Bunnies have pink balls and rarely ash their cigarettes.

One thing that's great about conventions is we get to see a lot of old friends that we sometimes only see at conventions. Some of us have certain ones we go to every year and when you see people you know it's like you're on vacation with your friends! Only you don't have to travel with them and listen to them complain about the food or the weather and you can ditch them when they get annoying.

Last weekend was the San Jose convention so we had a slew of friends coming through the shop. Tony Derigo of Chronic Tattoo in Ohio was here and hung out and tattooed at the shop one day. He drew a fantastic panther for Jason in about two minutes and tattooed it in about 3 minutes.

Not only is Tony a damn fine artist but, you know, for a tattooer he's also a pretty nice guy. So I really wanted to get tattooed by him, too. I made an appointment for the convention. And now I have this very cool tattoo of a harpy with Eleanor Roosevelt's head. Tony's going to be back sometime next year and might do a guest spot at the shop so we'll keep you posted on that.

Tony tattooing Holly

   

Tattoo on Holly by Tony Derigo

 

Tattoo on Aaron by Tony Derigo

Aaron, Jason and Iggy all had a great time at the convention and got to do some fun tattoos as well:

Tattoo by Iggy Vans, done at the San Jose Convention

While they were busy having fun and being cool in San Jose Eric, Cris, Jerry, Isaac and I were all doing the same back at the shop.

  

"All these pics of Cris were while I was asking him how long it took to warm up his time machine to get to work from 1896 every day, he said the flux capacitor has been on the fritz so he's been stuck in present day Oakland this week which sucks cause the bay bridge has been closed so every asshole in the Bay is on BART, I know all too well how much BART sucks hahaha"....Isaac

by Cris Cleen

by Holly

 

by Holly Ellis

 

by Eric

 

by Eric

 

by Aaron

After the convention our friend Andrew who is in town from Boston, came to the shop and got this weird but cool devil guy from Iggy. Andrew was one of the refugees stuck in San Francisco when Katrina hit his hometown so we put him up with a spot to work at at the shop for a bit. It was really nice to see him again.

 

by Iggy

Robert Ryan from Electric Tattoo in New Jersey stopped by also and tattooed this weird bird puking up a star flower mandala thing on Isaac. Seriously guys, I think you need to chill out on the drugs...

 

 

by Robert Ryan

We also have Bill Falsetta and Chad Hunt (I bet he's glad his folks didn't name him Mike!) from Name Brand Tattoo in Ann Arbor hanging out. Bill's gonna be tattooing at the shop this Friday so you should get tattooed by him while you have the chance.

All in all this was a pretty good week at the shop. The only thing I regret seeing is this:

Aaron tattooing Isaac

And maybe this, too: