DAN SANTORO: I grew up in Woodbridge, New Jersey.
I was paying for community college and it wasn't much, it
was like $800 a semester.
And to me it was like, what a waste of my fucking money.
So I dropped out and then I started working as a sign
painter for Wegmans in upstate New York, sort of gourmet
grocery store.
And they were looking for someone to do
hand painted signs.
I had all these countless amounts of like paint markers
and stuff at my disposal.
So I would just come in and then I'd spend the rest of the
day drawing friends' tattoos too at the time.
Like a lot of people were having friends be like, oh Dan
draws, you know like draw me that tree.
BERT KRAK: Well we've all been friends with
Dan for a long time.
I kind of always knew that eventually we would work
together because he has the same ideas all of us as far as
what a tattoo should look like.
He really enjoys painting and creating new stuff.
We don't want to keep pulling the same things out of the
same books.
But if we take those same things and repaint them
ourselves, well then it kind of does become a different
thing, it becomes our own.
I say this is how we keep our skills sharp.
STEVE BOLTZ: You know the flash at Smith Street, there's
certain shops, aesthetics, obviously that
we're trying to emulate.
The whole idea of it being crushed in flash is like-- and
that's a more old school approach to a tattoo shop.
Well there was a shop in China called Swallow Tattoo, there's
photos of this guy Swallow.
He was a Chinese tattooer standing in the shop.
And I mean everything is covered in flash, I mean like
the front of everything, little spots, like this little
side of the fridge would have designs all down it,
everything was covered in flash.
I just think it's such a good look.
I mean obviously you're in a tattoo shop, it
should look like that.
You know what I mean?
I think that place is kind of exactly what we want Smith
Street to look like.
So that anywhere you turn, you see a tattoo design, and then
are still thinking about tattoos.
Like tattoo heads get it, or they understand this is hand
painted Flash, and that there is sort of tattooing revival.
But like regular people who just walk into the shop, like
I think to them it's sort of run of the mill.
And actually we get reggies in there sometimes and say that,
like this is all hand painted by the four of us.
And they can't even wrap their heads around it.
Like what do you mean, like you painted it?
What do you mean you painted it?
Like with a brush and paper, they can't even fathom that.
DAN SANTORO: This whole wall at this point is 100% us.
Like this set, which actually turned out to be this entire
row, Eli had done the first three.
He had done the parrots, the eagles, and I think the owl.
So he did these little triptychs of like three
different birds.
And then Steve kind of followed his lead I think
first, if I'm not mistaken.
Right?
So then he did like these sets of pin-ups, and then I
followed him, and then Burt, and so on.
I did the roses, Burt did the geishas, and Eli did
crosses, and so on.
And then eventually it was like, oh we might as well just
do the whole row.
If you were actually here to see how much we talk and argue
about where sheets going to go, it's just stupid.
And then it will last like that for a week until someone
does another sheet, and then everybody sits on the couch,
stares at the wall and says, All right what's going in
next, or where is this one going, or whatever.
ELI QUINTERS: I don't know of any other shops in New York
that do all their own stuff.
Aaron Coleman I know in Arizona, that shop's all their
own hand-painted stuff.
And I think Black Heart has recently done a bunch of flash
for their shop as well.
But I mean it's a pretty rare thing really.
And it's kind of funny when you think about it, you know
it's been so advantageous for us to have it.
And it's been so fun to do it, it's really worked out.
But not a lot of people do it.
It's one of those things.
Tattooing goes through those stages, sort of coming out of
real big custom lonely stage.
Or it's getting back into people who are realizing they
can pick something off the wall and if somebody does
happen to have the same design it doesn't necessarily mean
anything bad.
You now what I mean?
Like certain designs are just classic.
STEVE BOLTZ: Oh I have to have something custom.
You know if it's on the wall then it's very common and
everybody has that.
I want something that's unique.
But let's face it, the most unique tattoos are always the
ones that suck the most.
The best tattoos are the ones you've seen a million times.
There's strength in that crawling panther
because you know it.
Whether you have tattoos or ever been in a tattoo shop
that has power, I think that it's
recognizeability, it's iconic.
I think it's up to the tattoo artist to save the customer
from themselves.
In other words, like when I first got into tattoos and I
knew nothing about them, I thought the
ugliest shit was so cool.
People come in and they want something bad.
It's kind of our job to say, hey, you know what, like, we
can give you something better, or every other teenage girl
comes in asking for that tattoo, are you
sure you want that.
ELI QUINTERS: You have to sort of educate or otherwise you
just come off like a dick.
You're just like, no, you got to tell them why the design
won't work.
You've got to explain to them what looks better.
A lot of the customer's hold on to it and they think about
it, and they apply that to their next tattoo.
BERT KRAK: I think we want for our customers to stay focused
on what they see and hear.
I don't really think there's one design in here that any of
us would be upset with tattooing.
Well actually there's one design that we all hate in the
shop, Dan loves it.
That band design.
STEVE BOLTZ: It can be a little confusing and a little
bit overwhelming to a reggie to come in there and see all
that flash.
And then a lot of it looking very classic and then yes,
there's like a sheet painted on cardboard.
There's sheets in there and designs in there, that
obviously we think are amazing, that are very foxy,
very simple, and clunky, or whatever.
And Dan's sheets are good examples of that.
He does some really experimental--
he manages to stay very traditional and very by the
book, but just completely off the wall at the same time in
imagery that you might not necessarily see on every
tattoo sheet.
ELI QUINTERS: And he gets a little more creative with it,
their very unique, and very clever, and very like well
thought out.
He's got one design, the great mother.
It's like a crystal with a little person inside of it,
and it's so weird, I've never seen
anything like it anywhere.
But it's so smart, you know what I mean, the way he used
color in it, the way some of the color doesn't go all the
way up to the lines.
Dan's much more studied in the folk arts then I am.
He really enjoys folk art all across
the board, most cultures.
So I think he really knows how to make tattoo flash look like
that, look like very genuine like folk art.
STEVE BOLTZ: We all buy obviously a lot of books and a
lot of tattoo related books.
And Dan definitely brings in books that we don't expect,
that have great imagery in them, that are not tattoo
related all.
And I think also it's like he's sort of
searching those sources.
Obviously the recycled imagery we love and is powerful.
But we're also always constantly
looking for one new design.
DAN SANTORO: I'd really like to talk about this.
This is a drawing from the little Korean woman at the
local bodega.
She draws these things on the sides of cigarette cartons.
I just think they're super cool, like this little old
Korean woman that just peddles cigarettes and like it's a
little piece of outsider art in Carroll Gardens that a lot
of people don't even pay attention to.
I actually wouldn't mind turning that in to a sheet of
flash at some point.
BERT KRAK: Dan's process is more I think where he won't
come to us with it.
He'll start it or finish it and then present it to us.
I think it was last summer he started doing these really
loose super kind of folk art style paintings, that were
totally different for all of us, none of us had ever really
tried to do anything like that before.
And I think he really kind of blew us all way with that.
Just from him doing that it kind of like helped all of us
to do things a little bit looser.
The paper wasn't even really watercolor paper, it was just
some really weird junk that I would have never even thought
to paint on it.
DAN SANTORO: I don't want to be too cliche and say, like, I
realize that I didn't really have to follow rules.
But yeah, once I painted on cardboard I think everybody at
the shop was kind of like why are you wasting your time.
Because this is something you do when you're on the phone,
but you don't spend eight hours on a painting of it.
So I did it and everybody was like, wow that actually looks
really cool.
I'm also really influenced by old game boards.
Really naively painted game boards that were something
that people just would've done at home.
This one is--
I love the birds, than I was just thinking about Sweetheart
of the Rodeo.
So it just kind of has like a lot of the themes that I think
go with real Americana painting.
It's funny because tattooing kind of desensitizes you to
anything other than painting for the sake of painting.
You know what I mean?
So a lot of these things are just all the things that give
me a certain feeling.
STEVE BOLTZ: How sick are those things?
Really off the wall.
But so cool, right?
He doesn't really like let them hang around or show you,
he does them and then he takes them home.
They're awesome, they're so different.
And I think that you could probably see those somewhere
out of context and not even think about tattoos, or that a
tattooer did them.