The Tattoo Shop

The Shop

♦    What to expect when you walk into a shop

♦    Here is where you get your tattoo

♦    Meeting the people who will help you

♦    The different people in the shop

The tattoo shop is the heart of tattooing—it is here where the business starts. It is here where a tattooist can have a base to set up and build a career. It is a house of pain and pleasure, and, of course, a lot of coffee drinking.

Tattoo shops are really very simple places. You will use them to help you find your tattooist and your design. They are set up to run specifically to help you get your tattoo. Let’s take a deeper look at what you will find in a tattoo shop, so you will know who and what to expect.

Shop Set-Up

There is a basic layout that every tattoo shop will follow. This layout makes the tattoo shop run in an efficient and practical way. It enables you to feel comfortable when you walk in to check out the shop, and for you to feel comfortable while you are getting tattooed. There are three basic parts needed to run a tattoo shop: the front room or waiting room, the tattoo station, and the steril­ization area.

Front/Waiting Room

The first room you will walk into in a tattoo shop is the front room or waiting room. It’s very much like a doctor’s office but with more style. Every shop is different, so every waiting room will have a different flavor to it. Some shops put a lot of effort into decorating the waiting room with paintings and specialized fur­niture or designs painted on the floor. This is where most of the customizing in the shop is done, as the rest of the shop needs to be more practical. You will be able to tell the overall style of the shop by the waiting room.

Here you will have your first encounter with either a floor person or a tattooist. The waiting room or front room is, in a sense, a greeting room for you. There

will usually be couches or chairs for you to sit on while you wait or look through the portfolios. Nowadays, most shops are starting to use wire­less Internet, so if you have a laptop you can surf the Internet while you wait.

Most shops will not allow customers to bring food into the wait­ing room. It is mainly a cleanliness issue. It’s not a good idea to have a front waiting room of a tattoo shop smelling like fast food. It would make the shop seem like an unclean and unsafe place to get a tattoo. Usually a drink with a closed lid is fine. You will want to drink some water while you are getting tattooed, anyway; getting tattooed makes you kind of thirsty.

Flash Locations

The front room or waiting area is Many shops will have all the flash This way more than one person can look through it at once. Flash can also be mounted on the wall like wall­paper. This is a good effect because you can stand in one position and examine the dif­ferent designs without anyone getting in your way.

Shops will generally have lots of flash for you to choose from. Many shops will have so much that they have to keep the extra flash in books. These are usually located within view on a table or desk in the room. They are usually labeled with the contents, so you can easily find what you are looking for. In more customshops, where the tattooists prefer to draw tattoos, they will often still have some flash kept in a flash book.For pricing of the different designs, some shops have developed a system of numbering and lettering, which will enable you to fig­ure out how much your tattoo will cost without having to talk to someone. This works best if you are in a very busy shop and the tattooists are overwhelmed. Usually there is a chart on the shop wall that explains how to price tattoos. However, many shops still rely on pricing each tattoo individually. When that is the case, you will need to speak to someone about pricing.

As the computer era is slowly coming of age in the tattoo shop, computers have begun to take the place of flash racks and flash books. This is a great system, as it enables you to search through numerous designs, many more than a shop could fit on the wall. Another advantage is that when you have made your selection, the tattooist can probably print it out, saving time on setting up.

Portfolios

As we have seen throughout the book, portfolios are the repre­sentation of each tattooist. These are generally kept in the front waiting room. They should be somewhere very noticeable such as

at a front desk or coffee table. Sometimes a shop will keep them behind the front desk and only take them out when asked to. This usually occurs in a very busy shop where clients don’t ask to see the portfolios or if the shop has had a portfolio stolen in the past.

As with the flash designs, some shops are now using computer screens to showcase the different tattooists’ portfolios. With a computer, you can take a look at the different artists’ work with­out having to wait for someone else to finish a certain portfolio.

It can make it a little more convenient for everyone involved in the process.

Tattoo Station

The tattoo station is where the magic happens. This is where you will be tattooed. Tattoo stations will differ from tattooist to tat- tooist and from shop to shop. Some tattoo stations are set up so that they each consist of a separate individual room. This is nice for privacy and can make it easier to concentrate when you are getting tattooed. Many shops are set up with individual booths that have about a 4-foot-high wall separating each other. This provides separation but still allows for airflow and the ability to see who is coming in and out of the shop. A popular and easy way

to set up a shop is to place stations around a large, open room. You will be able to see what other people are getting tattooed as well as possibly spark up a conversation with a fellow client.

The tattoo stations may be set up differently but they all have the same basic ingredients. There will sometimes be a sink nearby for easy access to water. The tattooists will keep their machines here as well as all the other necessary tools of the trade that you saw in Chapter 5. You may be able to see some drawings taped to the wall that the tattooist has drawn for other customers’ tattoos or just for fun.

A tattoo station will usually have at least two chairs, usually with wheels on the bottom to allow for easy maneuvering during the tattoo. Some shops like to have the client sit in a barber’s chair or a dentist’s chair. These chairs can be adjusted to fit the situation of the tattoo. A massage table will also be near, just in case you need to lie down for the tattoo.

Many tattooists will decorate their station with different kinds of collections. You may find yourself staring at a Star Wars figure collection or a Todd McFarlane figure collection. Many tattoo- ists will collect paintings or prints from other tattooists and hangthem by their station. In addition, most tattooists will have a large collection of ref­erence books.With all this stuff by the station, there may not be enough room for more than one friend to watch you get tattooed. With all the action of a busy shop, sometimes there isn’t even enough room for that person. Don’t worry, though; getting tattooed is not that bad, especially if it’s your first one.

Drawing Room or Back Room

In many shops, there will be a back room or drawing room that may be off-limits to the customer. Drawing a tattoo design can take a lot of concentration, so it’s important to let the artists do their thing uninterrupted. Some tattooists will have you stay there to check out how the drawing is coming along, or to help guide them to make the process go faster. Drawing rooms will usually have a small reference library to help the tattooist get the job done right.

Many times a back room is where the people who work in the shop eat their various meals of the day. Some shops will have a small refrigerator, coffee machine, or water dispenser in the back room. Often the photocopier and stencil machine will be housed there, too, along with the shop computer. All shops run a little differently but they all have the same basic components.

The Sterilization Area

One of the most important parts of the shop is the sterilization area. Without this area, the shop would not be able to clean the equipment and would be shut down. This is where the dirty work is done and then sterilized. Here the shop brings all of its contami­nated tools after each use, such as dirty needles and used tubes. The needles are put in the sharps container while the tubes are either placed in a tub of water to soak or in an ultrasonic cleaner.

There will always be a sink in the sterilization area, which will be used to dispose of the water used to clean the tubes in order to change colors during your tattoo. The tubes will also be scrubbed in this sink. Although the sink is sterilized with some form of sur­face sterilizer such as Matacide, it’s a good idea to never use the sink in the sterilization area for other purposes. Even the people who work in the shop always consider this sink contaminated and off-limits to everything but contaminated tattoo equipment.

The autoclave will be in the sterilization area, ready to sterilize all the used equipment. In this area are also the supplies needed to run the autoclave such as autoclave bags and distilled water. Sometimes shops will keep all of the other cleaning supplies here, too, such as extra paper towels or gallons of green soap.

The People

Tattoo shops generally operate with a very low number of people. Sometimes one tattooist will open up a tattoo shop and run it by himself without the assistance of a floor person or manager. Larger and busier shops will try to support as many tattooists as they can to make more money.

When working with a small number of people, it is easy for lives to intertwine. Often the people working together in a shop will form a kind of family bond. They get to know each other well by sharing their problems and helping each other out. They all want you to get a good tattoo so you will show other people and send more people their way. Let’s look at the different people who you will find in a tattoo shop.

Floor Person

The first person who will take care of you in a tattoo shop will be the floor person. He will be the first person you meet. He can help you find what you are looking for and guide you along the way. He will be the medium between you and the tattooist and should be able to answer most of your questions. The floor person is also the one who will set you up with an appointment and take deposits for designs.

A good floor person will also take care of the tattooists in the shop so that the tattooists can put all of their energy into making sure your tattoo is perfect. The floor person will be the one to get things for the tattooists such as coffee or lunch. He can also set up the tattoo station for your tattoo while the tattooist is resting or drawing your tattoo. After the tattoo is complete, a good floor person will clean up the area and reset it for the next tattoo.

It is often the floor person’s job to make sure the shop is clean and sterile. He will take care of the bathroom and make sure the floors are mopped daily. The sterilization of the equipment is also part of his job. He will scrub the tubes and make sure the auto­clave is running properly.

This all may sound like a lot of work and it is, but don’t worry, it comes with benefits. The benefit of being a floor person is usually getting free tattoos. Also, most shops don’t open until noon, so they get to sleep in.

Not all tattoo shops have a floor person to take care of the cus­tomers. Sometimes the tattooist will have to take care of all of the floor person’s duties. It’s usually in busier shops that a floor person is needed so that the tattooists can do their jobs without distraction.

Piercer

Some tattoo shops have a piercer. This is the person who takes care of you if you want to get pierced. Some piercers will branch out and do other forms of body modification; it’s not all belly but­tons and tongues for these piercers. Many will do branding, where the skin is burned with a hot or super-cooled piece of metal or a cauterizer to leave a scar in some design or pattern. The more skilled piercers will do surgical implants, meaning they insert an object under the skin to create a certain shape or design. Many piercers will be part of what are called suspensions. A suspension is the process of inserting hooks into the flesh of specific places on the body in order to be raised up to hang by the hooks. This creates a rush of adrenalin that some people enjoy. Many people find it a very unique experience. For more on the subject

Not all piercers are into all of this body modification. Many pierc­ers will act as the floor person if they aren’t busy. It can also be that the floor person just knows how to do small, average pierc­ings like eyebrows and nostrils, and for them, piercing is just for a little cash on the side and to take care of the few customers who come in and want it done.

Apprenticeship

Every tattooist has to start somewhere. The best way for a person to learn how to tattoo properly is to become an apprentice.

An apprenticeship is like college for a tattooist. Not all colleges are great and not everyone can get into every college. It’s impor­tant for an aspiring tattooist to find a mentor who can teach her all she needs to know, because it will affect her tattoo career in the long run.

An apprentice should be able to draw well and have some form of art background. She must already have started collecting tattoos and continue to get them so she can watch and learn. Learning about the history of tattooing and being interested in what is cur­rent in the industry is important as well.

An apprentice will do all the jobs the floor person does, but usually for free. She gets paid through whatshe is learning. The harder she works, the more she will learn in an ideal situation. In most situations, the apprentice will be tattooed for free so that she can watch and learn. The whole process usually lasts for at least one year before find­ing a job at another shop or starting to tattoo clients in the shop she learned in.

Tattooist

As you already know, the tattooist will be the person tattooing you. He is the whole reason you are there. If there is a really good floor person in the shop, the sole job of the tattooist is to draw and tattoo. If there is no floor person, then the tattooist must clean all of his own equipment and make sure the shop is clean.

A tattooist also needs to take care of advertisement, as far as get­ting cards and stickers printed. He will often draw all of the propaganda that comes from the shop. T-shirts and bumper stickers usually come from the hands of the tattooist. (Some of them even find time to put together books.) Websites also need to be kept up on, so that you can see the newest tattoos done at the shop.

Inkformation

The Least You Need to Know

• ♦   The front room or waiting room is where you will be greeted and where you will be able to look through portfolios and the different tattoo designs.
• ♦   All shops are set up differently and each tattooist will set up their tattoo station to how they work.
• ♦   Everyone who works at a tattoo shop is their to help you get your tattoo.