The recession has forced people to sacrifice luxuries such as Caribbean cruises or diamond earrings. Some folks are even putting off little things like manicures. But one shop that specializes in vanity items is doing a booming business. WUWM’s Marti Mikkelson visited a local tattoo parlor, and found out why people don’t want to give up their body art.
It’s Friday night at Body Ritual on Farwell Avenue on Milwaukee’s lower east side. A vertical neon sign that reads Tattoo beckons customers from the outside. In the shop, several are paging through racks of sample tattoos; everything from Bugs Bunny to the Virgin Mary to huge eagle wings. Tia Johnson looks at a star pattern she wants to have tattooed on her foot.
“I just can’t stop getting them, that’s it. I just like getting them,” Johnson says.
This will be Johnson’s seventh tattoo. Upstairs in a tiny room another customer, Dan Reed, is sitting in a chair with his right arm outstretched. Today is his 35th birthday and he’s celebrating by getting a tattoo. The musician has chosen a red, yellow and green striped pattern that symbolizes reggae music.
“When you create music, it’s an extension of your soul to a certain degree and I feel like tattoos are a physical representation or extension of that soul as well. I can walk around and still let my personal expression out at all times. It’s like 100 percent of the time going,” Reed says.
Reed says the tattoo is going to cost him $150, but it is money well spent.
“I’m still going to outline, then color. Ready? Mm, hm.”
After shaving the hair on Reed’s arm, Brock Baumgartner stencils on the outline of the tattoo. Then he uses a machine shaped like a pen to apply permanent bright green ink. Baumgartner is one of nine tattoo artists who work at Body Ritual and says his schedule is always packed.
“Even with the way the economy is and stuff like that it’s one of those things that people are still going to do for themselves. I think you need to,” Baumgartner says.
Baumgartner says lately, the store has been really busy with customers looking to spend some of their tax refund money.
Dave Weir opened the shop three years ago, moving Body Ritual from its former location in the Prospect Mall. Weir says before he got into the tattoo business, he was barely making ends meet as an art dealer at a store on the east side. His young customers persuaded him to get into something else.
“The kids came in and said this stuff’s great but you ought to start a piercing place or something because you guys know how to deal with people. We said well that’s not really our forte, but we bought a store, we tried it, hired a couple of people and we grew to be the biggest in that venue in the city. A year later we started tattooing and we were the first shop to have an ad in the yellow pages,” Weir says.
Weir opened his store soon after Milwaukee legalized tattoo shops in 1998, and business exploded. He says people prefer tattoos because they can wear their taste in art on their bodies, instead of leaving artwork at home sitting on their walls. Prices range from $50 to $250, depending on the size of the tattoo. He says his business is doing better than it was before the recession.
“We’ve noticed a real big spike this year especially. Though it’s always been good, it seems like this is our best year so far. People are really trying to have something permanent and signify a time and place in their life, whether it’s something sad, happy. Or just that they feel that this a value compared to other things they could do right now,” Weir says.
Weir says another secret to his success is that he’s frugal with money. He saves up enough to get him through slower times in winter. Business always picks up in spring, when more skin starts to show.
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