FEATURE ARTICLE — September 1999
ED HARDY'S TATTOO BEAT
ENDURANCE AND RESPECT
I don't go to many conventions these days, but recently I participated in Crazy Philadelphia Eddie's Tattoo Arts Festival in his hometown. The focus of the show was to gather together and honor a pack of true Old School New York tattooers. These guys worked on the Bowery in Coney Island, near Madison Square Garden and other action spots around the city prior to tattooing being outlawed in NYC in 1961. My friend, Mike McCabe, worked for years to gain the trust of these people. He conducted an amazing series of interviews to document their stories, which we published in 1997 as New York City Tattoo: The Oral History of an Urban Art. Eddie was one of the tattooers in the book and he managed to bring together other interviewees to recount their stories, sign books and expose the younger generation to the tattoo world of those days.
It was a rare treat to meet all these men and hear their stories. Although I am a California guy, the tattoo world they inhabited was not much different from Bert Grimm's where I hung out as a kid. In the mid-'50s the Long Beach Pike was our West Coast version of Coney Island, a world light years away from today's sophisticated and diversified tattoo scene—authentically counterculture, difficult to enter, with closely held methods of workmanship and a fierce pride of individuality. The aura of secrecy, wildcatting and "the forbidden," along with the mesmerizingly powerful designs, were all part of the old art's allure.
It was gratifying to see the enthusiasm and positive response of so many people in Philadelphia. Ten or 15 years ago, there wasn't much interest in the history or roots of tattooing in Western society, as people clamored to get on the Tribal bandwagon. The East Coast has always clung to a solid American look in terms of designs and technique, and now worldwide interest has finally come around for both the style and the people who established the tradition. What made the gathering in Philly so unique was that this is the last surviving group of tattooers from a specific era and place. Their West Coast and Midwest counterparts Bert Grimm, Owen Jensen, Bob Shaw, Colonel William Todd, Amund Dietzel, Tatts Thomas—are all gone.
There were good and bad things about the way the business operated then, and positive and negative aspects have been amplified 10,000-fold in the current world tattoo craze. For me, the only thing off-kilter during those bygone days was the emphasis on the blood-and-thunder gore. Granted, the tough atmosphere was an indelible part of tattooing in NYC back then, and for these guys it was like being in the trenches in wartime. Like many veterans who saw active duty, the tough times were a high point in their lives, when the adrenaline really flowed. But there's a disturbing tendency among certain younger tattooers who are imitating what they perceive as the old-school way. Many work harder at affecting the dress, speech and flash designs from that era than actually improving their tattooing. One high-profile California poser is quick to shoot his mouth off about what he thinks the hard and fast "rules of the game" are and enjoys bullying the female tattooers where he works, since he believes women don't belong in tattooing. Meanwhile, he's only been around a few years, and his work is C-level at best. But he's too engrossed in playing wannabe tough guy to pay attention to that. This stooge is lucky it really isn't the old days. Someone like Millie Hull, a hard-bitten female Bowery tattooer, would have bounced his sorry ass out.
It's important to give our predecessors their due, and the wild-and-wooly situations are a kick to hear. But what keeps the art moving forward is learning from and building on the past, not wallowing in misperceived nostalgia. Better to celebrate the tenacity of the pioneers. Despite the beefs, they put in the ink and got the cash. They understood their equipment, did work that was solid and strong (based on good shading), and endured with close-knit ties of friendship, respect and shared outlook. Surviving in this business is not an easy thing. The authentic experience of learning from worthwhile teachers goes way beyond surface effects and empty bragging. As in the old Asian proverb: "Those who know, don't say, and those who say, don't know."
—Don Ed Hardy