy tattooing scene comes some of the world’s best talent and the NY tattooing scene has a unique mix of European, West Coast and Japanese influence. Here follows a who’s who of

INVISIBLE

Invisible, headed by Troy Denning, is a somewhat high brow tattoo studio and art gallery in a stellar lower east side location and employs some of the best artists in the industry. The place is slick and clean, and the gallery constantly shows the work of various contemporary, urban artists. True to the title, the tattooing takes place behind a wall, which retains it’s exclusive feel- it definitely hasn’t got the walk-in feel of a tattoo “shop”, as the tattoo shop itself, is more or less, invisible. The concept, according to Troy is to “have an appointment only art gallery/ tattoo studio, to bring other elements of activity and art into the fold. We still adhere to the same principal of keeping it exclusive, and keeping the standards as high as possible,…we don’t try and please everybody.” Despite the exclusive reputation, the artists were some of the most friendly that we encountered.
 
Troy himself has been tattooing for 17 plus years, moving to NY in 1999 from SF after the ban was lifted. His work is a result of years travelling Europe and Japan,  and is considered one of America’s best for Japanese art styles - to the degree that Japanese clients fly in get tattooed by him. Troy’s first recollection of a tattoo was seeing the movie Kungfu, at age 7 which inspired crayola sessions on his arm. He started doing handmade tattoos at age 13, and in his early 20s got professionally tattooed, and got to know other tattooers. He started working on his friends, and “general misfits of society at this random walk-in shop”. 

He says of the NY scene “I would hold NY up against any city in the world for strength of tattooers. If you go out to an average night in a NY city bar there might be more good tattooers at that bar than in many tattoo conventions. NYC has got it…”

Paul Booth/ Last Rites

No one even vaguely familiar with tattooing needs an introduction to this legendary custom shop. Headed by Paul Booth, the reigning master of dark and horror imagery, with his trade mark black and gray style, saying  
”I appreciate the extreme in anything.” Despite his fan base, including a lengthy list of celebrity clientele, Paul Booth himself, is disarmingly polite and down to earth.

He is also famed for being the  first tattoo artist to be accepted into the elitist National Arts club, having both an exquisite talent for both skin and canvas as surfaces. He is also responsible for the arts collaboration project Art Fusion experiment, alongside Filip Leu and Guy Aitchison. His website has a loyal gathering of followers, and has a community where members can mingle with “like-minded people”.

The studio has to be seen to be believed. Its outward appearance is of a gigantic crypt, and houses a theatre, and an expansive art gallery filled with “outsider” art such as  Giger and Michael Hussar amongst others. It is an impressive converted loft space that lives up to its macabre image.

“We present art from the heavy hitters of the outsider art world, and showcase a lot of art that is inaccessible to a lot of people. The outsider art genre is growing into a movement, artists that were previously getting a thousand for art are now getting 15 thousand, over the past several years, this is what is happening” says Booth.

Whilst the line-up at Last Rites has changed, with a new roster of talent, the shop remains true to its reputation with top tier artists who excel in dark arts. Fans will be pleased to know that he will going to tour heavily next year, with 8 or 9 expected shows on his agenda.

Fineline

If you want a tattoo experience that screams authenticity, a visit to Fineline, NY’s oldest tattoo street shop, is a serious cultural experience. Mike Bakaty is an old school tattooing legend, having worked the entirety of the prohibition era. His shop is adorned with his own flash, and his son Mehai Bakaty tattoos alongside him. Oozing positivity and genuinely a lovely person, with an irrepressible love of tattooing he quips “It’s the only art form that left that has power and mystery to it!”.

He got his first tattoo at the age of 13, “spurred by boredom” in the early 1950s in Miami by a tattooist called Stitch, which cost him “50 or maybe 75 cents”. He started tattooing professionally in 1976 out of his loft in the Bowery, and tells us, “What got me interested, was number one, that it was a dying art, and secondly whenever I asked any tattooers any questions about anything, they would shut up, they would tell me nothing. The less they told me the more interested I became, so here I am 30 odd years later. “

Mike continues, “One of my early mentors gave me great advice; Always be considerate of a sterile chain of events, to do my own flash, and don’t fall victim to hollow praise. Everyone wants to think that they got tattooed by the greatest tattooer in the world, and they aren’t afraid to tell you so, but if you buy into that you wont experience anything greater than that”

While Mike tells me that when he started there wasn’t 500 shops in the whole of America, being a” really specialized area of graphic expression”, he has mixed feelings about its current popularity: “It has brought amazing artists, unimaginable in the 70s, but at the same token you can buy a whole tattoo shop in the back of a magazine, along with a book of instructions”. He adds with his trademark positivity,  “In the end it makes work for us… fixing them up and covering them up! I don’t think it’s lost any of its mystique though, I think the popularity is great”.

Elio Espana at Flyrite

Elio is an old school legend that is highly respected in the scene, and has a following of loyal customers who come to him for his bold yet simple tattoos, and is renowned as capable of anything: portraits, Japanese, old school, with good clean designs, longevity and good workmanship. 
 
He started drawing flyers in the lower East side for bands, and was involved in the 80s hardcore scene, which had bands such as Agnostic Front, Cro mag, and Murphy’s Law at the forefront. For a while he was tattooing kids who were lined up outside Vinny Stigmas apartment.  
 
”I came back from England in the late 70s. There was a punk rock explosion with a lot of crazy tattoos going on over there. After that I was in the military and got my first tattoo. As soon as I got out in the early 80s, there was a huge NY hardcore punk rock thing going on, and I just jumped right into that. I was hanging out at CBGBs, I was playing in a band with a friend of mine, and I ended up tattooing him. The next thing you know I was tattooing all these punks and skins”. 
 
His history is indicative of the leniency of the prohibition laws, with Flyrite opening a year before it was legalised in 1996. Like other underground tattooists in the prohibition days, he was working out of an apartment, with a tell-tale swallow sticker out the front.  Ironically the police themselves were getting tattoos of their daughters names, and portraits of family by him. “If something was going to happen, which it didn’t, they would warn me in advance”. 
 
While he never had an apprenticeship, he had some top mentors: “I was working with a guy called Tony, an old timer who used to tattoo in the city before it became illegal, i mean its legal now but it was illegal for many years, and he kind of showed me a lot of how to build machines. I was working with Shotsie in Jersey and getting tattooed by Jack Rudy and asking a lot of questions, and that is how I learnt; by getting tattooed an asking a lot of questions.” 
 He follows on 
”As for trends, I think it depends on where you are at. I was in Jersey and in the early 80s there was a lot of fine line wizards, dragons, crystal balls, then later on this funky kind of old school, new school, I don’t know what kind of school it is anymore, then chrome stuff, everything was chromed out for a while, then tribal, tribal chrome, it goes on and on and on. Nowadays, a lot more people are getting traditional style tattooing which when back when I started was like ‘why do you want to get that?, I want fine lines and lots of shading’ this kind of thing, so views of tattooing have changed a lot over the years.”

Tim Kern, Tribulation Tattoo

Tim Kern is an artist  known for his realistic horror tattoos, and macabre designs -in his words, “the more fucked up the better”. One of the most popular artists of the NY tattooing scene, and formerly of the legendary shop Last Rites, he now has his own shop, Tribulation, in Manhattan’s East Village which will no doubt be an instant success with it’s A-class line up of talent.

He tells us when we catch up with him at his Brooklyn home - a Bates Motel style abode on a leafy street - “I really like doing horror imagery–realism… I enjoy most things that I don’t get asked for a lot. .. I also like doing things which really seem like ridiculous ideas at first, but will look good when tattooed”.

His tattoos are a result of his brilliant artistic ability, on parallel with the low brow artists of whom he is a fan of: Trevor Brown, Mark Ryden, Sas Christian, Alex Grey, Lori Earley, Travis Louie, and  Audrey Kawasaki.

“I learned to tattoo by a guy who went by the name of  “Spider”, in Columbia, Missouri. He was a Navajo punk rocker. He was really cool and I’m grateful for the chance he gave me–he taught me to like Jägermeister early on as part of my apprenticeship as well… haha. ”

His schedule seems to keep him almost constantly on the road, from Canada, Ohio, California, Georgia, Paris, London, Barcelona, St. Louis to Tokyo he is a popular face, and is a popular artist with the ladies, having tattooed 25 Suicide Girls, and recently designed the tattoos in an upcoming Charlie Kaufman flick, which had him going under the needle by Jennifer Jason Leigh offset.

More of NY Tattoo to follow shortly…