Conventions, road rage, and bacon ice cream

Nate Click, Marissa, and myself left for the Needle Art Expo on Thursday

and it only took us an hour to fit all of our stuff in my car.

We left Thursday and wouldn't you know my new banner came in on Friday morning which meant I had to use my old hand painted banner. My timing is for the birdz.

Drove all fucking day long, was screamed by the passenger of a Winnebago who called me a "fucking idiot" in her very intelligent sounding southern accent, ate mexican food, denied Nate a trip to Dino World, and crashed in our hotel around midnight.

This was where I went to work for the weekend.

Nate and myself were worried that this would turn out to be a convention with nothing but shitty sketchball "tattooers" but it was a pleasant surprise to find out that all the artists were very legit and most of them were very good traditional style tattooers.

I was told that the convention center used to be an old Hanes underwear factory. The convention center was a much different setting compared to most convention centers. It had a very "industrial" feel to it which made it a bit more fun just because it was so strange.

The time I was there I was lucky enough to sell completely out of prints and paintings, I filmed an interview for SoTattooed.com (stay tuned), made a lot of new friends, and of course...

did some damn tattoos.

Here are some that I actually got a good photo of:

On Eric from Los Angeles who used to work at TatSoul

On a cool tattooer named Jereme

A tattooer named Max had me tattoo his left foot...

...But he had me tattoo his right foot first. Both done on the same day.

It was fun to load our hotel room with tattooers and weirdos. One hispanic guy is talking about spending the last 10 years in prison, girls are yapping about girl stuff, everyone else talks about the joys of whipshading.

I caught Nate tattooing our friend and fellow tattooer Rich's head. "Mama Tried" in fancy script on his dome. Marissa also got a tattoo of Nate's fancy script. You can't beat it!

This is where I was interviewed. I said "ummm" a whole lot and tried to keep a straight face when I filmed the intro where I had to introduce myself.

I probably sound like i'm autistic.

After Nate and I tattooed the south and made enough cash to choke a small goat (that joke is copywrited by my dad), we spent an extra night so we can actually rest and we took off for home the next morning. On the way home I was lucky enough to see Nate order a milkshake that was topped with bacon and maple syrup.

True Story.

As a reward to myself I bought a new machine which I am impatiently waiting for.

The show was great and this morning I was contacted by a guy wanting to know if I wanted to be part of a new tattoo flash book coming out. The roster already includes the likes of Steve Byrne, Chad Koeplinger, Robert Ryan, Scott Sylvia, and countless others that I consider to be masters of traditional tattooing and still look up to. I have no idea how they picked me to be a part of the team but I am both flattered and honored beyond words.

I hope this isn't a cruel joke.