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What Tattoo Should I Get?
Wes Grimm • 2021-01-31
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome back to the Simple Questions Podcast. I'm your host, Dylan Carnahan. That introduction was American Ghosts by Jack Summers. That song is off of his album Four Years. You can find that on SoundCloud as well as Bandcamp. So head over there and give Jack a listen. I'll also have links to his album and this song under the show notes for episode three at the website simplequestionspodcast.com. Now today's episode is What Tattoo Should I Get? So if you are in the market for a tattoo or simply just want to learn more about the subject, you've stumbled across the right episode. In this episode, we'll touch on the history of tattooing, the tattooing process, things to consider when getting a tattoo, and we'll have a little bit of fun along the way. You might be asking yourself the question, well, Dylan, who are you gonna be asking these questions to? And I would reply to that with, I will be asking an owner of one of the oldest tattoo parlors in Kansas City. He is a third generation tattoo artist with over 40 years of experience, and his name is Wes Grimm, the owner of Grimm Tattoo. So sit back and relax and listen to Wes and I's conversation, and hopefully you'll pick up some things along the way. So, I kinda wanna get into the shop, and you a little bit here. So, can you tell me a little bit about how long Grimm Tattoo's been around, and how it got started?
Wes Grimm:Well, my great-grandfather was born in 1900. And in 1916, he was 16 years old. He opened his first tattoo shop in Chicago on the Bowery, which was a part of town where they had quite a few tattoo shops, kind of a rough part of town. At 16, he put the name, his name up on a sign and everything. And the story goes that his uncle came by and saw his name up there on the tattoo sign. He tore the sign down, beat him up, and said that he was gonna ruin the family's reputation. So then he changed his name. He started using a trade name, Bert Grimm. And that's kind of where Grimm Tattoo starts right there. And so that was 1916.
Dylan Carnahan:So how does the shop move around from there?
Wes Grimm:Well, Bert opened that tattoo shop. And the interesting thing, the story he tells, is that he was open there for some time, a few months, and Buffalo Bill walked in one day with a big announcement and said, Oh, I heard that the best tattooer in Chicago was some kid named Bert Grimm. So he hired him for the Wild West Show.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Wes Grimm:And so Bert worked for the Wild West Show. But then, you know, Buffalo Bill died that very next winter.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Wes Grimm:So that was the last Wild West Show. And I believe the story is that from there, he did lots of stuff. He was in the Army, he was in the Merchant Marines. He traveled with circus trains. That was a real popular way for tattooing to be done, was to travel with a circus train. Every circus had a tattooer.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Wes Grimm:Mm-hmm. And then, so 1926, he opened up a tattoo shop in St. Louis, and he was there till the 50s.
Dylan Carnahan:Huh.
Wes Grimm:And from there, ha, he ended up in Long Beach, California. He's most known for his Long Beach work, because in Long Beach, the people that he tattooed there still have recent memories of being tattooed. Whereas the people that he tattooed in the 20s and 30s and 40s in St. Louis, most of those are not around.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, so he's kind of lives on through his work a little bit.
Wes Grimm:His later work, yeah, he had a long, long career. He died in 85, and he's supposedly still working. People would still come by his house and knock on his door and went in and tattoo him.
Dylan Carnahan:So what made his kind of tattooing, I guess what drew people to him?
Wes Grimm:He had a really, a showman-like attitude, like I assume that he learned working for circuses, carnivals, and he would sort of bark as he tattooed. He would give you a story of himself in a kind of dramatic way. So he'd be tattooing you, and all of a sudden he'd say, well, you might not know you're being tattooed right now by the best tattooer in the world. By golly, it's true. And if you don't believe it, look at this quote in this newspaper. It says right there that Bert Grimm's the greatest in the world. And so he would go on like that.
Dylan Carnahan:Really? So he had kind of, it was kind of the process of his tattooing had like a showmanship quality to it.
Wes Grimm:It did. And then the style that he developed was very simple. And it's been emulated quite a bit, even up to today, to even people even copying his original designs, the Bert Grimm designs are, they're iconic. And so he developed that really well too.
Dylan Carnahan:What would be some of the kind of those designs?
Wes Grimm:It's well, like the heart with the teardrops coming out of it, the crying heart, and there's quite a few things like that.
Dylan Carnahan:So you mentioned earlier that like his Long Beach work in particular, what made that so special?
Wes Grimm:Well, it's the recent memory.
Dylan Carnahan:The significance.
Wes Grimm:The second part of his career. The people he tattooed in Long Beach are still alive. Most people he tattooed in St. Louis are not, because it was just so long ago. So he's remembered his role on the West Coast. And another thing he's memorable for is because his tattoo shop was sort of a central place for tattooing. And a lot of the West Coast really famous tattoo guys got a start there in that shop. And so it spreads out from there really wide.
Dylan Carnahan:So they were, he had an influence upon those other people that tattooed there.
Wes Grimm:He had an influence on a whole lot of new generation, very influential tattoo artists. So he's remembered for that as well.
Dylan Carnahan:So how does Wes come into the picture here? How do you fit in?
Wes Grimm:Well, he taught my grandfather to tattoo. And when my grandfather began tattooing, he assumed the name. He was, bestowed the name Grimm. He tattooed as a Grimm. But then he decided that he'd like to teach me to tattoo. Back when he decided that, tattooing wasn't cool. Like nobody I went to high school with wanted a tattoo.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Wes Grimm:Yeah, it was kind of, and I knew grandpa tattooed my whole life. But so that was kind of a grandpa thing, you know.
Dylan Carnahan:It was aged.
Wes Grimm:It was like playing checkers or something. Like something I just don't care that much about. I had other things to do. I worked on a river boat. Had all this other stuff going on. And grandpa wanted me to come over and do grandpa thing with him.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Wes Grimm:So he finally, my mom finally started bugging me. She said, well, why won't you go help your grandfather? Well, I've been helping grandfather since I was a little kid, you know. He'd always call me up to come help carry hay or build fences and stuff like that. And so when he wanted help, I started going over to just helping him. And then he started me drawing and painting designs and I'd stand over shoulder and watch him tattoo. That went on for a year or so. He tattooed mostly bikers. Back then, when I started in 1980, I actually started tattooing in 1979 or so, I started hanging out. And back then, the only two people that got tattoos were sailors and bikers. And so, Great Grandpa, he worked on the West Coast, really near a sailor training center. And Grandpa tattooed bikers. He pulled a little trailer and he'd go to all these motorcycle events in Midwest, which there were quite a few swaps and rallies and races and things like that. And so, that's what I did for a year. I just followed him around. And then in 1980, Great Grandpa flew to Kansas City and I was on a riverboat. I worked on a riverboat 30 days on, 30 days off, 30 days on, 30 days off. And I happened to be on the boat. Great Grandpa flew to Kansas City and they opened a shop at 38th and Main, which was basically more a place to house all of our travel and tattoo stuff.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Wes Grimm:Yeah, because it was all travel-oriented. Like all the tattoo designs were in hangers that you could deploy basically instead of individual frames on the wall.
Dylan Carnahan:It was very mobile.
Wes Grimm:Yeah, so the whole thing was mobile.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Wes Grimm:And so we opened up a little bitty shop there at 38th and Main. And then we were there for almost 20 years. Grandpa sold me the place after three or four years, and I continued operating it for almost 20 years.
Dylan Carnahan:So how, so you kind of gained that exposure from your grandpa, kind of just watching him, traveling with him.
Wes Grimm:Yeah, and that's a funny thing too. Great grandpa tattooed the way he tattooed in the 40s. He had kind of technical stuff, but he had one piece springs with no capacitor when these old fossil machines is. And so, and I started that way. He didn't use a spray bottle. He used a bucket and a sponge. And it sounds horrible, but they would change that every time. So it was always antiseptic, clean, warm, soapy water. And, but no spray bottle. The first time I saw a guy use a spray bottle on a tattoo, I thought, ah, that's genius. So I started the exact same way they did. Tattooed the way grandpa did. He tattooed the way Bert did. We tattooed side by side. It was seamless. You couldn't tell the difference between any of us because that's the way you did it. We used, instead of an armrest, we used a foot block and a lap cloth. It was very archaic. Big blue flame on your tattoo machine because there's no capacitor. If you touched that thing, it'd shock you. So let's see, what else? There was carbon stencils. I had never seen one of these purple stencil. Tattoo machine stencil makers. We used a carbon stencil which you scratched a piece of clear plastic and then you rubbed burnt bone into the cracks. And then you put a thin coat of Vaseline on and pressed it on real carefully. Now, if you touched that thing, it was gone.
Dylan Carnahan:Really? It was that fragile?
Wes Grimm:So it's not like that permanent 3M purple paper stuff. Yeah, it was real fragile. If you touched it, it'd be gone. So it was a different, even method to tattoo, you'd have to start to line it. You'd have to start at the very bottom. Carefully do the line as you went up so that you didn't erase the line with your elbow while you're doing the top part. Even the method of doing it was like really archaic.
Dylan Carnahan:How have you kinda, I guess, changed as an artist?
Wes Grimm:Well, right away, I started doing all that old stuff. And then right away after I became involved in tattooing, I started meeting other people that were doing it and seeing that this was the old way. And learned, I picked up a lot of stuff. I started going to tattoo conventions. I went to a tattoo convention in Reno, Nevada, a national tattoo club, I think in 1981 or 82. So from there on, I started trying to emulate the new ways, which was kind of a revolution going on because we suddenly started wearing gloves and being a lot more conscious of being safe.
Dylan Carnahan:So you had a revolution, not only of the aesthetic of tattooing, but also, like as you mentioned, the ways in which you just...
Wes Grimm:Yeah, even the technology that we were using, yeah. Because I started using the capacitors and two B springs and the purple stencil machine. When I started tattooing in 1980, no private person had a copy machine.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Wes Grimm:No one did. I mean, the only, if you saw a copy machine, was that a big bank or something, and they were the size of a Buick.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Wes Grimm:You know, one person couldn't even pick up a copy machine. So yeah, so it was several years into tattooing before you could even go down there and hit the button that says, you know, shrink it down 10%. If you wanted to shrink it down 10%, you had to sit in front of it and draw it on a piece of paper, you know, even the technology's changed quite a bit. Now with tattooing, anything that makes tattooing quicker, makes it a little bit more affordable. And you think back when they were doing it by hand before electricity, it might take all day to do one tattoo. Now when they started using electric tattoo gun, you could do 10 tattoos in one day, so it's 10 times faster. Well, that guy's going to make more money. He can actually lower his prices because he's working the same amount of time. He's working eight hours. This guy's working eight hours. This guy's doing 10 times as much. He could charge only twice as much, way, just squash this other guy.
Dylan Carnahan:You can also, you know, pass the savings on.
Wes Grimm:It made it available to everybody who could afford it now, because you could do 10 of them in a day, so you didn't have to charge so much. You could charge a little bit less on each one. So it made it affordable and it made it very popular. So once the electric machine made it go through sort of a revolution where everybody wanted to use it. And what did that was that the electric machine was faster. So anytime if you make tattooing faster, you're gonna get more on your menu than the other guy. So like if you see everybody drawing on an iPad now, you say, oh, that's not the old way. You guys don't know how to draw because you're not drawing on paper anymore and all this stuff. But if it makes them faster, then you're gonna get left in the dust. I don't care how much that you love the old way. If you're not as fast as what they're doing now, then you're gonna get left behind. And then tattooing, if you put a stick in the mud and say, I'm not going any further than this, you're gonna get left behind.
Dylan Carnahan:And so you kind of mentioned obviously speed, the impact that has on the tattoo artist. And you mentioned that made it more accessible. And earlier you kind of talking about how predominantly bikers and sailors, like Navy men, kind of how do you think the demographic for tattooing has changed over time?
Wes Grimm:Well, it's a lot different now because it's more accepted in society. Now you can get a job now with a tattoo on your arm. Used to be you couldn't be a cop, you couldn't be a fireman, you couldn't be a waiter. So that's pretty cool. It's a lot more accepted. I had an interesting time when I went to work in Hawaii. It was a time period there. I've been tattooing for 40 years, so for like a 10 year stretch or so, I used to work in Hawaii for the whole winter. I'd go over there in October and I'd come back at the beginning of May and just skip the winter. And in Hawaii, I experienced something that I'd never experienced anywhere else. And that is in Hawaii, there's a place in their culture for tattooing. So that they find your tattoo artist, you had suddenly a status in society. And I personally have never had status in society. Being a tattoo guy on Main Street, it's pretty much counter culture sort of thing to be doing. And so that visible, palpable honor that they bestow upon you for being a part of the community like that was moving. I had never experienced that before.
Dylan Carnahan:That is really interesting.
Wes Grimm:And it was a real thing you could count on. Like I remember, like for instance, at the airport one time, looking at my bags and they start taking all my, I got a lot of tattoo stuff. You know, and they start to getting weird and looking at my stuff. And a big old guard walks over, a big old Hawaiian guy walks over there. He peeks at it a little bit. He was the one with the uniform on. And he said, you tattoo guy. I said, yeah, I work over skin deep. He was, oh, let him through. Just like that.
Dylan Carnahan:Really? Yeah, that's really interesting. I never thought about that kind of social dynamic and how it's different elsewhere.
Wes Grimm:Mm-hmm. Hawaii is a great place to work, because you know you hear about Hawaii, well, it's expensive over there. Well, yeah, it is. There's two parts of expensive. There's the part where you have to pay, so you don't want to make your money in the Midwest and spend it all in Hawaii. But if you make your money in Hawaii where things are expensive, and spend it here, yeah, it's not expensive, it's lucrative. Yeah, things are expensive in Hawaii, so when you turn your hand over and say, pay me, you're getting a bigger paycheck. So that was a wonderful thing. So it's like working in Hawaii in the wintertime. I gotta recommend it to anybody who figured it out. I used to go over there, when I first started doing that, I knew what I was doing, so I knew I was gonna go over there. In October, everything's dead and gray, you know? And so when you get to there, you get off the plane, everything's just alive and lush and green and humid. It was a beautiful breeze blowing. It's just so beautiful. And this feeling would overwhelm me. That was so unfamiliar. I didn't know what to think of it at first. It felt good, but it was real unfamiliar. I never felt like that before. So eventually wear off a little bit. So the next year, I'd go there again, you know? Beginning of the winter, everything's dead and gray. Get to the airport, and when I get off the plane, I would start getting that feeling again. Real unfamiliar. Well, about the third time, it was starting to get familiar. I said, oh yeah, I remember feeling this. And I finally put my finger on what that was. I felt smart. I'd never felt like that before.
Dylan Carnahan:What made you feel so smart?
Wes Grimm:Well, I just left 10 million people freezing their asses in North America, and I'm gonna spend the winter making a bunch of money in Hawaii. Why doesn't everybody do this? Why?
Dylan Carnahan:It was a good seasonal gig.
Wes Grimm:Oh yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:So what kind of, did the tattooing, the tattoos you did in Hawaii differ from that of the Midwest? What was requested?
Wes Grimm:Well, it added more to my palate, because there's also a Hawaiian tattoo language that I was allowed to converse in. And so it added quite a bit to just my general rounding.
Dylan Carnahan:So that kind of brings me to the question, what are kind of the main styles of tattooing?
Wes Grimm:Well, when you want to think about the main styles of tattooing, what you're really talking about is varying cultures. Different cultures have different, not only, but subject matter, drawing styles, and even instruments. So, there's a Polynesian style where they sort of tap it in, and it's a lot of geometric patterns. And then, so you go to Japan, where they sort of do an opposite polar thing that we do in the West, where they'll make a sort of a light image with a huge dark background. And what we tend to do is to have a skin background, light, and then put one single dark image there.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Wes Grimm:So it's kind of a point, and then they do, so that's sort of the difference there.
Dylan Carnahan:What about kind of, as you mentioned earlier, kind of the old way to do things in America, like traditional tattooing versus kind of like this new wave stuff? What about those distinct stuff?
Wes Grimm:I'm not sure I know what you mean, but there's always been a really diverse imagery. And the tattoo guys are always sort of trying to catch that. And even sometimes, you know, even the old, most traditional designs you can imagine can be done in new ways. New ways to color in things like that.
Dylan Carnahan:So you kind of mentioned there's a lot of different ways that you can do, you know, old school tattoos. You can do things a lot of different ways. What are kind of some of the common, I guess, subjects that people bring in to get tattooed?
Wes Grimm:Well, that just varies so greatly. Everybody has a different reason and different imagery in their head. And most people have, you know, expectations that you can't even fathom. So it just varies with people's imagination.
Dylan Carnahan:So you get quite a wide variety. I know earlier we were kind of talking about the flashes. Can you kind of describe that again?
Wes Grimm:The flash is the designs on the wall. It's an old carnival term. And it's a traditional way to be tattooed, is to come in to see a design, a traditional imagery that you like. Point at it and walk out the door with it. It's kind of a traditional old style of getting a tattoo. Nowadays, there's a lot of really fine art can be involved. And a lot of artists like to look at what you want to do and then take some time to make a drawing and make an appointment for you for later. And we still like to kind of keep it spontaneous and actually sort of do it on the spot. It's the hardest way to really practice this art, because it's so immediate, you know. You have to satisfy people's expectations on the spot as an artist.
Dylan Carnahan:What kind of things can you do to kind of to bridge that gap to make it easier?
Wes Grimm:Well, one thing you do is there's ways to get your clientele involved and invested in what you're doing. Like one thing, you can draw it right in front of them so they can see how the thing's developed and everything. Instead of, like, if you leave them and then come back with a drawing, it cheapens it somehow. They don't understand what it took to get there. So they might look at it and go, oh yeah, but could we do it from a three-quarter angle instead of straight on? And they don't see that. You just don't go back there and wave a wand over it, and it just flips over. If you draw that thing in front of them, they watch every line come crawling together on the page, and still it finally starts looking at something that they can recognize. And so they get invested like that.
Dylan Carnahan:There's a level of artistry to it.
Wes Grimm:Yeah, and involvement with people getting the tattoo. When they're involved in it like that, they're more invested in the end result. Instead of just going, oh, that was great, but could you do it like a different way? Could you do five or six so I can kind of pick one? You want people to be more involved, so you can draw the same thing all day long.
Dylan Carnahan:That kind of is reminiscent of kind of like your great-grandfather a little bit.
Wes Grimm:Yeah, that immediacy is what we, you know, the culture is what I spoke about earlier. The thing about culture is like I have culture. Everyone's got a culture, but it's learning to build on what came before. Like I don't have to learn every single little trick about building a tattoo machine or mixing ink because that was brought to me. So I could take all that and go on from there. Like maybe bring an innovation or add something to it or also concentrate on other aspects of what I'm doing. It's that culture that we bring. And it gets passed up whether you even realize it or not. This sort of method of the way that I like to see the tattoo shop run. I didn't invent that. All these little things that you could just take for granted here was brought to me.
Dylan Carnahan:And then, you know, build off of...
Wes Grimm:Yeah, that's what I bring here. That's why there's five tattoo guys out there. They're spread out pretty wide, but they can all see and hear each other. And they're all get along. They're all friends. Because the atmosphere, which is part of the culture, I couldn't have a thing where there was a war, where half was aside, was against the other half, or something like that. It's like who could work there, you know what I mean? Just things like that. Look around in here, you see there's hot sauce on the shelf. It doesn't have nobody's name on it. It's like we share a common area, and we know how to do it because we have a culture that allows us to this freedom to share with each other and not worry that somebody's stealing from you to be able to contribute. My very favorite people that I love to work with are people that allow me to be generous. If someone allows you to be generous, then they're your best friend. If you can't be generous to somebody because they take advantage of you, or they steal or whatever, you can't be generous with people that steal.
Dylan Carnahan:This is authenticity. You know, you can't be open with someone. Yeah.
Wes Grimm:So, you know, the atmosphere, just bringing that kind of thing, like a safety standard, and an atmosphere, like that immediate atmosphere, where all we can do this, like we can do it right now. It's the way we do it. It's all part of my culture.
Dylan Carnahan:So, how do you, if someone was wanting a tattoo, how do you usually decide where to place it, the placement of the tattoo?
Wes Grimm:Well, generally what you want to do as a professional, is to find out the general area that they want to get the tattoo in. And then you look at the design, whether it should face forward or backwards, that kind of thing. And then you want to decide on a general size for that area. And then you'll make the stencil. And then as an artist, from there on, you want to kind of take the reins. You don't want to keep getting steered around by the customer. I mean, as a professional, what you want to do, what they're here to get from you, is your artistry, your understanding, your wisdom, and your expertise, your experience. That's what they're trying to get from you. So when they say, you say, well, where you want it? They say, on my shoulder. From there, as an artist, you ought to be able to say, all right, this is where it should be placed, and this is the direction it should face, and this is the size that it ought to be, to be here. And then instead of going through every phase of that, say, well, how big do you think you ought to make it, or whatever, you should take it from there, and the whole process be a process of an artist finishing a piece of artwork, you know, generally the right area.
Dylan Carnahan:So how does kind of the pain vary, I guess, in locations to...
Wes Grimm:Yeah, it varies greatly, and it depends a lot on an individual. You know, some people, you know, some people are sensitive one place and not so much the other, so it varies a lot. There's a few things that are pretty universal, like the easiest place to get tattoos outside of your arms. And then, you know, the more delicate places to get tattoos, you know, other places, ankles are kind of tough because they're just so bony and everything.
Dylan Carnahan:And that does that not only alter like kind of how the tattoo appears, but also the pain, so it's kind of a more bony area?
Wes Grimm:Well, not really. Not if it's done right. Well, you're not really tattooing bone, you know, you're just tattooing skin, so if you keep it in the right parameters, then the look shouldn't change much at all. The skin does change from area to area, like the palms of your hands and the bottoms of your feet. The skin is really, really thick, so you can get a little difference of a result than if you're doing a protected area like the inside of your arm.
Dylan Carnahan:So it varies, the skin thickness?
Wes Grimm:Yeah, epidermis.
Dylan Carnahan:What are kind of the factors that determine the time it takes for a tattoo to be completed?
Wes Grimm:Well, it depends on the size of it, the detail, and how much resistance you get from the customer. Some people can sit down and just let you work, and some people have to jump up out of the chair once in a while. It can vary greatly.
Dylan Carnahan:What, I guess, so give me an example, say like a 3-inch intricate tattoo.
Wes Grimm:Well, here's a good, interesting thing, is that humans are pretty much alike in a lot of ways. There will be some variations. And about a 3-hour tattoo is usually about all anybody wants to endure. You can see people sitting there for 5 or 6 hours, but you get a diminishing result as you go along, because they have to take more breaks and things like that. You think of it this way, if you sat down in the chair and my boot was in the chair, and you sat on my boot, you could sit there for 5 or 10 minutes. It's not, you're just sitting on a boot. It's not comfortable, but you know, it's not going to kill you. But if you had to sit on that boot and drive to fucking Wichita, by the time you got to Wichita, it takes about 3 hours to get to Wichita. By the time you got there, that boot would be the biggest fucking pain in the ass you ever felt, ever. You couldn't wait to get out of that car. Tattoo in the same kind of way. You're just sitting on a tiny, tiny little needle. It's not that bad, don't even go in that deep. It's not even painful, it's just irritating as fuck. It's not like, say, burning yourself with a cigarette. It's not going to make you jump or anything. You can endure it. It's just not that comfortable. But after three hours, I mean, most human beings will be done. So I personally, if you're going to try to save some money on your tattoo, the best way is to not get tattooed more than three hours at a time. The fourth hour, you're going to get maybe 45 minutes worth of work done. The fifth hour, you'll be lucky if you get a half an hour's worth of work done. In the sixth hour, you'll gladly just sit there and chat with your tattoo artist while time ticks away.
Dylan Carnahan:Because you're just done.
Wes Grimm:You're like, oh, get me out of this ride.
Dylan Carnahan:That is a good point. Just the consistent irritation, you can only withstand it for so long.
Wes Grimm:It's just uncomfortable. And it takes a certain amount of energy to resist it. And after three hours or so, most people are just worn out. They just don't have the energy anymore.
Dylan Carnahan:So how do you figure the cost of a tattoo?
Wes Grimm:I'll tell you how you figure the cost of a tattoo. You price a tattoo so that you can start it and finish it and do the best job that you can do on it and feel happy about it. If you get partway through that tattoo and think, damn, I should have charged more money on this than you just cheated your customer because you didn't provide them with the opportunity to give you enough money to be interested in the goddamn thing until you're done with it. That's how much tattoo costs. Whatever it costs to get the artist to be interested enough in the damn thing to do it right from beginning to end. You only got one chance.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's a very interesting way to look at it.
Wes Grimm:When I started tattooing, I was like, oh, they said, okay, well, like, you can start doing tattoos. And I was like, well, who the hell is going to let me tattoo them? And Graffell said, well, you're going to tattoo price repeaters. I said, what exactly is that? He said, you watch, there's plenty. And so a guy walks in and he says, how much for this tattoo? Grandpa says, 100 bucks. The guy says, 100 bucks? Price repeater. 100 bucks, he says. Grandpa looks at me and smiles. He says, yeah, 100 bucks. And he points at me and he says, my grandson there has never done a tattoo commercially. And he'll do it for half price. Well, guess what the price repeater says? He's a price repeater. He says, half price? That's all he cares about. That's all he hears. So he never had to lie to anybody about my experience. Because then two days later, a guy come in and say, how much? 50 bucks. And he'd say, 50 bucks? And Grandpa would say, well, my grandson's there, been tattooing for two weeks or whatever. He'll do it for half price. Half price! He went all the way through to his... Grandson's there, only been doing it for six months, but he'll do it for $20 cheaper.
Dylan Carnahan:$20 cheaper!
Wes Grimm:Price competitively walking in there now. That's what you practice on.
Dylan Carnahan:That's pretty funny. So, we've kind of talked about a lot of things, but we'll kind of circle back to, where would you personally recommend not getting a tattoo?
Wes Grimm:On your eyeball. That's been disastrous for many people, and just don't seem right, does it?
Dylan Carnahan:Personally, no, just to share my personal opinion, I wouldn't do it. Any other kind of areas that you talk about, kind of the skin being thicker in some areas?
Wes Grimm:Well, you know, the places that are visible have social consequences, they still do. You can't expect to put funny tattoos all over your face and not have people laugh at you.
Dylan Carnahan:So, that's kind of the large, plays a large role, is kind of the, maybe the social.
Wes Grimm:Yeah, you want to put your tattoo where you can live with it.
Dylan Carnahan:And if you're ever second guessing that, then it's probably not a good placement.
Wes Grimm:It used to be a thing when I started, before I even got there, but it was in place when I got there, in the 70s, when I started tattooing in 1980. I'm still there now. Some of the people that had been in tattooing for a while, they had this philosophy that they were sort of sharing and trying to present to the public. And to be in agreement on was that they'd ask the question, is this good for tattooing? Does what you're doing make tattooing look like like not a dumb or criminal or stupid thing to do? And so you just stop and ask yourself that. So if a guy came in and said, well, I want scooby-doo on my forehead, and you'd say, stop and say, does this make tattooing look good? Doing something like that. The answer is no. You just say, well, no, we don't really do that. So it sort of kept tattoos off of hands, faces, and necks.
Dylan Carnahan:Kind of an honor kind of thing amongst tattoo artists being protective of their craft.
Wes Grimm:Yeah, and sort of an aesthetic that we'd hope to all agree on, at least that.
Dylan Carnahan:So that was kind of a unwritten rule, if you will?
Wes Grimm:It may have even been written in a few unofficial places.
Dylan Carnahan:So that kind of, how long do tattoos last generally? I know that people get, you can get a touch of-
Wes Grimm:Well, a Grimm tattoo is guaranteed for life. It really won't, if it's done right, a tattoo's a permanent mark. It won't need to be done again, ever, if it's done right. That's the standard we hold ourselves to. That's what we're trying to achieve.
Dylan Carnahan:Really? So come in, you get one, boom.
Wes Grimm:Guaranteed for life. Really?
Dylan Carnahan:Well, that kind of leads me to, I guess, my last question, which would be, how would someone go about getting a tattoo here at Grimm Tattoo?
Wes Grimm:The funnest way is to come up to the door, let us know you're here. We'll get you in, sign you up. We'll get an artist to look at whatever references you might bring, or describe your tattoo, or allow you to pick one out, whatever it takes. They'll sit down and make a drawing for you, and then take you back there and tattoo you.
Dylan Carnahan:Is it usually on the spot like that?
Wes Grimm:Hopefully, yeah, that's the way we like to run it. Sometimes when we get back there, you might have to wait. If you can't be first, you can be next.
Dylan Carnahan:Thanks for watching! Well, that concludes the interview with Wes Grimm. I hope that you guys enjoyed that. I hope you learned about the evolution of tattooing, a little bit about how to determine the placement and style of your tattoo, as well as kind of getting a deeper understanding of the tattooing experience from an artist's perspective. And ultimately, I hope that helped you understand the process that you might go through if you're wanting to get a tattoo. If you're interested in getting a tattoo from Grimm Tattoo, feel free to look them up at grimmtattookc.com, as well as you can simply give them a call or stop by the shop off 39th and Broadway. They are open, as Grimm mentioned, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. So they will be available fairly often and they will take care of your tattooing needs. Looking forward to the next podcast episode. If you are a musician that would like to be included in the introduction, simply DM me on the social media accounts for Simple Questions Podcast or shoot me an email at dylancarnahan at simplequestionspodcast.com. Whatever platform you are listening to this podcast on, whether that be Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, whatever it may be, feel free to give us a subscribe and follow. That way you can stay tuned for next episode. As well as, I have a plethora of information in the show notes provided at simplequestionspodcast.com. If you'd like to learn more about Wes Grimm and Grimm Tattooing, I have additional resources provided in the show notes for this episode three. Next episode might cover a topic that's fairly different than the previously discussed topics in these episodes. It could include finance, it could include history. I'm currently pursuing several different topics right now. If you would like to ask a question and have me find someone within our community to answer that, feel free to submit a question via social media or through the website. Stay tuned for that, and like always, keep asking questions.