Daredevil and Fun City have a crazy full house of tattooers right now and I couldn't be happier. Mina's even sqeezing into the mix. John Raftery, Beau Brady,Diego Maninno, and JK5 have all jumped into our lineup. We are also celebrating the triumphant return of Chuck. So lots of new pictures to check out on the sites and a ton of new energy in the shops. The tattoos above are by (left to right) Diego Mannino, Chuck D, Mina (our apprentice), John Raftery, JK5, and Beau Brady.

We all know how much has changed in our little tattoo community. What used to be secret and protected is now broadcast into people's living rooms, at this point nothing's sacred. We get to share in the most intimate details of tattooers lives. Just when you think they've sqeezed all the mileage possible out of the minutia of the day to day "reality" of the life of a tattoo artist they manage to puke up yet another show (black hair, boobs, and all) for us to cringe at. Whatever, I'm over it too. But when I hear people say "real tattoo artists don't want to be on TV" I think of some pretty heavy hitters who've shown up on the boobtube and actually done us justice and then some (Mike Rubendall, Guy,Aaron, Bugs, Leo Zulueta to name just a couple) The media isn't to blame for the poor representations of tattooing and the selling out of our culture.  The blame is on the bimbos and jerks from our own community who made their way into the spotlight and made all of us look bad, or shared too much, or sold out. It all started withMiami Ink yet who would take anything away from Chris Garver for being a part of that. He's an outstanding, intelligent tattooer and conducted himself as such the whole time he was on Miami Ink. (Of course that's probably why he's not on TV anymore). 

Tattooing has chaged and no matter how much some people might want things to go backwards, it never will. The cat's out of the bag. My point in talking about all this is that I remember opening Daredevil right after the legalization of tattooing. We had two stations and two artists. Me being one of the artists. That first winter REALLY sucked. I personally was ok because luckily Ihad been working on Ludlow for a few years already so I had customers. However,  the first artist to work at the shop and the second artist to workat the shop even the 3rd and 4th weren't so lucky. There would be days at a time that they went home without doing any tattoos. To me there's nothing worse than a slow tattoo shop with artists sitting around not doing tattoos. Years later with some help from all those TV shows Daredevil and Fun City support a really large crew of tattooers. When I agree to promote my shop in the media I'm thinking of how nice it is to have a busy shop. I'm proud of how we've presented ourselves in the media over the years. And I'm proud to run a REAL tattoo shop owned and operated by REAL tattoo artists. But more than anything else I love the artists I get to work with.  I'm proud that I run a shop where somany amazing and talented people want to work. It's taken a long time but we have a really great crew. Be sure to check out all the new portfolios. 

Comments (3)

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Myke Chambers said:

I totally agree. The flood gates are open. If real tattooers don't step up then crappy douches are going to continue to make us look bad. Myke

November 01, 2010

Father Panik said:

You nailed it Michelle. Good post.

October 26, 2010

PicKaren said:

I wouldn't take that new tattoo show too seriously. It's a UK z-list 'celebrity', who has had too much plastic surgery and used to be a page 3 girl. She also did a show trying to find a husband. She ain't going anywhere near me!

October 23, 2010

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