Well crap. Life is pretty good at throwing these damn curve balls.
So I started tattooing back in the summer 1996. I started working by myself at a headshop in the suburbs of Tampa. This friend of mine Reid was an excellent tattooer and my personal motivator into the world of tattooing. As much as I wasnt his "apprentice" he would constantly help me out and give me the accurate guidance a young person would need to become a tattooer. He helped me out a lot. This would be the first of many curve balls thrown at me as he died days after I started tattooing.
It was a rough start tattooing. Even though I havent been tattooing that long the industry has changed so much and just 11 years ago the process was much harder then compared to how it is now. For instance there was no internet which is a huge platform for information on learning new lessons about tattooing and machines. It was much harder to acquire supplies as tattoo suppliers had scruples and wouldnt sell to just anyone. You had to get referrals and well it was harder as it should have been and should still be. Either way my start was rough and so very uninformed and after a minute of bull shit I quit tattooing. I start tattooing back up in 1998. I had recently married my wife cristy. I got a job offer to work in Columbus, Ohio for this random guy. i moved to Ohio and only had the job for about 3 weeks before he fired me. He never gave me a reason and its still the only job ive been fired from. I sat in at 8 Ball Tattoo for a few weeks and then Durb Morrison offered me a job at Stained Skin. That was good and i started learning more and more but Columbus wore on me and I left at which point I was offered a job at Deluxe Tattoo in Chicago to work with Ben Wahh, Dennis Halbritter, Harlan Thompson and Tim Beidron. I stayed there for 2 years and learned a ton. While I was there I was decieded that i want to move to California. My friend Jason Kundell was leaving New Skool Tattoo in San jose to open a shop with Grime in San Francisco. I ended up taking his position at New Skool and I worked there for a little over 2 years. At the time my second son was born and we were having delusions of grandeur and wanted to move back to Tampa where we had family that could potentially help us out with small things like baby sitting. So we moved to Tampa and I worked at a small street shop for a minute and the eventually opened my own shop, Redletter1 aka Shangri-la. I love my shop in Tampa...it is so perfect. After 2 years of hard work and sweat I was offered a position to work with my good friend Grime at his new shop Primal Urge. As much as i didn't want to physically move I wasn't going to pass on this golden opportunity. So we packed it up and moved. I sold portions of my studio to the guys that were working for me there, Jeff and Lucky. All that i had to do to complete the deal was to sell my house. Which seemed to be very positive but ended up being my current curve ball. I have been trying to ditch my house for 9 months now. Rent, sell, burn, whatever. Well market sucks and I cant seem to find a way out. Im just short of full scale foreclosure and I have decided that it would be best for me to move back to Tampa until I can sell it at which point I will simply move back to SF. Grime has offered to keep my position here open. I will have to come back constantly in the mean time to complete the backpiece Grime has started on me, to work on my clients and to preserve my sanity. But there you have it... wow, what a curve ball.
