Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life in Ink

A behind-the-scenes tour of the fabled tattoo industry on the arm of a swashbuckling insider and natural-born storyteller.

Jeff Johnson, a master tattoo artist and co-owner of the Sea Tramp Tattoo Company, has a blazing personality and a surefire management philosophy: Protect your people, make them feel safe enough to be brave, help them grow, and always learn from them. And for God's sake, pay attention to the toilets!

In this sharp, funny, and fascinating memoir, Johnson takes readers backstage at the Sea Tramp, Portland Oregon's oldest tattoo parlor, where art, drama, and commerce come together in highly entertaining theater. Founded by the legendary Bert Grimm, tattoo artist to Buffalo Bill and Bonnie and Clyde, it's an old-school street shop with a rich and colorful past.

Tattoo Machine reveals all the things that a TV show or a visit to your local establishment can't capture. There are the bloodbaths, the scams, the customers from hell. And then there are the friendships, the practical jokes, the surprising acts of tenderness. At the center of it all is Jeff Johnson. Welcome to his world, where there are no do-overs, everything is written in permanent ink, and a picture lasts a lifetime.

"Tattoo parlors are showcases for the socially disreputable, the brazenly nonconformist and the indelibly creative, all on display in this colorful memoir. First-time author and veteran tattoo artist Johnson has a million tales of the tattoo demimonde, who come to his Sea Tramp in Portland, Ore., as well as tattoo shops around the country. Into his shop walk scamsters and freaks; a gangster whose gun-toting posse rattles Johnson into misspelling their boss's tat; a punk femme fatale who lures him into a trap; and a probable serial killer who has the names and Social Security numbers of his victims emblazoned on his skin. Ruggedly individualistic artists are part of the show, as is Johnson himself: 'I have no shoes and no driver's license and I've been smoking gooey Mexican heroin and snorting piles of coke off a switchblade for three days straight,' opens one tale. (In a grungy management primer, Johnson offers tips on customer service, employee relations and the importance of bathrooms so clean that 'some daisy-assed pantsuit could feel safe and secure' in them.) The book is little more than a collection of shaggy-dog stories, but Johnson's stingingly profane prose, storytelling chops and offbeat sensibility definitely get under the reader's skin. (July 14)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"An amazing firsthand account of all things you wondered about tattoo shops. I loved it." Gus Van Sant

"Tattoo Machine is meticulously observed, savagely funny, and deeply compassionate. It's a tale of up-from-under redemption through the shadowed art of personal symbolism. Jeff Johnson is a sharp-eyed master tattoo artist and an extraordinary writer." Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

A behind-the-scenes tour of the fabled tattoo industry on the arm of a swashbuckling insider and natural-born storyteller.

In the eighteen years hes been a tattoo artist, Jeff Johnson has worked on everyone from nervous young coeds who turn green at the sight of his needle (chudders) to cocky would-be artists with fancy design degrees and weak constitutions (night hogs). As the proprietor of the legendary Sea Tramp Tattoo Company, hes inked gangbangers, age-defying moms, and sociopaths; hes defused brawls, tended delicate egos, learned to spot and avoid bunnies, and made it his mission to perpetrate ingenious and awful practical jokes on his fellow Trojans. Hes a true swamp panther: He knows all the tricks of the trade and, more important, he knows how to keep his legendary shop in Portland, Oregon, from becoming the scene of a nightly bloodbath.

In Tattoo Machine, Johnson lifts the curtain on an art form that has undergone rebirth and illuminates a world where art, drama, and commerce come together in highly entertaining theater. A tattoo shop is no longer a den of social outcasts and degenerates–its a workshop where committed and schooled artists who paint on living canvases develop close bonds and bitter rivalries, where tattoo legends and innovators are equally revered, and where the potential for disaster lurks in every corner.

Discussing everything from his days as an apprentice to some of the greatest inkers in the trade to the incredibly vivid nightly spectacular over which he presides, Jeff Johnson has written a sometimes riotous, sometimes harrowing, and always riveting memoir about what it means to be on the front lines of a global art revolution.

Jeff Johnson has been tattooing professionally for eighteen years and is the co-owner of The Sea Tramp Tattoo Company, Portland Oregon's oldest tattoo shop. This is his first book.