Rebels for an artistic cause
Feb. 12, 2008
Loni Flaks gets a tattoo on her upper back from tattoo artist Gabe Garcia on Saturday at Hollywood Rebels Tattoo. Flaks and her mother had tattoos done on the same day at the shop.
Columbia resident Dan Ryan watches tattoo artist Mikey Wheeler work on a tattoo on Ryan's arm Saturday at Hollywood Rebels Tattoo. Ryan also works at the tattoo parlor as a piercer.
Tattoo artist Mikey Wheeler works on a tattoo on Dan Ryan's arm at Hollywood Rebels Tattoo on Saturday. Besides working at the tattoo parlor, Wheeler is a guitarist for Bald Eagle.
RIGHT: Tattoo artist Mikey Wheeler takes a cigarette break outside Hollywood Rebels Tattoo on Saturday. Wheeler sports several tattoos, one reading 'Rock Star' on his fingers.
Tattoo artist Mikey Wheeler examines a sketch of a tattoo on Dan Ryan's right arm Saturday. Ryan's left arm already features a large tattoo, which includes creatures varying from gremlins to dinosaurs.
(Click graphic to enlarge)
Mikey Wheeler pulled the cigarette out from behind his left ear, stepped outside his office and took a few minutes to himself before his next appointment.
His “office” is Hollywood Rebels Tattoo in downtown Columbia, a slight aberration of the block where it resides, with its fair share of neon lights and two bold “Rebel Tattoo” logos decorating the window display. It’s hard to miss.
He stood outside the door taking drag after drag, hand in his pocket, staring out into the distance in the Columbia cold. A tattoo crawls up Wheeler’s neck from beneath his long-sleeved olive shirt, and the fingers holding up his cigarette are similarly adorned with ink reading “Rock Star,” which the guitarist and vocalist for local band Bald Eagle clearly is. The smoke from his cigarette twisted and turned around him, made more visible by the frigid winter air.
But after a few minutes of solace, his time was up. It was time to get back to business.
Inside, Dan Ryan was waiting. This wasn’t Ryan’s first tattoo. Among an eccentric cast of characters on his full sleeve tattoo, the furry Mogwai Gizmo of “Gremlins” fame is roughed up with a glass eye and some crossbones. A taco-eating dinosaur near Ryan’s elbow sports a dwarfed sombrero and brandishes a row of razor-sharp pearly whites.
But on his right arm was Wheeler, sitting crouched on a chair, dutifully preparing to ink Ryan a brand new tattoo.
“Mikey, is this going to hurt?” Ryan said with a laugh.
The answer was no.
“But I’m a big fat liar,” Wheeler said.
Both Wheeler and Ryan are employees of Hollywood Rebels Tattoo, where Wheeler is a tattoo artist and Ryan is a piercer. This is a place where the buzzing of the needles never lets up, as it bleeds into the loud music played overhead for hours on end. But for Ryan and Wheeler, it’s a comfortable place to be.
They seemed comfortable with each other, as well. The store’s other employees march in and out of Wheeler’s workstation as Ryan’s tattoo takes shape. For a little while, the shop was reminiscent of a soccer mom’s kitchen, with rowdy teenage boys running in and out, laughing loudly and making repeated trips to the refrigerator.
They were uninhibited as they spewed jokes (including one about a painful scenario involving the candy Pop Rocks) and poke their heads in now and then to see what’s up.
“Ready?” Wheeler said as the needle touched down to Ryan’s skin.
This time around, Ryan was going for something a bit different to counter the images on his left arm. He said that working at a tattoo shop has made him re-think the tattoos he once thought were funny.
“There was a time a while ago when I thought a lot of things were a lot funnier than they really were,” Ryan said. “I kind of regret it.”
That’s why he’s getting the tattoos removed.
Comparing his sleeve to the sleeves of customers, Ryan, vocalist for the hardcore outfit Shut It Down!, said, “Especially working at a tattoo shop and seeing all the people that came in and looking at their sleeves and then taking a look at mine, it was just like, “Aw, crap,’ you know?”
So this time, Ryan got something a bit more serious. He chose a cobra versus a mongoose, a staple of Japanese art.
“Sworn enemies,” Wheeler said, pointing to a piece of artwork hanging on the wall of his workstation depicting the battling duo.
Though he knows what to expect by now, Ryan made another quip about the pain.
“I was thinking of getting my septum pierced at the same time, you know,” he said jokingly. “That way I could see which one hurts more.”
About his inspiration for a thugged-out Gizmo tattoo, Ryan said he just liked the idea of getting inked with a Mogwai, a fuzzy, furry character not unlike Furby, from one of Ryan’s favorite movies, “Gremlins.”
Other movies on the discussion agenda are a lesser-known dark comedy, 1990’s “Frankenhooker” (“It’s pretty messed up,” Ryan said), 1991’s “Rikki-O” (“He punches through a guy! It’s so intense”) and “Black Sheep,” the tale of what happens when New Zealand is overrun with genetically-altered sheep who, much to scientists’ chagrin, turn out to be zombies. The last one Ryan admits to not having seen, though the DVD caught his eye at a Target store.
Hollywood Rebels Tattoo, established in 1999, has been around for nine years. Customers come in and out of the doors at a constant rate, flipping through tattoo books and looking to the walls — there, customers can get ideas or finally find out what Betty Boop looks like naked. Black leather couches and artwork adorn the walls, like a scene from TLC’s “L.A. Ink” slightly downsized to fit in this sleepy Midwestern town.
Customer DeeDee Flaks took a seat in the shop nearest the window, fresh from getting a new addition to her small collection of tattoos. She sat waiting for her daughter, Loni, who was getting another tattoo as well. The Flaks keep it all in the family when it comes to tattoos. Flaks said she and her daughters have matching tattoos. To them, the tattoos weave a family story worth the pain of the buzzing needle. The pain is worth it for Ryan, too.
A few feet away back in Wheeler’s workstation, Ryan’s distinct smile still curled from ear to ear, regardless of the pain.
“This hurts,” Ryan said.
Wheeler looked up with a smirk. “Told you I was a big fat liar.”
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