Our company history starts back in 1984 when I served my second apprenticeship at the Seattle Tattoo Emporium under P.A.Stephens and Danny Danzl . That's when I really learned to tattoo correctly, as it was my second apprenticeship. My first was under a tattooist named Bud Craig up in Anchorage in 1974. Bud was a second generation tattoo artist, his father had been a tattooist out of New Orleans at a shop named "Tom & Jerry's". Apparently it was slightly infamous, according to Bud.

It seems he came home from school one day to find the family tattoo shop being raided by the New Orleans Police, for what he never told, and his father throwing him over the fence to the alley behind all the while yelling "Get your ass out of here as far as you can go from here boy!.." with Bud sitting on the ground on the other side of the fence in the alley with a couple of trunks stuffed with tattoo equipment on his lap, after being thrown by his father. Well obviously Bud managed to get away, dragging those trunks and himself right out of New Orleans and he took his father's orders to get "as far away.." as he could to heart and ended up about as far as you can get away, my home town of Anchorage, Alaska. At any rate, I realized after working with Bud for a few years that, tattooing was way more advanced than he had taken me thus far. So off to Seattle I went, and with the luck of the irish, I was able to land work and new training, at the world famous Seattle Tattoo Emporium under the master tattooist P.A. Stephens .

After working at the Emporium for a couple of years,(which was by far the most learning I've ever done about tattoo, with the shop's rich history and deep roots in the biz) I went to Tacoma and got to work with second generation tattooist Rio DeGennaro , son of Lew Lewis of Bert Grimm's tattoo on the Pike in Long Beach Ca. Working with Rio was a great experience and I'll never forget it. Rio now works in Portland Ore. with Don Deaton at ironically enough, Bert Grimm's old oregon shop, Sea Tramp tattoo.

In 1988 P.A. bought the Everett Wa. "Ancient Art" shop from J.D.Crowe, who had Rollo and Terry Tweed working it at the time.P.A. changed the name to "Everett Tattoo Emporium" and moved me in as the shop manager. I got to work for a few weeks with Terry Tweed, Rollo,and the infamous "Scary Dave Shore" in the beginning and then alone for a few months, until I built up a crew at the shop to help out. At around the spring of 1991 our screen-printing shop (that P.A. and I owned) got a big order for concert shirts from Soundgarden (the Seattle band) and after buying some new equipment I asked P.A. to buy me out and got my grubstake to move the family to my ancestral home of Alaska!

It was in Anchorage that the company took on it's feel and "way of doing things" that lives on today, with at one point over the seven years there,growing to two shops and a combined crew of 5 tattooists and three piercers. Alaska was great and we had many tattoo guest artists come up there and sit in with us, Marcus Pacheco, Liora Mugrabi, Tony Callan, and more, just to name a few. After seven years though, we tattooed just about everyone we could in Anchorage, and waiting for new skin to move to town or come of age is no way to run a business....so it's off to the states again!

This time I moved to Bremerton,Wa. across the water from Seattle. I picked Bremerton because I've always liked the way the town is loaded with trees and is right on the water with water running through it , bridges and all. I'm a sucker for the sea! The fact it has a large Navy base here don't hurt, and it's a beautiful ferry ride on the water to Seattle,just about the best city on the left coast as far as I'm concerned! I've been here for about 9 years now, gone through just about everything. Grief from loss of life, had a crew jump ship, lost some friends and made some new ones..and weathered the opening of about a dozen new tattoo shops in an area that can effectively support maybe two.....and yet I'm still here and still the only all custom tattoo artist in the area. And so it goes..........