TROY DENNING: (CHANTING) I know you really want the
tribal armband, but I think that you should get a dragon.
All right.
Got what I need.
Glass.
(DEEP VOICE) Give me a keg of beer.
Remember "Teen Wolf"?
-Of course.
TROY DENNING: (DEEP VOICE) Give me a keg of beer.
The fuck you want, man?
Don't bite it!
Go to sleep, sleep, sleep.
You're getting very sleepy.
[GUITAR MUSIC]
TROY DENNING: I suffered for a long time in New York City
with living conditions that I thought
were below my standards.
Everything's in boxes.
I got way too much shit for the amount of
space that I have.
I did that for a long time.
Now I'm ready to be grown up, to a certain degree.
How you doing, bro?
-What's up, buddy?
TROY DENNING: What's up, homie?
I really enjoy being a host.
And I really enjoy taking care of people.
That extends to my friends and the people who work with me.
We've got like 10 pounds of Korean short ribs coming, so
that and hot dogs.
I wanted to have some sort of seafood so people
don't feel left out.
I know how sensitive people get about food.
I had no concept of any kind of international food.
I didn't have sushi or anything like that
until I was in my 20s.
My father was a truck driver.
So everything that we ate kind of fell off a truck somewhere.
Whether it be Campbell's soup or Jimmy Deans, my mom would
make it work.
But I really love cooking.
I love the culture of food.
You better not grab me, motherfucker.
Today, we are serving bloody crab.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
TROY DENNING: Sasha, Troy.
Pleasure to meet you.
Sable, pleasure to meet you.
I'm Troy.
My whole life, I've been interested in
Asian culture in general.
Definitely, the aspects of Japanese tattooing and
Japanese culture that I've always had a fondness for is
the ideas of duty and honor, and knowing your job and doing
your job, not complaining about it.
The reality may be totally different.
But when I was a kid, that's what I thought.
Do you want to help me make hot dogs?
-No.
TROY DENNING: You don't have a hot dog making
outfit on, for sure.
JEB MAYKUT: I think Japanese people get a kick out of Troy
a lot because Troy tries so hard to give them a kick.
So that he can speak his little bit a Japanese.
So he can show them his knowledge.
So he can talk about samurais or whatever crazy shit that he
likes to talk about.
KIKU: He already asked me a bunch of silly
questions about Japanese.
-Like what?
KIKU: I don't know.
How do you say stupid word, this
kind of stuff in Japanese?
TROY DENNING: (JAPANESE ACCENT) Do you have a samurai
[INAUDIBLE]?
Do you miss your momma?
KIKU: He already had a bunch of knowledge about Japan.
He already into Japanese culture, tattoo, of course.
TROY DENNING: This is the book, right here--
"Tamotsu Kuronoma, Horiyoshi II." What sets this tattooer
apart from everybody else is that he'd achieved so much
with there no real precedent.
You have to have perspective of the timeline.
You can't judge somebody's work that's 40 years old
against something that came later.
These guys already did all the hard work.
They made all the mistakes already.
He just invented and codified this whole style himself,
which blows my mind.
I really tried to understand this stuff on a greater level.
It's taken me a long time to refine my style and really get
stuff looking the way that I want it to.
This was when I started doing more of the specifically
Japanese-style stuff.
This was like '96.
My earliest attempts at doing these types of tattoos, I
approached them definitely from Western illustrative
perspective.
You have this bag of tricks, of effects that you're used to
using in every tattoo to make something pop or to get the
desired result.
I had to really step back and learn how to make stuff a
little more flat and a little more readable, and just let it
stand on the strength of the design itself.
Years later, I'm always definitely more pleased with
the outcome if I didn't attach a bunch of bells
and whistles to it.
CHRIS O'DONNELL: Troy, he always says things like that,
that you may know it or you don't.
But the way he articulates it out of the blue, just creates
an epiphany for you.
One day, he even said, I'm going to
stop looking at tattoos.
I'm going to start looking at old prints and stuff.
If we're going to use, say, Japanese subject matter, I
want to see what it's about and not look at it filtered
through the eyes and hands of 10 different tattoo artists.
TROY DENNING: This is a really fun one.
It's like a Shoki, Bishamonten riding a tiger.
I looked a lot at old [INAUDIBLE]
for all the detail in the armor and stuff.
KIKU: He knows a lot of the mythology story behind the
Japanese tattooing.
That made me feel like an idiot, that I had to know
better about Japanese stuff.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
KIKU: I used to hate people asking me doing Japanese
style, just because I'm Japanese.
So I was like, fuck this.
I'm not doing Japanese style.
But after I started working here, I
totally changed my mind.
Because the guy works here taking super seriously the
Japanese style.
So I was kind of embarrassed.
That's how I started more doing Japanese stuff.
I was so nervous when I start work here, though.
I just wanted do some tattoo that I want him to say, wow.
So I was just trying every day so hard.
KIKU: That moment did come, yeah.
But it took me a couple years, probably.
-Hot damn.
TROY DENNING: Kiku is probably one of the most talented
tattooers in the world.
And he's just an amazing person.
He's the kind of people that I can't see him without smiling.
I hear his voice, it just makes me happy.
He just has such a great spirit and is just such a
great, kind person.
Working with him has been one of the high points of my
career, for sure.
KIKU: Are you filming I'm eating?
Oh my god.
-Hold up each piece of food and say
what it is in Japanese.
KIKU: [JAPANESE].
JEB MAYKUT: Kiku's like Troy's little buddy.
They just have this crazy little energy that no one else
in the shop really has besides them.
Troy will just yell something in Japanese, and then Kiku
will yell it back.
Now, mind you, they're across an entire shop.
So they're basically just yelling over
people, left and right.
KIKU: OK, so nobody wants the chicken, yeah?
TROY DENNING: Nobody wants the chicken.
JEB MAYKUT: And Troy will always play
certain songs for Kiku.
And Kiku will never not give positive reinforcement.
So Troy loves having Kiku around, because it's a
constant audience.
-I hate [INAUDIBLE].
TROY DENNING: It's kind of a weird coming to America type
of situation with Kiku and I, because I'm always explaining
stuff to him.
Like one day, he goes, Troy-san, what is a barbarian?
I was like, I don't know.
Barbarian's like an uncivilized, savage person.
He goes, oh, because at a Dunkin' Donuts they have the
barbarian cream doughnut.
I was like, that's fucking Bavarian cream.
It's totally different.
He goes, what's the difference?
Barbarian cream is something like the name of a porno
movie, or something like that.
It's totally different.
So it's funny little idiosyncrasies like that, and
little English language faux pas that keeps me laughing
throughout the day.
Everyone roll with us?
Yeah.
KIKU: Troy and me love karaoke.
So yeah.
We can't stop singing, me and Troy.
Especially Troy, though.
Oh shit, Axl.
Rose.
You've got to sing like a snake now, like Axl.
You've got to do the snake dance.
TROY DENNING: This is the big time, baby.
This is rock and roll.
Grab a mic, motherfucker.
Kiku and I like to do karaoke.
He's big on the Michael Jackson.
I'm more of either gangster rap or rock and
roll type of person.
Me and him can go back and forth.
It's usually me and him fighting over the mic.
DAMIAN RODRIGUEZ: You can tell they've been working together
a long time.
It's all love.
Everyone, it's all family here.
And it feels like it's just a very warm environment.
-Bring them out.
Bring them out.
TROY DENNING: Bring them out.
Bring them out.
DAMIAN RODRIGUEZ: Troy is everything.
He does it all, but manages to still be one of the best.
TROY DENNING: Yeah, New York City.
You're now rocking with the best.
If I got into this business just to work my ass off and
constantly worry about my standing in the world at
large, that wouldn't be any fun at all.
I got into tattooing because I thought it was a platform to
completely be your own person, just live
life on your own terms.
The payoff comes from being able to work really hard,
feeling like you really have challenged yourself, and
you've really put in an honest day's work.
And then being able to reap the rewards of all of that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]