My friend and bad ass tattoo artist Friday Jones is in a new tattoo reality show on the Oxygen Network called Tattoos After Dark. I know what you are thinking, the last the thing the world needs is another tattoo reality show and why on earth is the Oxygen Network even doing tattoo shows… BUT I went to the watch party for the first two episodes and I gotta say the show is pretty hilarious. The show is about two shops in LA that stay open and attract really drunk crazy people who want really horrible tattoos. (Their ideas are horrible, the tattoos are excellent.) There are several tattoo shows about cover ups and the people getting them tell stories about how the ended up with these really bad tattoos, well Tattoos After Dark documents those mistake stories in real time!

Friday threw her party at the Dr. Who themed bar Way Station in Brooklyn. She had one of her favorite bands Geena & Dragster perform followed by comedian Mara Marek. Geena & Dragster were pretty rock and roll and Mara mostly did crowd work making fun of tattoos and couples in the audience. After that we watched the two episodes live and then Friday and fellow Tattoos After Dark star Joe “Jersey” Meinweiser did a Q&A. Jersey also showed everyone his dick tattoo but I decided not to post the picture out of respect for everyone.

I didn’t take a ton of photos because most of the party involved everyone watching TV and I was suffering from extraordinary tooth pain which ended in having to get a root canal yesterday, but it’s probably for the best since Friday got in a fight with some insane drunk girl on New Years Eve and got a black eye from the crazy bitch’s purse! Although in retrospect I should have taken more photos of Geena’s daughter who was a babe and was dressed like a sexy Beetlejuice. I probably shouldn’t be writing this post on this many pain killers.

Anyway, look at these pictures and then check out Tattoos After Dark on Oxygen on Wednesdays at 11pm!

Click here for all the photos from Friday Jones’ Tattoos After Dark watch party!

Oliver Peck is back in town filming the newest season of his tattoo competition reality show Ink Master and he decided to throw another party. Last time he was in town he threw a “Wig Party” which involved karaoke, a drag Ramones tribute band and a ton of Sailor Jerry rum. This time it was exactly the same except the Ramonahs were the only people in wigs.

It was a hell of a good time at Arlene’s Grocery last night. I am not a big karaoke fan but Oliver and his Dallas based Good Luck Karaoke partner Josh Hammertimez are pretty hilarious and join people on stage for their karaoke jams. Oliver’s Ramonahs killed it again and his Ink Master co-hosts Dave Navarro and Chris Núñez showed up to support his deviant rock and roll performance.  Carl Hallowell works at Oliver’s Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas and was back doing Sailor Jerry flash tattoos all night. It was the most people from Dallas I have been around since I was at Elm Street’s music and tattoo festival.

I have a big ad gig this week and I brought my clients to the party and they had an amazing time. They are from Switzerland but it turns out one of their favorite bands is the Ramones. It was pretty awesome and we ended up casting model Leah Jung in the ad after meeting her there. Leah can sing her ass off and it was pretty impressive watching her and this hilarious dude Roman do “Baby It’s Cold Outside” together. I did some Minor Threat karaoke but I pretty much just embarrassed myself when I realized my mic was up way too high and I was just horrified by the sound of my own voice. Good times.

Seriously though, it was a great party and I am not sure how those dudes make me enjoy karaoke, but if you ever get a chance to see Good Luck Karaoke I highly recommend it.

Now click here to see all the pictures from Oliver Peck’s Sailor Jerry presented Good Luck Karaoke and Ramonahs throw down live at Arlene’s Grocery!

Here is one of those really exciting posts of mine where I update you with some news that you don’t care about and then throw some half assed “content’ at the end. It’s exiting I know, but I like writing weird posts about why I am not updating my site enough. Good times!

So yeah, this week is super crazy for me. On Wednesday I had a really exciting dental appointment where instead of just getting a filling like I thought, the dentist realized it was worse than he thought and I might have to get a root canal! So he just packed my tooth up with some temporary filling and is hopeful that in two or three months he can try again. Whatever the case it hurts like hell now whenever I chew.

Twenty four hours later I got the last of three tattoo appointments to finish up my half sleeve. While it was nice and painful I am super psyched about it. I just had this empty bicep area for years and I could never think what to get that would be meaningful enough to put there. I decided to go the exact opposite route and just get some really bad ass artwork. I hit up my friend Marisa from Needles & Sins and she recommended a few people and I knew immediately that I wanted Grez over at Kings Ave to do it. I booked my appointment in April for late October and three sessions and six weeks later I now have by far my favorite (and most expensive!) tattoo. I asked him to do a woman’s head and to fill space but other than that it was up to him. He killed it. She’s so bad ass. This photo doesn’t do it justice. Thanks Grez!

So yeah, after a very painful two days I am now in the midst of preproduction for the biggest photo gig of my life. A cigarette company in Switzerland wanted to use a NYC party picture style look for their add campaign and pretty much wants to copy a few of my party photos. Theoretically that would be really easy to do, but casting and location scouting are a bit out of my league so I reached out to a friend to produce it and suddenly this shoot is this massive undertaking that involves like 20 people a day for three days. I am still gonna shoot this thing with an on camera flash but it’s become insanely stressful and also pretty damn exciting. I’ve never shot anything that might end up a billboard!

On top of this crazy shoot on Sunday I am working this really fun party for Sailor Jerry and my buddy Oliver Peck. He has a Ramones cover band called the Romonahs and they kinda rule. He is doing a rock and roll karaoke thing as well and as much as I hate karaoke his parties are a really good time. The last one I shot was really fun and I am pretty excited for this one. There is a 90% I will hurt myself performing some punk song as well. So come out for that on Sunday at Arlene’s Grocery.

I have also been kept really busy with Miami Dolphins related stuff recently. After our #MetLifeTakeover our club has blown up a little and have been on calls with the Dolphins and trying to organize more stuff and all sorts of things that have taken up a ton of my time. Which rules but  is quite distracting to my real life. We did raise a TON of money for charity and were able do some good for two of our crew who were injured in the Metro North train crash. We filmed a video of the whole thing which I will probably post next week but in the mean time here is a video of the event care of the Miami Dolphins website.

Anyway, this week is crazy and for some reason I felt like I needed to do a post about it. Aside from the Ramonahs party pix I hope to have two updates ready to go for next week so that once I finish this monster photo gig I can go on a mini staycation. My exgirlfriend is coming to visit and bringing her dog so I am just gonna do cute shit with them for five days and try not to do any real work other than hitting send on those posts. Good times.

And finally, for no particular reason, I leave you with this insane video. Enjoy.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/80704110[/vimeo]

So I meant to get these pictures up a week ago but it didn’t happen. Remember when I went to the Sailor Jerry Presents Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival? Well there was a big fundraising raffle for True South, a charity that helps people injured in motorcycle and bike accidents. The big prize was a 1984 Harley-Davidson, but what I didn’t talk a lot about was the 2nd Harley that was given away.

Another bike was given away by Elm Street Tattoo’s Oliver Peck. A bunch of tattoo artists and some locals were offered the chance to play in a massive dice game that happened on stage at the end of the tattoo convention at Prophet Bar. 40 people gathered around a table and one by one rolled three dice in a game of C-lo. Four people managed to roll the best possible score of 4-5-6 and they moved on to the second round. In the end it came down to Chicago tattoo artist Keith Underwood and one of the members of the nightclub Trees staff. In the third and final round Keith won the bike and celebrated like a crazy person. It was pretty amazing. I’ve worked with Keith at a couple of Sailor Jerry events so I was psyched that he won.

I should also mention that Oliver rolled a 1, the lowest possible score. Everyone but Oliver got a huge kick out of that.

I video taped the whole thing as well so all the shots I took were one handed and a lot of people were in the way so they aren’t the best of my career. That being said I kinda love these photos anyway so I decided to make them their own update. It’s a lot of fun to see all these very serious looking tattoo artists laughing their asses off and high fiving each other over a game of dice…

Click here to see all the photos from the dice at the Elm Street Music & Tattoo Fest!

Finally back from Dallas and I had a blast at the Sailor Jerry Presents Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival. Day three was a lot of fun because it was the slowest day and I got to hang out with a lot of the tattoo artists and other people at the convention. By 8pm people were mostly done tattooing or just finishing up and there was a raffle for a 1984 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a Fender guitar and a Tim Hendricks tattoo machine. All the money went to True South, a charity that helps people injured in motorcycle and bicycle accidents. I video taped the raffle so there aren’t many pictures but they raised a ton of money and later people who donated to True South got a chance to play in a massive game of dice to win another Harley, but more on that later.

Sunday was also a lot of fun because my friend Alysha Nett showed up and I spent most of the day hanging out with (and taking photos of) her. After she left I did quick photo shoots with two girls I met on the first day of the festival but I think they chickened out and don’t want their pictures online. You can see a preview on my NEW Instagram though…

After the tattoo part of the convention was over there were after parties at Three Links and Wit’s End. Three Links ended the night with a solo show from Jim Heath of the Reverend Horton Heat. I left right after his set but I think all the tattoo artists and friends ended back at Oliver Peck’s place for some sort of insane after the after party that I should have attended since I didn’t get any sleep anyway. I skipped out early because I had to get photos to clients before I left for the airport and I hopped to get a few hours of sleep. At least one of those things happened.

In conclusion, the Elm Street Music & Tattoo Fest was an amazing time and I hope I get asked back again next Friday the 13th cause I had a lot more fun in Dallas than I thought I ever could. Big thanks to Oliver Peck & Elm Street Tattoo, Sailor Jerry and the Dallas Observer for having me out!

Click here to see pictures from day three of the Sailor Jerry Presents Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival in Dallas Texas.

Ps. There are random pictures of Rhett Miller from the Old 97s in this gallery because he happened to be playing next to Three Links and I stopped in for a second to check it out.

Yesterday was day two of “Sailor Jerry Presents the Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival”. I didn’t get any tattoos on day two but I had a lot of fun. There was skate boarding, tons of rock and roll and of course more tattooing. Bowling For Soup were the headliners yesterday and there were a bunch of tattooed babes hanging out everywhere. No complaints.

I hung out on the half pipe out back and shot kids skateboarding for a while. I shot a bunch of skate stuff when I was in high school but I didn’t have that many friends that were any good so I have really only shot skate stuff a couple times in the last 15 years. Sports photography, and especially skate photography is such a specialized thing but I had fun anyway. I got a couple of nice shots but my favorite might be the one of a board flying at me. It actually hit me in the face but the shot was worth it. The shot is always worth it.

Bowling For Soup headlined Trees but I was more excited about the headliners over at Wits End across the street. Dallas Uber Alles were an awesome Dead Kennedys cover band and I had a lot of fun fucking shit up in their mosh pit. It also made me realized how many Dead Kennedys songs I don’t know. That was pretty surprising since they were one of the first punk bands I ever listened to.

This fest has been so much fun so I gotta thank the homie Oliver Peck and Sailor Jerry for bringing me out to Texas. Half my family is from Dallas and I have spent a lot of time here and this is the first time I ever had any fun… (Although I did fire a gun for the first time here.)

Click here to see all the photos from day two of Sailor Jerry Presents The Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival in Dallas, TX.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th and that means one thing, cheap #13 tattoos! Getting the #13 tattooed on you has historically been a way to ward off bad luck and in recent years it’s become a tattoo shop tradition to give out small inexpensive #13 tattoos every Friday the 13th. Tattoo artist Oliver Peck and his shop Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas, TX have taken that idea even further. Oliver has 13s tattooed all over his body and once broke the world’s record for most tattoos in a 24 hour period by tattooing 13s on people.

This year Oliver and his shop launched “Sailor Jerry Presents The Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival” on Friday the 13th in Dallas. On day one of the festival they had something like 100 tattoo doing Friday the 13th tattoos during the whole  24 hour period. The festival lasts all weekend and features tattooing all day and bands all night. The convention took over four venues on Elm Street in Deep Ellum. The actual tattoo convention is taking place in the Prophet Bar and bands are playing at Trees, Three Links and Wits End. Day one was a lot of fun and the Reverend Horton Heat headlined Trees and I used to love those guys so it was awesome to see them for the first time in over a decade.

I should mention, that I was supposed to be in Dallas at midnight but I didn’t get there until 4pm on Friday because of a canceled flight and a nightmarish runaround that had me spend 11 hours of my life at LaGuardia airport. To celebrate the worst travel day of my life, and to help ward off bad flight luck, I got a Friday the 13th tattoo myself… Rana Almiron, a tattoo artist who flew in for the festival from Argentina, tattooed the Delta Airlines logo on me with the number 13 on top of it.

Now click here to check out all the photos from Friday the 13th at Sailor Jerry Presents the Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival in Dallas, TX.

I am back from my insane road trip! If you somehow aren’t aware I spent 31 days on the road driving from Detroit to Chicago and then taking Route 66 from there all the way to LA. From there I drove up to San Francisco and then drove back across the country to Chicago where I spent several days photographing Sailor Jerry’s Pitchfork Music Festival after parties AKA Cobrafest. I finally drove back to Detroit and then flew home on Tuesday. I spent a couple days sleeping and recovering and trying to catch up on emails.

I have mostly recovered and although I might take another couple days off this weekend, I am ready to get back to work. We are going to start things off getting all the Cobrafest photos up. Keith Underwood and Jason Hoodrich from Taylor Street Tattoos gave out Sailor Jerry flash tattoos all three days. Tons of bands played and DJs spun outside.

I already did mini updates on the road trip blog about all three days of Cobrafest at Cobra Lounge if you want to know more about the events, but I will give you quick break downs right now.

Cobrafest Friday: The Bronx headlined and absolutely destroyed the place and my friends in Habibi were awesome as well. The People’s Temple and Thing played as well and there was a pretty sweet dance party outside. All of Habibi got tattooed and I got a tattoo as well. My dad raised me on Jimmy Buffett so I got a dead parrot head tattoo as a secret homage to that upbringing.  Click here for photos from Cobrafest Friday.

Cobrafest Saturday: The night featured The Growlers headlining with Toxie, Heavy Times and Denney & The Jets all performing as well. Most of the Growlers got tattooed as did Denney and his girlfriend. Saturday seemed like the most chill of the days probably because there was so much other shit going on that night but the Growlers and local favorites Heavy Times still brought out a pretty packed crowd. Click here for photos from Cobrafest Saturday.

Cobrafest Sunday: Sunday was my favorite day specifically because there was a Yacht Rock party with a water slide that made for awesome photos and a lot of cute tattooed girls in bikinis and a lot of Hall and Oates being played outside. My pals White Mystery played and opened up for King Dude and Chicago’s own Hollywood Holt spun outside. Nones and Rainbow Gun Show opened the night and it ended with two cute girls driving me to the place I was crashing. Nothing but awesomeness all night. Click here for photos from Cobrafest Sunday.

Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins, one of the most important traditional tattoo artists in history, died 40 years ago yesterday. To keep his memory alive the company that that bares his name threw events across the country. I photographed the New York event at the bowling alley/ dive bar The Gutter in Brooklyn. Sailor Jerry gave out free tattoos for seven straight hours. The guys from Three Kings Tattoos busted out dozens and dozens of mini Sailor Jerry flash tattoos that people picked by throwing a dart at a dart board. You might be asking yourself who would want an actual tattoo that they picked by throwing darts and a bard and the answer is hundreds of people. The line was around the block hours before the event even started.

On top of that Sailor Jerry brought out Matt Van Cura from Invisible Ink NYC to do slightly larger Sailor Jerry pieces on bands, journalists and friends of the Sailor Jerry crew. The drummer from Foxygen got one of the most confusing tattoos I have ever seen which was “Tom Jones” written in script under the letters DC. Evidently there is a DC Sailor Jerry flash that you can write any name in. I have no idea what the DC means and I have less of an idea why he would get Tom Jones as the name. It’s pretty amazing/hilarious especially because it’s his only tattoo. Nightlife legend Steve Lewis, artist Buff Monster and Inked Magazine’s creative director Todd Weinberger all left with Van Cura pieces.

The party was a great time with tons of cute tattooed girls ever, delicious hot dogs, cheap Sailor Jerry rum and lots of bowling, but after seven hours of tattoo madness I was ready for bed… but instead I went to The DL and shot another party until 4 in the morning. Pictures from that up tomorrow! Until then…

Click here for all the photos from the 40th anniversary of Norman Collins death: Sailor Jerry Day at The Gutter!