Name: Leo Darlin Guajardo
Location: Portland, OR
I tattoo for a living. I’ve been doing it about fifteen years or so. I apprenticed in a shop for a couple of years out in Hawaii after working there just to answer the phones, clean stuff, scrub tubes, things like that. After a few months, the guy who ran the shop offered to teach me to tattoo because, in his words, I worked hard, I could draw, and everybody there liked me, which is rare. Apprenticeship was about a year and a half or so. Two years? Yeah. Somewhere in that range. It was… nothing’s a set schedule with an apprenticeship or any kind of learning in a trade like that, aside from once you’re in the trade, the whole ‘10,000 hours journeyman’ thing.
I had tattooed my own foot after work one day and went in for my next day of apprenticeship. My mentor was like, “I heard you tattooed your foot”, and I thought I was in trouble. And I was like, it’s my body. You know? But, he looked at my foot and he was like, “All right, I’m just gonna put you on the schedule tomorrow”, and I was like, oh, all right. Gave me the rest of the day off. I was stoked on that. It was kind of like a surprise because it was, you know… nothing was in the chute for me to be tattooing soon. And then, later that night, I realized the next day was April Fool’s. And so I girded myself for walking into work tomorrow and him just handing me a broom and being like, “SIKE!”, you know? But, no, I started tattooing on April Fool’s.
I’d actually already tattooed my ankle, but I just wanted something on my foot. You know, living in Hawaii… everywhere, sandals all the time, you’re always at the beach, so a lot of people get their feet tattooed. The first weekend I was tattooing professionally, I think I did seven different people’s feet. Flowers, turtles, you know? If I were Tarantino, I’d be in heaven.
I was in Hawaii about five years. And then I was in Seattle, for a couple of years. Two or three years, something like that. And then I just kind of fell into Portland through coming down here for guest spots and hanging out. I found this particular neighborhood that my shop’s in [gestures around] and it’s just a pretty special little neighborhood. I’ve lived a lot of places and when you travel, you start noticing, like, “Oh, this place is special”. Once you move beyond looking for the hip strips in every town, you’re like, “Oh, this is actually a neighborhood. This is great”.
I feel like there’s almost not a regular day. There’s usually a few types of regular days. There’s the, “I have a couple regulars or 1 regular doing, like, bigger pieces” day. There’s the “I don’t have anything going on, but there’s tons of walk-ins” day where you just kind of think on your feet. There’s days where nothing happens. Sometimes you end up just doing some painting. I always try to put painting in there somewhere.
It’s a fun, creative gig where you just figure out what people need. A guy came in today and he just picked something off the wall… he had, like, forty minutes before he had to leave to go to a wedding. And he’s like, “Yeah, it’s just a spur of the moment thing!”. And then he’s like, “What about this?” and I’m like, yeah I can knock that out in thirty minutes, get on the fuckin’ table.
I’ve been drawing consistently since I was about ten, and I’ve always played music, and written poetry, short stories, things like that. I’ve done a lot of graphic design over the years as well, just by happenstance, because I can make things for people. I’ve never been able to be anything except for an artist. I’ve tried to do other normal-ish kinds of jobs, and I was very, very bad at them.
I’m sure it’s like this in a lot of other trades, every shop is its own little ship. And whoever’s running it is the Captain. And it’s like if you’re on a ship, if you’re not cool with how the Captain runs the boat, you should probably get off the fucking boat. I’ve worked in shops where, you know, the owner is a hard ass or whatever, but in a way I can fucking deal with. I’ve had other people complain to me about it [shop owners] and I’m like, well, then go work somewhere else, he’s not going to change and this is his tattoo shop, you know. I’ve worked in, like, 1%-er biker shops. I’ve worked in comic book nerdy shops, and everything has its pros and cons, and, for me, I just wanted to have a spot where I could kind of make things a little bit simpler, where it was just about the tattooing. You know, I came up through the service trade when I was younger… being an artist, you often are waiting tables, bartending, working in kitchens, things like that. I learned a lot of my ethics from that, and one thing I like about tattooing is having a shop on the corner as a part of the neighborhood.
We’ve been here ten years, so we have a lot of regular people, word of mouth. I’m tattooing a guy tomorrow that I hadn’t seen in, like, three years, but I’ve tattooed him a lot, and he just came back in, like, “I got more ideas!” and, it’s like, all right, cool. I would say almost every day there’s somebody who’s been there before. It’s a very word of mouth business, even with the internet and everything these days. A lot of what has changed has to do with exposure to the mainstream through television. When they [tattoo reality shows] were first out, every tattooer I know was like, “FUCK THOSE SHOWS. IT’S NOT THE INDUSTRY”, yada yada. Now everybody seems to be fine with it. It’s pretty analogous to the nineties, when underground music got really big and everybody was like, “Oh, that band’s a sell out!”, and then after a few years you’re like, who’s a sell out anymore? It’s just… are they making something good? That’s all that fucking matters, you know?
Instagram has had a huge effect, too, almost equal, if not more than the TV thing, because it’s an online portfolio where people can connect with you directly. What I found from Instagram is that it works in a great many ways, like, you can find new clientele that way if you’re really looking, or sometimes people follow you and they live in another city. Years later, they visit your city. So you have someone who’s followed you for years and wants to get something done. I’ve tattooed somebody, then like a week later posted a painting, and they’re like “I really want to get that!”. And they just come in like another day later, you know? So it’s good for me and how I work.
I’ve had clientele, who, over the years, who were like, “You should put pictures of yourself on there every now and then, personify yourself a bit!”. And I’ve realized people like that connection, they get it. To know who they’re working with and have a sense of them, there’s a lot of your personality that has to be involved. I’m not sure what the angle on that is, but I don’t know, I get it from my own enjoyment of art, right? I can appreciate art without being interested in the human being who made it. Like you can post the greatest tattoo you’ve done or the coolest painting and it gets X amount of likes, but you post a picture just of yourself randomly with something, you know, whether you’re going somewhere or whatever, and it gets far more likes. People just like human faces.
I have three full time artists working in my shop, and I’ve owned the shop for ten years, so I’ve had a few different types, a few different crews over the years, and I love when everybody is having a good day. A good day is me knocking out two or three pieces. I take maybe an hour and a half, two hours each, and everybody else is getting to work all day. One of the great things about those days is that, all the clientele, all the artists, we’re all in the same kind of, you know, room together in the shop. The conversation becomes something where everybody’s talking, or one person, or, you know, one group’s conversation. All of a sudden somebody comments, and then everybody has an opinion or, you know, wild stories get thrown back and forth, or funny things or people will commiserate or moan about something, all together. I think that that kind of community and social aspect is something that tattooing still offers. It’s a people job, even if it’s just you and one person that day, nobody else is in the shop, it’s still a people job.
You know, Covid, like, we had for awhile. You couldn’t have anybody with you. I know a lot of tattooers get annoyed for some reason with friends, people having their friends with them. I think it’s great. It helps them calm down and helps the conversation move more naturally. People are usually more chill, for the most part, and then their friend goes “Oh wait, do you have time to do another one?”, or “I like that one, you know, let’s do that another day”. You can bring all your friends if you want, as long as they all like tattoos.
If I’ve had a tattooer complaining about their job or tattooing in general, I’m like, “And then? And then what? You had to draw something, and then someone gave you hundreds of dollars for it?” We’re very lucky to have the job we have. For the most part, I don’t sit around and do paperwork. I don’t have to email back and forth with a bunch of people. I don’t have to be called into meetings. I don’t do any of that shit, and it’s shit I’m not good at.
There’s tattooers out there charging insane amounts for like day rates, just an insane amount of money. Like, when I was coming up, the only tattooers I knew that charged, say, $250 an hour have been doing it for 25 to 30 years, and were very good at a lot of specialties. The reason you were paying more is because they could get it done fast and efficiently. There are a lot of people getting into the trade now that charge prices that I wouldn’t charge. I see someone post a piece or something, and I’m like, wow, that’s twice what I would charge because I’ll do that shit in thirty minutes. Maybe it’s going to take them two hours because they’re new at it, but I just don’t understand where they’re coming from. It’s just more capitalism. It’s like… why make designer products for rich assholes? I like to tattoo for people who want tattoos. You know, like, if you want a $100 tattoo, that’s fine.
It does make me feel good that I have a job where I connect with people. Even if I do a tattoo on someone and I never see them again. Like, there’s that connection with that conversation, and both of us are going to remember that, because your body remembers that. That’s why I like to continue to do it. Whether you’re getting, like, something out of grief or fun or whatever, it’s with you forever, you know, unless you get a potato peeler or you cover it up. I love it for the fact that I can operate in a way that I think a lot of our society in the Western capitalist culture trains us not to. You know, you go and get your food, you don’t make a connection with your server or whatever, like, you get it with the QR codes or you get on the app.
I went to a restaurant in SF with a couple of my friends. We were there tattooing for a convention, and we sat at the table for five minutes before we realized that nobody was going to come. So we had to, like, scan a code, get on there, download an app, put our order in, and then our order would just be delivered by somebody who I assume was a server. I’m like, why? I like the people aspect of it. I guess maybe that’s the biggest thing, to put a pin in it, is, like, there’s so many things that are getting less personalized, like checking out your groceries at the grocery store, like, I don’t mind, I like that, that’s the kind of kibitzing I like. I like to see people on a regular basis. I know the people who work at the grocery store down the street from me. You know, we know each other’s lives. We ask each other about stuff. I like that we’re not friends, we’re acquaintances, but it’s part of your community. And that’s what I like about tattooing, it’s that you are part of a community, whether you want to be or not.
Leo’s shop, Hidden Rose Tattoo, is open 7 days a week, hit them up on Instagram or give them a call to get yourself tattooed.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE 