It’s really taken off.”ĭean Dennis from Dean’s Tattoo Headquarter, another veteran at the show, was one of the impressed ones. It’s amazing what’s happened, especially in the last five to ten years. We both did portraits there and blew everyone away. Back then, there was like one convention per year. I remember going to a convention in Sacramento in 1980. “Jack Rudy and I introduced black and grey portrait tattooing to the world in 1977. As it turns out, one of the first tattoo artist to start doing portraits is at the convention, namely Freddy Negretti at Mark Mahoney’s Shamrock Social Club in Hollywood. Suddenly the area around the stage is filled with bare male backs, mostly covered in realistic tattoos. The style of tattoos varies a lot, as Baba pointed out, but one of the contests on Saturday attracts a surprising amount of participants, Best Black and Grey Big. Saturday is the most crowded day, but it never gets unbearable like at some other shows. The Cow Palace is never really packed with people. Unfortunately there are no lawyers present at the Cow Palace this time – or travel agents, for that matter. Sometimes, you can go into a place and people often think “Who’s this guy?”, but if the lawyer or travel agent has tattoos, he’s going to be cooler about it.” “Some of them look down on tattooed people so we invite tattooed lawyers. “We’ve had lawyers who strictly defend tattoo companies”, Baba tells me. Other tattoo related businesses at the different shows includes after care companies and, maybe more unexpected, lawyers. We also have clothing companies, often started by wives or girlfriends of tattoo artists.” “We black out the porn and we just want to show that nowadays tattoos are for everybody, not just sailors. “It’s very family orientated”, he tells me. They feel free to show off their bodies.”ĭespite the presence of Burning Angel and the Best Orgasm contest, Baba still feels it’s a convention for the whole family: If you look around at a convention you see people walking around in their underwear or with their tops off. People who are into tattoos are normally exhibitionists. “First of all, I think tattoos are sexy and two cultures have many similarities. At the conventions she sells movies, posters, photos, and she sees a clear connection between her line of work and tattoos. Burning Angel is a porn company where most employees are tattooed. In the booth next to Vintage Tattoo sits Joanna Angel, the owner of one of the tattoo related companies that attends many of these conventions. In San Francisco they’re more open to all that perverted stuff.” In Chicago, however, where we used to have a convention as well, they didn’t get it at all. The guys from China love that and it works well here in San Francisco. We also have the contests for Best Ass and Best Orgasm where people come up and fake orgasms. “Usually a kid wins the contest for Best Stud”, Baba says with a smile. Yes, it is.” Key word number three, weird. He presents himself as “Crazy” and he’s the presenter during the contests “I think it’s Best Stud today”, he says. We do, however, have competitions to hype up the crowd before the tattoo contests… ‘Hey Crazy! What’s the weird thing we have today?’” Down one of the aisles comes a man in shades and long white, braided hair underneath a bandana and a black top hat. Other conventions have burlesque shows, concerts, hot rod shows and so on, but not us. “We always try to give the customer as much value for his or her money as possible, but it’s all tattoo related. The idea is to show off many different styles on a large scale.” Which brings us key word number two, variety. At the time I had a column called “The Gospel According To Baba” in the magazine so they turned Megaproductions on to me since I’ve been tattooing since the 80’s. “Megaproductions is a company who puts on large productions of any kind and they wanted a large scale tattoo convention. At least according to Baba at Vintage Tattoo in Los Angeles, the main sponsor of the show: It’s even bigger than this one!”Īs the guy in the smoking area outside the Cow Palace points out, big is a key word when talking about this specific chain of conventions that are held twice annually in San Francisco and Pomona, and once a year in Arizona, San Diego and Houston. "You should go to the convention in Pomona. Porn, best stud and orgasm-contests and still family orientated? The Tattoo Body Art Expo in San Francisco is just one of seven on the tour of Megaproductions gigantic shows in the American tattoo world and its goal is to be big, varied and weird…
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