Home-hunting

I now have roughly 2 tattoo days a week, since I come into the shop EVERY day of the week; 5 for apprenticeship and 2 for doing tattoos on people. We really need a bigger shop so that we can all work at the same time.

We are hunting for a (in our wildest dreams) a small suburban house in downtown Davis, commercially zoned with street parking, room for a lobby/gallery in the front room, a tattoo room for Jess and I, and a piercing room for Chris. A bathroom, possibly a small office or kitchen. I personally want a little porch with jasmine or roses on it. Hah! Piercing room,...hmmm(It's funny how piercing is much more private than tattooing. Usually tattoo patrons are getting tattooed in some stage of nakedness in the middle of the room, and peircing takes place behind a closed door. Is it the instant of intense pain? Is it the subconscious feeling of a sort of penetration? Is it the body parts that get pierced?)
We are having some trouble. Even though we are as far from speed-dealing bikers as we could possibly get, the word "tattoo" freezes people...especially landlords who don't want problems. I'm not sure if they realize how much mney tattooing makes. Or maybe they do, but excpect those making the money to do shady things with it. I always joke to Jess that we should just walk around and let them see us in person; two girls with short hair, one tall and one short, with tattoos of angels, tibetan symbols, flowers, and hearts,... me in a skirt and mary-jane shoes and her in a little newsboy cap. People don't realize that most of the people that are getting tattooed are suburban-family types, moms wth kids, Christians that want crosses and praying hands, or people getting portraits of their loved ones. Jess tattooed TWO cops just in the last week. It's just the nature of our shop and our persona and our art I guess. "Normal" people feel a bit more comfortable here. And they should. I love the underground roots of tattoo in America, but tattooing should be available for everyone- as it has been in history. Safe, clean, good art, etc. It's such a egalitarian art form (I probably have more to say about this in a future post).

I'm the only one in the shop who swears and drinks*!

OK, this is funny, but if Jess and I had our way, our tattoo shop-of-dreams would look like this:


This is the Mucha-designed jewelry shop of G. Fouquet. We like the baroque, obviously. I wonder if gold stain-glass peacock furniture is hard to sterilize? Haha.


*Except right now. Trying sobriety, and deciding it RULES.