A tattoo parlor that belongs to Vinnie Stigma, Jimmy Gestapo and Lars Fredericksen, three of New York’s hardcore best-known musicians? I had to take a look!
Amongst the bzzzz of the machines, Liverpudlian Baz Shailes told me about shit tattoos, shit-faced rock stars and his love of comics.
Who are you?
My name is Baz. I’m a tattoo artist here at New York Hardcore Tattoos.
How did it all begin?
One day, a lady was tattooing me (I had just moved down here) — she had seen my artwork (a few exhibitions and my canvases, paintings…) — and she said: “Hey, you know what? You’d probably make a good tattoo artist!” I was like: “Uhhh I don’t know…” She was like: “I’ll teach you how to tattoo, if you want to work for me.”
So, that was like what? Thirteen years ago, so… I guess that it worked out ok. And here I am!
And you had no other plans?
I always wanted to come to New York and be a starving artist doing my paintings, but then I got to be starving too much, so I thought: “Maybe I’ll get a job…” And I got one. I was doing magazines kinda layout computer stuff, and I designed t shirts and merchandising — I still do — for companies and a lot of events.
Now I don’t have time to paint my canvases anymore: all my art is here in the shop.
…and on people.
It’s great! It’s instant validation and instant gratification.
When you paint a canvas, you hang it in a gallery for like a month. Maybe somebody will buy it, or someone would like it.
But as a tattoo artist, someone has chosen me, they’ve come in and said: “I want you to tattoo me.” They already know that I can do what they want.
And they go away happy and they gave me money! It’s fantastic! [laughter]
That’s how it should be!
Is the relationship with the people you tattoo important for you?
Oh yeah, of course, definitively! It is kinda cool, especially if you get good clients who come back! Some of my best costumers actually are now really good friends of mine. We hang out and stuff!
I’m not saying I wanna be friends with every costumer: some of them can just go — give me the money and go!
When I was getting tattooed waaaay back in the eighties, the tattoo artists, they just could be assholes. They really were horrible, they were mean… It was kinda cool because not everyone was getting them but I just always thought: “You know what? You don’t have to be horrible! Be nice to people. »
I mean, they suffer already, especially if it’s someone’s first tattoo. They’re usually especially nervous and they don’t know what is gonna happen, they don’t know what to expect. So you can really just put them at ease, you know, “Everything’s gonna be fine”.
Do you accept any tattoo?
Hmmm… No. At the end of the day, I mean, theoretically, you shouldn’t really think: “I’m too good for that kind of thing!” or: “I’m above that kind of thing” but looking where we are here we don’t really get many erm… we don’t get tribal designs or dolphins…
And there are obviously certain things that we won’t do: anything racist or white power or nazi stuff. None of that would get done.
Or if we think it’s a stupid idea, we won’t do it. If someone comes in and they don’t have any tattoo and they want a tattoo on their neck, or their face, or their hands, we just say no. You should only do your hands and your face and that if you got no space left. People see a lot of celebrities with tattoos on their neck and stuff, and they want to be just like them. But they’re millionaires, they’re in TV, they’re making videos. You might end up working at McDonald’s.
And art-wise, you accept any style?
People come here because they know who we are, they would check out the website and would like our work. We all do pretty similar traditional solid style.
For me personally if someone comes here with a photo of someone’s tattoo and says: “I want this”, I’ll change it ‘cause it’s supposed to be an individual expression, not just a copy.
For example, we do a lot of CBGB’s stuff: for each one that we do, we just kinda change it a little bit. Because you don’t want to be on a beach or hanging in a bar and someone would just go: “Hey! Same tattoo!”, you know?
You’re from Liverpool, right?
Yeah!
So, what does New York city mean for you?
New York city is like basically, it’s just… It’s like the best place on earth! That’s what it is. I’ve always been obsessed with America since I was a kid…
It is a Liverpool thing, isn’t it?
Or an English thing, I don’t know.
Especially since I grew up in the North West of England where country and western music is very popular, Elvis is very popular… Like the Beatles, they loved Buddy Holly and Elvis.
I think the connection can be maybe because Liverpool was a big port back in the days.
My family mom’s from Dublin. And when everyone was leaving Ireland, they went to New York or Liverpool. So, there’s always this trans-continental type connection.
When I first came here in 1991, I felt like I’ve just come home. I felt so much more at ease here than I felt anywhere in England. I feel much more at home here than in Liverpool or London or Manchester or even in… — I’ve lived in Sidney for a while — Sidney’s great, I like Australia, but New York is really one of these places where if you are of that mindset, when you come here, you’ll think: “Yeah! This is where I belong!”
There are so many freaks, here, it’s good! [laughter]
Have you seen New York change a lot?
You know, it’s funny, my family, they had this seedy tough image of New York, and then when they came here, they were like: “It’s really safe here, it’s quite nice!”
I first got here at just the beginning of gentrification. Times Square, for like twenty seconds, it was still dodgy, like porno cinemas and homeless people and prostitutes. It wasn’t like Taxi Driver but it’s kinda like what it was. But now I mean so many millions of people visit Times Square, they had to clean it and make it nice, you know?
But some places like down here [in Stanton Street, Lower East Side]? One of my friends, he staid here back in the eighties and he said it was just like a shooting gallery. Dead bodies everywhere. Always something going on. And cops wouldn’t go down this part. It’s probably for the best that it’s not like that anymore. Instead, we have more businesses.
I think New York is just one of these places where you can achieve your dreams, just, you know, get on with your life. You can be very successful here.
It’s a better quality of life here than in England or most of the places in Europe as well. But it is just New York, I mean I couldn’t go and live in like Jersey or Kentucky or like Wyoming or anywhere. Those people are crazy!
And you were in the music scene in Liverpool as well?
Yeah, I used to work in a record shop in Liverpool called “Probe” which was the only alternative store in the North West at the time, it’s one of the oldest punk rock shops.
And all of the Liverpool music scene in the eighties with the guys like Echo & the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, all those guys were at the shop.
And it was just round the corner from Eric’s, which was the punk rock club, and all the bands would come round — the Clash came in, had a cup of tea, were grooving round the counter. So, there were always these playing bands and stuff. And so that’s how — you know, with the punk rock bands — I got into the New York hardcore stuff.
And when I was getting tattooed here back around 1999, I got to realize that the guys who owned this place were Vinnie from Agnostic Front, or Jimmy from Murphy’s Law — two guys from punk rock bands that I used to listen to back in England, back in the eighties.
So, now, it’s like this full circle thing, working with the guys. I have to be with Lars from Rancid, he’s also an owner here. Lars, he’s still doing it, you know: if you listen to a Rancid song now and you compare with one say from ’92, the only difference is that’s a little bit slower ‘cause they got a little bit older.
What is this correlation between rock n’roll and tattoos?
It has always been the symbol of the outlaws, the bad boys, the gangsters and stuff, they’re the ones getting tattoos. It really got bigger in the seventies and the eighties. When you just had like one tattoo, back in the seventies, everyone was like: “Oh it’s crazy!”
In England, a lot of Teddy Boys got tattoos, even in the fifties, because they were like the bad people. Then the Stray Cats, they had a lot of tattoos. And then like Social Distortion, they had a lot of tattoos — which is when everyone was just like: “Oh we’re forming a band, we have to have tattoos”.
But the point is now I think it’s just gone too far: you see these kids, maybe they’re just like 25, whatever, playing in bands, they got so many tattoos. If I got all the tattoos that I wanted to have when I was 19, I’d just be covered in shit tattoos ‘cause you don’t make the best decisions when you’re young!
And also there are so many guys in a band with sleeves from here to the hands, but they have no other tattoos. They get tattooed for the t-shirt! I think that’s posing, you know! [laughter]
How comes that so many people from bands go into tattooing? — It’s not really the same skills set!
Jimmy and Vinnie opened this because they kept getting tattoos for years.
It was illegal here until ’97! I mean, you could get tattooed, but you had to go down back alleys, meet someone in the corner, go upstairs…
Those guys, they would always mess around tattooing each other, so they were like: “You know what? Why don’t we just open a tattoo studio!” So, they opened this place in 1999 and they kinda run it like a clubhouse where everyone come in and hang out, smoking here and drinking there and getting tattooed…
People from other bands would come in, like Green Day, they came in, like 7 Seconds, and like Sick Of It All. They would come in and get a tattoo and go and get wasted.
So they wanted it to be like a little community — and we have a lot of kids who come here just because of the music. They hope to see like Jimmy or Vinnie or Lars in here, and they would only buy a New York Hardcore Tattoos t-shirt, and they would want to see the memorabilia.
We have flyers of old like gigs and photos, this kind of stuff. So it’s a little like a museum, I guess. When they come you can see them taking photos of everything. And we like that. When we don’t tattoo, we like to show them around, let them have a look and stuff.
Which is kinda cool because Agnostic Front, they sell stadiums, there are thousands of people coming to see them, and that’s a good sign for those guys, you know, ‘cause they lived in squats down here when they started. They’re doing well. They’re doing good.
So, when musicians are touring, they stop here?
Oh, sure, all the time!
All the crew of Bad Religion came in, Billy Joe from Green Day was here, Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty was tattooed here, lot of people, especially a lot of Europeans — Garrie from Cock Sparrer came here when they were on tour. Yeah, they come here ‘cause they definitively know each other from touring.
So, a lot of the bands, even if they don’t get tattooed, they like to come here just to hang out and say: “Hello how is it going?”
It’s a good thing, it’s a good connection to the whole worldwide punk rock family, I guess.
What are your influences?
MY influences? I like a lot of comics, like Jake Kelly. Some people would never think of it, but his style of comic books is so big and thick and bold, it’s just like some tattoos. So, really all the sixties comic book stuff.
I like bringing in a lot of different things, like old magazines covers, like film noir, that kind of stuff, sci-fi movie posters. Even just in the way of shading things or adding a color, it might be from a poster of a movie I’ve seen from the sixties.
For a long time, people used to be only influenced by tattoo artists, and it got a little bit inbred and boring, everyone doing the same stuff. But now, people are just looking everywhere to see what they can do, and they do crazy colors tattoos. Some of them you know they won’t look that good in a few years, but some of them you just think: “That’s very well thought and that’s so different from everything else.” And when someone does it, you’ll find someone else to copy it and it will be a movement… And it all will be filtered eventually.
A lot of New Yorkers have very ugly tattoos…
I know!
You know why? Because there are so many people tattooing in New York. I mean, you have to have a license, but having one doesn’t mean you can draw, it doesn’t mean you know how to tattoo.
You might as well have bought the tattoo machine two weeks ago, and then you go out, and people are like: “Oh yeah, you can tattoo me” without even any thought about what ifs.
Especially here in New York, people want a tattoo, and they only wanna pay 20$ for it. So, they gonna get a 20$ tattoo, and it will look like a 20$ tattoo.
“Cheap tattoos aren’t good and good tattoos aren’t cheap”, that’s the old adage that everyone is saying, but it’s one of those things that are kinda true.
You wanna go to a good nice clean tattoo studio with nice people, good portfolios, and you can get good work for a couple hundreds dollars. If you go somewhere and you expect like a koi fish tattoo for 150 bucks, you won’t really be happy with it.
Do you have a guilty pleasure?
A guilty pleasure? [smiling] Erm, I think so! I drink a lot! [laughter] I do, really!
But you’re English! You’re required to!
Yeah, I know, I know! [laughter]
I don’t think I have a lot of guilty pleasures as such… I think I’m kind of boring! This is about as interesting as I get!
The fact is that I collect all kind of robots and comics, but that’s not guilty, that’s just being a geek!
What turns you on in tattoos?
I think the feeling of getting tattooed is pretty cool. I mean it’s painful, but it’s also quite thrilling as well, quite stimulating.
I guess seeing really good solid work.
What is exciting for us — for me especially— is when you design something and it’s just totally what you wanted to do. It’s just like you put everything in there and you got this really cool tattoo and it looks exactly how you wanted it to look.
That’s the most thrilling thing, when you have been given the freedom to do whatever you want.
What turns you off in tattoos?
Just crap tattoos. Just bad tattoos. You know. I guess if you see a tattoo that’s done very well, but is a stupid idea, you’re just like: “Ew, whatever”; if you see a shitty tattoo that’s done shitty, it’s just shit in the end of the day!
Or, I guess, a lot of the ladies with their tramp stamps. I remember when that started coming out, it was really hot and sexy, and then everyone in the Midwest has got one and you know, someone from Kentucky with… Not everyone can sport that!
Tell us a joke.
A joke? Ok. Say: “knock knock”.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Hmmm…
That’s the worst joke in the world!
Baz now owns his tattoo studio, Clash City Tattoo.
(He left NYHC when it changed ownership in 2015.)
His instagram