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Baku Watanabe:Tattoo Artist
By fauxpas | March 7, 2008
Baku Watanabe:Tattoo Artist, originally uploaded by Faux-PasOnline.com.
I guess I have this calming affect on people or else it’s the opposite but something is working for me. How could I capture the moment by possibly going with the flow? Then miracles take place and your friend becomes a tattoo artist.
In Hollywood you have a high tollerance for the absurd. Here you can be yourself and nobody seems to care. Nothing seems shocking but within reason. We stood in front of the tattoo shop taking it all in. It was time for a green tea for myself, Baku took a sparkling water and a coffee for a co-worker. It’s a nice day there is no shortage of tourist and beautiful women.
“Yesterday I tattooed a cherry on a ladies ass!” Said Baku.
A lady walked by and she looked pretty beat up another guy looked like reject from Hellyboy another guy is on his way to work as Zorro. You can’t go wrong here. There’s plenty of traffic which is in stark contrast to his last location which was off the freeway and way too underground. This is the strip.
Baku is moving to a new shop, just down the block. There he can get more work and less hours. I spent some time talking to the owner of LA TATTOO unexpectedly. Originally from Iran he described coming to the United States with $500.00 and selling fake Nikey’s at swapmeets while raising his kids so he could be with them until he woked his way up to Hollywood.
“This is Hollywood?” he remembered. He had asked a taxi driver to take him to Hollywood and eventually told the driver to just leave him. The Hollywood he described in those times was run-down and rank. At least at East End. This is where the prostitutes and drug-addicts dwelled but he still believed that he could make something happen there. He had a vision, at least that’s how I conceptualized parts of what he was saying and it was to have his own store.
The owner didn’t spend all his time at Swapmeets. When Iranian revolution came in 1979 many expatriates came and they came with money. A friend of the owner started a disco for the rich Iranians partying in Los Angeles. And well the owner worked there for a while and made a little bit more money. It wasn’t really his seen because he liked Iron Maiden, Van Halen and Motley crue and grew his hair long and had learned English from rock music-from listening to metal.
Soon he had saved up enough money to open his own show. Not far from where we were. Inside the store he had a huge British flag which he strung accross the back wall. One day some people walked into his store and one of them asked for some posters and he bought a lot of them. He asked the guy why he was buying so many posters and the guys said “this is me!” The owner looked a little bit closer. It was lead singer of Gun’s and Roses. The owner was so shocked he scrampled for a pen and paper for an autograph, then he suggested that they sign the flag in the back of the store and then after that the owner says that every rock group that came to town would come into his store and sighn the Union Jack on the back wall of his store. Soon he was making more money and then he expanded. This guy was more than a store owner, besides being a father he was very wise.
He had broken down life into three parts. The first being education, the second raising a family and the last being retirement. In his philosophy a healthy mind is a healthy body and vice versa. That parents should set good examples for their children. That children copy everything that you do. That when your are raising your kids you are preparing them to carry on the culture to the next generation. It was common sense. Everyone had their own philosophy that’s what made it interesting to here what other people think about life. It was time to go home.
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June 7th, 2010 at 7:05 am
Whatsup John?! I like your site dude… keep writing.