THOM DEVITA: Do you want to see Huck's back?
-Yeah, I'd love--
THOM DEVITA: My back and Huck's tattoo.
-Exactly
THOM DEVITA: Huck Spaulding.
-The collaboration?
THOM DEVITA: All tattoos are a collaboration.
ROBERT RYAN: Thom's back piece is probably the most
incredible tattoo I've ever seen.
And it was the dragon done by Huck's Spaulding.
I believe, in late '60s, that tattoo was done.
ED HARDY: And when I first saw that picture, I was like,
Jesus Christ.
The tattoo world was so tiny then.
It's just, you can't even convey how unusual it was to
see any tattoos.
The only people with tattoos were either in
jail or in the service.
And then seeing big work just blew my mind.
He forced Huck to do that that size.
He blew that up, the Coleman dragon.
And Mike said that Huck really grumbled about it.
That's too big.
ANGELO SCOTTO: Tattooing years ago was a lot different.
Totally, totally, totally, different.
Nobody got big back pieces back then.
He was ahead of his time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CLAYTON PATTERSON: At that time, tattooing was very
underground.
There were very few places where you
could learn about it.
And especially if you were a kid here in New York, when
it's illegal and it's underground,
there's no place to learn.
NICK BUBASH: We went up and got tattooed from Huck.
And then Huck Spaulding helped Thom get started.
That's all you ever did was help somebody.
You didn't teach anybody anything.
CLAYTON PATTERSON: DeVita takes Malone and [INAUDIBLE]
upstate, where Huck is tattooing.
And Malone takes pictures.
JOHN WYATT: He told me that he was a photographer.
And he was so blown away by the tattooing, this is what he
wanted to do instead of being a photographer.
This is a photograph of Mike Malone sitting in Thom's chair
on Fourth Street.
They became very, very good friends.
CLAYTON PATTERSON: And it's who opens the door for you,
and who turns on the light, is one of the greatest parts of
your career.
If you look at Malone, it always
starts with Sailor Jerry.
And that is absolute a big crock of bullshit.
ED HARDY: DeVita was responsible for Malone getting
into tattooing, for sure.
And I had started corresponding with Malone when
I was still at Doc Webb's, first couple of
years in San Diego.
And then Malone and I really got along, had a lot of
similar things.
I was like, I'd like to see New York.
I'd never been there.
Anyway, my first trip to New York was in,
Christ, maybe '72--
spring of '72--
because I was tattooing a bunch of wealthy people that
lived there that were getting custom work, like big
businessmen type that were in the closet sexually, and they
were in the closet with the tattoos.
They were positions of importance.
And the night I got in, they had a party at
this person's apartment.
And then Malone had said, wait until you meet deVita.
And then Malone was talking about deVita's place.
And he said, you won't believe it.
ANGELO SCOTTO: Thom's place was--
I've got to say it was a dangerous area.
The East Village was a bad place in the '60s and '70s,
very dangerous.
He was on Fourth between C and D.
CLAYTON PATTERSON: Yeah, C and D, Coke and Dope.
That's what it stood for.
Where are you going?
It was very dangerous down here, for one
thing, at that time.
It was totally ghetto.
It was all drugs.
That's the drug capital of the world at that time.
THOM DEVITA: If you imagine what it was in the bad
neighborhood, that's where I lived.
ED HARDY: We'd go down to see deVita.
We'd get in a cab, and I'd say, we're going to Fourth
between C and D. And then we got going Fourth.
And then finally, at about Avenue A, he said, I'm not
going any further.
I won't take you any further.
It was like Berlin after the fucking war.
It was like burned out buildings and shit.
It was just totally crazy.
CLAYTON PATTERSON: If you look at Lower East Side, Lower East
Side has changed the history America probably 500 times
with the different people that have come through here.
It's been massive.
Rothko had a studio down here, Jackson Pollock,
Jimi Hendrix, Madonna.
It's just endless, the number of creative people that have
come out of the Lower East Side.
And the connection to that, the root to all of that, was
cheap rent and inexpensive lifestyle.
THOM DEVITA: Our Fourth Street shop was on the top floor.
I lived downstairs, on another floor.
ANGELO SCOTTO: But the only thing is that Thom, he only
took five people a day.
And you had to be there at 7:00 in the morning.
And when you got there at 7:00 in the morning, there was
people waiting for him on the stoop.
THOM DEVITA: I used to tell them, you can wake me up at
any time as long as it's light out.
Just call out my name very softly.
And I'll hear you because that's when I wake up.
I'll be ready in one hour.
NICK BUBASH: You had to walk through his apartment, which
was kind of darkly lit.
So you didn't really get to see anything.
But it was very mysterious looking.
There was a lot of things there that you would want to
stop and look at just out of curiosity.
But he didn't give you a chance.
You followed him in to what was the kitchen of the
apartment, where the tattoo shop was.
And when I walked into that place, my mind was blown.
It was walking into a work of art.
A lot of this stuff was there then.
ANGELO SCOTTO: Thom had the best sign I ever seen.
Like I said, he used to go out at night and look for things.
It said, no bongo drums or percussion instruments allowed
in the park after dark.
You felt like you were walking in an art gallery.
I kind of envy that.
I wish I had a shop similar to that.
NICK BUBASH: He would get flash from people.
And those things were all presented on the wall.
The sheet itself was embellished with ink and
stamps, and he would paste things on them, and put frames
around them.
He changed everything.
Fuck, he used to say, our job as artists
is to change things.
Jeez, I think it wasn't until years later you started seeing
things like that in the Lower East Side galleries, things
like the collage constructionism.
You would see things that looked like what Thom had been
doing 10 years or 15 years ago.
ED HARDY: I never met anybody that was in tattooing that was
like that at all.
He was working on grape crate slats, because he said, well,
it's perfect.
They're, like, the size of an arm.
And I just, I said, this is your flash?
And he says, yeah.
This is what I do.
I said, what if they want hot stuff?
Because he didn't have any cartoons.
And in those days, all of us were like,
oh shit, more cartoons.
It paid the rent, but you just get so tired of them.
And then he said, yeah.
I said, well, I tell him, I've got to get his dad.
And he had a big [? Hanja, ?]
big Japanese demon.
THOM DEVITA: I don't like cartoons.
All that Mickey Mouse tattoos, it started in California.
Tattooing is already cartoonish.
Why make it so obvious?
I like tattoos that look like tattoos.
ED HARDY: And it just blew my mind.
It was like, you mean you don't have to just give them
the main menu?
I was still tattooing sailors.
I was trying to get people to get something different,
custom work.
I worked for almost nothing just to get to
do something different.
It just changed my head around completely.
I saw this stuff, but I didn't have a plan yet to do a custom
shop, to do what I eventually did with realistic.
Then I went to Japan.
I shut down the San Diego shop.
And when I came back, I opened a place where everything had
to be one of a kind.
And I fucked it up for a lot of people, because I started
going, well, hey, we can do whatever you want.
And a lot of tattooers were not into that.
Then I started inching the prices up.
When I came back from Japan, it started
getting more realistic.
And then deVita, he had all these signs, tattoos need not
be expensive.
And I'm going, Thom, you're living here in a fucking
burned-out building in this neighborhood where you don't
have any overhead.
I said, Jesus Christ, I've got a family.
I'm paying rent.
You don't even know what it is to be in the real world.
So we we're always going back and forth about that.
THOM DEVITA: I used to have a sign
saying, artists pay double.
NICK BUBASH: Yeah, that's true.
He did.
-Were you known for your designs?
THOM DEVITA: No.
I was known for $30 tattoos.
I had a big room filled with $30 tattoos.
But I had the smaller room that had higher price tattoos.
-They were $50.
THOM DEVITA: They were $60.
-A $50 room and a $30 room.
THOM DEVITA: No, $60.
$30.
I can't figure out numbers that easy.
So I made it $30, $60, $90.
Caught on pretty quick.
NICK BUBASH: People weren't coming around to get collector
things from him.
He was almost completely doing the neighborhood guys.
He was in a Puerto Rican neighborhood.
Some 99% of his customers were Puerto Rican.
ED HARDY: So I'd go down there, and I'd
roll my sleeves up.
I had these same tattoos on.
So even though you're like a Haole guy coming down in
there, and if anybody said anything, we'd say we're going
to see the tattoo man.
Or sometimes people would say, you going to
see the tattoo man?
I'd say, yeah, you know.
THOM DEVITA: I'd walk down there,
and they'd say, tattoo--
tattoo man, "the marker" in Spanish, the man
that does the marks.
Puerto Ricans just came by like the Russian guys.
Just come by, and got a tattoo.
People I'd tattoo didn't have their bodies done.
-Just their arms.
THOM DEVITA: They want an eagle over here.
They want a heart over here, mom and dad over here.
That's the kind of people I tattoo.
I had designs on the walls.
But nobody picked them out.
I was doing blue collar workers and
guys who didn't work.
-Is that the monkey king?
THOM DEVITA: Yeah.
-You've done this one before?
THOM DEVITA: That's not typical of the work
that I would do.
Blue collar guys don't come up for a monkey king.
Plumbers don't want monkey king.
Do you understand what I say?
-Yes, sir.
THOM DEVITA: And no customer ever come in and
said, I want clouds.
I want water.
Couldn't sell them water.
I would sometimes tell them, would your like some clouds
around the eagle?
Yeah, OK.
I wouldn't even charge them for it, hoping maybe they'd
get out, and somebody would come back and
say, I want the clouds.
Then I'd say, that'll be $30 extra.
ED HARDY: Another thing that I loved, as a formal
breakthrough, was he would put that stuff on.
He'd have the panther, right?
The standard panther size.
He'd have the panther.
But then he'd do the claw marks.
And he'd say, see, then it fills up that space.
Or he'd do the big spiderwebs behind it.
NICK BUBASH: He was always trying to wipe out--
oh, you'll wipe out a whole forearm with that.
He'd put stuff around it.
By the time he was done for $30, your whole goddamn
forearm was covered.
ROBERT RYAN: I know his reasoning for it was to make
people think they were getting more for their money, even
though they were only paying $30 for this tattoo.
But really, it's a dynamic look that
really can't be faked.
You're just stunned.
Wow, look at that.
That's strong.
CLAYTON PATTERSON: If this was like a traditional situation,
Thom would have probably never gotten into tattoos.
The only reason that Thom would be able to become a
tattoo artist, and be the tattoo artist he is, is
because he was in a place like the Lower East Side.
They thought, wow, it's a great tattoo.
They're not part of the classic tattoo lineage.
So they have a tattoo, which they think is powerful and
great and unique.
But it's for this section of the people, who are drug
dealers, and junkies, and whatever.
Thom would be nowhere without that.
ROBERT RYAN: To me, it's high art, in some of the craziest
conditions.
He was bringing to that neighborhood what
people could afford.
And it was illegal.
So there was risks at every corner and turn.
And he's just doing this really beautiful stuff.
He really was a tattooer for the people at that time.
And I think that's so cool.
And I think people really liked him for that, as well,
and respected him for that.
THOM DEVITA: There was one guy, a Puerto Rican, his name
was Ralphie.
I done quite a few tattoos on his arm.
And we had no electricity and no air conditioning, because
the one who was in control of the basement shut it all off.
So [? Jenny ?] went out and bought me short pants.
And Ralphie is standing on the corner.
And he couldn't believe that my legs, they're solid.
And he looked, and he's so stunned.
He says, Thom-- he pronounced the H in Thom.
Thom--
I don't even know how to do it, but he pronounced the H.
He said, Thom, we are proud of you.
Thom, he says, we are proud of you.