Benjamin Garcia, RLn Reporter
The Museum of Latin American Art exhibit, INK: Stories on Skin, has been on display since August, and will continue through February 2019. The aim of the exhibit is to reveal the histories of the Los Angeles Harbor, i.e. the city of Long Beach, the Pike Amusement Park, the U.S. Navy, and Los Angeles Chicano culture through tattoo art.
Random Lengths News interviewed two San Pedro tattoo artists to explore their perspectives on this rich legacy and how the tattoo business has changed over time.
Tattoo community transcends racial tensions
Jimmy Carranza at San Pedro’s Sunken City Tattoo is one of those artists RLn interviewed. The Sunken City proprietor noted that due to the wealth and diversity of artistic traditions in the tattoo art community, the sharing of art and ideas is common.
Carranza was introduced to tattoo art from his home boys in East L.A. back in the 1970s. Though he has never been to prison, Carranza is most familiar with Chicano tattoo art that comes out the incarceration system.
“I kinda grew up with it,” Carranza said, “Seeing older guys doing it.”
Carranza used his self-taught experiences to break into the professional world by opening up his first shop in Long Beach. He notes that before the 1980s, tattoo art was largely the province of white biker gangs in the area.
“Any other shop that came around was a threat,” Carranza recalls. Adding that if you were within 50 miles of another shop, the rival shops would bust your shop’s windows and superglue your door locks to shut you down.
“At that time, I was the only Chicano doing it,” recalled Carranza, “They destroyed the whole shop […] but I came back. That was [happening] here in Pedro, too!”
“Back then it was the racial [tensions that divided the tattoo world].”
Carranza said these tensions are mostly gone. Latinx artists are more present in the industry today than ever before. He points to the depth and reach of talent on display in INK.
“The homie Big 5, owner of Union Electric Tattoo in Gardena, did a piece and my buddy Vero helped out doing some of the paintings. I’m very educated on the artists featured there and they all kicked ass.”
San Pedro’s Sunken City Tattoo, 601 W. 6th St., San Pedro
Tattoos go mainstream, tattooist get personal
The owner of San Pedro’s Golden Heritage Tattoo, Gabriel Gonzalez, also recalls joining the ranks of tattoo artists when tattoo art was still taboo and closely associated with bikers, gangsters and others who just wanted to stand out. He points to recent data from the Pew Research Center to suggest that things are changing.
According to Pew estimates 36 percent of people 18 to 25 years old now has at least one tattoo. Tattoos, however, are at least as prevalent among the preceding generation, Generation X, at 40 percent. These days, the San Pedro Bay area is where people go to get tattoos as fashion accessories rather than as cultural statements sometimes echoing a criminal past.
One hindrance to business is how tattoo art is in the midst of merging with technology for the purposes of marketing and design. Because of the role that social media now plays, it is necessary for most tattoo artists to be on it all the time in order to find business. They cannot just wait for customers to come in — that doesn’t work in today’s market. This is not so much a worry for Carranza and Gonzalez, who have long established relationships with clientele and work strictly by appointment.
For Carranza, tattooing has always been a time-intensive artform; but it is no longer something that “you just get off the walls now.” What he means by this is how people often come with a picture of a design on their phone and the artist has to emulate realism.
Carranza and Gonzalez have in common the attitude that such portraits are one of the hardest things to do. Both cite technical reasons for this; Carranza simply said that everyone looks different; Gonzalez said that another difficulty is the sentimental value that could be associated, adding that he talks with people as he tattoos them for hours at a time. Sometimes customers ask for portraits of dead people. It’s always hard for him to hear people’s stories.
“Plenty of people have said that I’m like a therapist,” Gonzalez remarked. He continued, “We talk, I cause you a little bit of pain, then you feel better.”
Golden Heritage Tattoo, 1212 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro
Editor’s Note — In the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor Area, there are an estimated 40 tattoo parlors, some with a connection to the diverse history of the ports and sailors, and many that have become a part of the growing trend to self-illustration via the tattoo.