GUS KENWORTHY

Like most athletes, freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy spent years dreaming about going to the Olympics and bringing back some bronze, silver or gold. When the dust cleared and the Sochi Olympics were finished, Kenworthy found himself returning to the States with something far more precious than the silver medal around his neck—a family of stray dogs he rescued off the streets. “My friend Robin (MacDonald) sent me a photo of this particular family of stray dogs,” Kenworthy says. “It was a mom and these four puppies and they were literally the cutest things in the entire world. I left the Athlete’s Village, found a bus, and went all the way to check them out. I thought, alright, we need to find a way to bring these dogs home with us.” Kenworthy is the type of guy that stops to pet every single dog he passes on the street, even when he has the biggest competition of his life looming only a few days away. In between practice runs Kenworthy would check in on the dogs. After all of the stressful qualifiers in the weeks leading up to the Olympics, the Sochi Pups, as they are known on their very own Instagram, provided a welcome distraction for Kenworthy. The final Olympic team isn’t even announced until right before the games. Skiers then flew over to Russia and had to wait for two weeks before the events took place. “It’s a huge build up for one day, it’s really stressful,” Kenworthy says. “I was eating away at myself, getting stressed out and second guessing the run I was going to do. If I wasn’t doing the stuff with the dogs I would just be sitting around in the rooms, which sucked.” All of those hours inside of his own head may have not been what Kenworthy would have wanted, but it clearly worked in his favor as he was able to grab the silver as the US freestyle ski team made history by sweeping the podium in the men’s slopestyle. Slopestyle hasn’t been an Olympic sport for long but from his earliest days on skis Kenworthy felt the calling. “I got into it because my older brother skied, I skied, and we used to watch ski movies and snowboard movies. I always though the cool thing was doing tricks,” Kenworthy says. “I was always trying to do tricks on whatever I could. I thought that it was the most fun thing you could do while on skis. It was awesome.” It takes a great deal of testicular fortitude to go down a mountain backwards while hitting jumps and sliding on rails. Even the biggest daredevils must have a little bit of trepidation when they plan out their runs and think of the consequences of a trick gone awry. “You know that you are going to get hurt,” Kenworthy says. “I’ve come to terms with that aspect. I’m not that scared of it hurting, but I’m more fearful of all of the time you have to take off when you get hurt.” And get hurt he has. From breaking both of his legs when he came up short on a jump to breaking his collarbone badly enough that he needed a metal plate put in, Kenworthy has taken more than few spills on the slopes. Even with the frustrating amounts of time he had to miss due to the major injuries he has sustained, it was a simple cut he barely noticed that proved to be the most galling—it went right through the middle of his brand new tattoo. The scar is barely noticeable a few months later; if anything, it adds a little grit to the skull and roses design covering his upper arm. In the months since coming back from the Olympics Kenworthy has been working on his right arm sleeve after a long gap between tattoos. When Kenworthy was only 14 he received his first tattoo—the name Hoot on his left arm to pay tribute to his best friend who had passed away. His next tattoo, an owl on his ribcage, was also honoring his lost friend. “For the longest time I kept thinking that all of my tattoos needed to mean something deep,” Kenworthy explains. “My first one meant so much and the second one was an extension of that one. Then I got past that. “[The tattoos] still mean something to me but I don’t think they need to be tribute tattoos or anything like that,” Kenworthy continues. “That’s awesome if there’s a reason like that, but I also feel like it’s artwork that I’m stoked to wear.” Kenworthy has been visiting Dave Allen of Preying Mantis tattoo in Denver to work on his sleeve quite a lot over the last couple of months. In addition to the skull and roses Allen has added an anatomically correct heart, a moth and a woman wearing a wolf’s head to Kenworthy’s body. The two have also become fast friends thanks to the many tattoo sessions completing Kenworthy’s sleeve. Much like the Sochi Pups, this friendship between artist and client started in Russia. “When I wanted to start my sleeve I got the Olympic rings on the inside of my bicep,” Kenworthy says. “It’s kind of cliché but I figured you got to do it. Maybe I should have gotten the medal tattooed on my chest like Iron Man.” Within hours of winning that medal, US Olympic officials were trying to hustle Kenworthy back to the States to begin his media tour. The task of actually getting the dogs onto a plane bound for the States fell to Kenworthy’s friend who had brought the dogs to his attention, Robin MacDonald (also the photographer of this story). As Kenworthy made his stops on the media tour, the story of the puppies became a sensation. The publicity would end up being both positive and negative. Since the story was so heartwarming, groups like the Humane Society got in touch with MacDonald in Sochi to help clear the path for the dogs. Dealing with the bureaucracy of any government can be an enormous undertaking, so Kenworthy and MacDonald needed all of the help they could get. The publicity the pups received added to the avalanche of bad PR the Russians had been combating since months before the Sochi games even began. Needless to say, this made the task of getting the dogs out of the country a bit more difficult. “The trick was to get them permission to fly,” Kenworthy says. “The Russians really didn’t want to release them to us. The US never said anything, so they never went to quarantine. They flew over and came right home.” Kenworthy and MacDonald have each taken in a pup while the mother dog has found a home with the skier’s mom. Now that all of the dogs have found proper homes and Kenworthy has spent a summer getting tattooed, it’s time for him to get back on those skis. The 2018 Winter Olympics are only three-and-a-half years away; Kenworthy has a lot of work to do if he wants to earn the time off to fill in his other sleeve.

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RICK WALTERS TALKING ABOUT TATTOOS

When Rick Walters starts talking about tattoos you better shut up and listen to him. Walters has garnered so much experience over the last 60 years that he is more than just an artist—he is a living almanac of tattoo history. When he was barely even old enough to tie his own shoes, the inquisitive Walters figured out how to hand-poke tattoos and he hasn’t stopped tattooing since. By the late ‘70s Walters would find himself on the Pike—Southern California’s version of Coney Island and a mecca for the tattoo world—tattooing out of Bert Grimm’s studio. It was there that Walters cemented his reputation as an artist and earned his seat in the Grimm family of tattooists. We had a chance to speak with Walters early one morning—he needed to start doing walk-ins once his shop opened—about his start in tattooing, the importance of apprenticeships, and why Rick Walters “Hates You.” INKED: It’s pretty early. Not a lot of tattoo artists want to do an interview at 9 AM. RICK: Yeah. I get up really early, for a tattoo artist. I get up early every day. I used to work a real job when I had to get up at six in the morning.

How did you get into tattooing? When I was a little kid I started hand-poking tattoos on all of the neighborhood kids. Just stupid shit like little hearts, writing, crosses and stuff you could do when you are little. I was like, 10. I was the kid that all of the moms told their kids to stay the fuck away from. That was in 1955. How much trouble did you get into? Oh, I got into a bunch of trouble doing that. When I was 14 my dad took me down to Long Beach to have a hand-poked tattoo that I did covered up. It was Zeke Owens, actually; he did a black panther on my leg to cover up some writing. That was my first professional tattoo. Back in those days they didn’t really hassle you too much about age. I think it was 1959. Clearly tattooing was in your DNA. When did you first start doing it professionally? In 1965 me and this kid Frankie opened up this little shop and we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Back in those days you didn’t need a license or anything, you just had to pay rent. We had tattoo machines and we were trying to tattoo. We would go down to the Pike and watch those guys and try to figure out what the hell they were doing. When you’re self-taught that’s what you got to do. Eventually I became friends with a few of the guys and they helped me out. I hung out with Phil Sims, Don Nolan and the old guys from Bert Grimm’s. It was all downhill from there. I almost always had a regular job and tattooed. Back in the old days it was sort of like when you play music; don’t quit your day job. What kind of other jobs were you working? I would work in a machine shop or a welding shop in the day and then I would tattoo at night. In the ‘70s I was working structural steel during the day, you know, climbing high steel and doing welding. Then at night I would tattoo and in my spare time I owned a welding shop. When did you get to give up the side jobs and tattoo full time? I moved out to the Pike and started working at Bert Grimm’s in 1978. I worked at the Pike from ‘78 until 2003 when the shop closed. So you were there for quite a while. Only 25 years. I was probably the oldest employee there. I was there longer than Bob or Burt. In 25 years you must have seen the area change remarkably. When I first went there the Pike was mostly just people getting tattooed. The Pike was dying off; there were still a couple of rides and a couple of bars but the main thing left was a bunch of tattoo shops. The Navy had left town. So consequently we were just tattooing civilians, bikers, waitresses. In the early ‘80s they reopened the Navy base and all of a sudden the tattoo game was on again. We were tattooing nonstop all day long. Did you mind tattooing an endless line of people with no real downtime? Yeah, man, that’s fun, I love doing that. I’ve been tattooing for so many years now that if I didn’t like it I would have quit 20 years ago. I don’t have to tattoo, I do it because I like doing it. I’m over 60 years old and I own a tattoo shop, I have three guys working for me, I don’t have to go in and tattoo if I don’t want to. I can just kick back and let them make the money. But I’m at the shop every day at 10:30. You just can’t stay away. Nah, I like doing it. When I ain’t tattooing, I paint. I’ve probably done about 20 paintings in the last month or so. Many people say that tattooing walks the fine line between being an art and a trade. As someone who is both a tradesman and an artist outside of tattooing, where do you feel tattooing lies on the spectrum? It’s a little bit of both. If you don’t know the trade part of it the art doesn’t really do you much good. You have to get the ink under the skin or it really isn’t relevant who drew the picture. The main objective is getting the ink under the skin and getting it to stay. The drawing part, it’s good and it’s very helpful if you can draw, but it’s not really that important. The important shit is getting the ink under the skin. A lot of kids these days, you find that they can draw really good but they don’t know how to tattoo. You can’t really compensate for that. If they are a really good artist they tend to have a tendency to think that they know what the fuck they are doing. But they don’t. Tattooing is a whole different game. So you believe that since some tattooists refuse to learn the trade side of things they will end up creating tattoos that don’t last. What people don’t understand when they haven’t studied the history of tattooing is what makes a good tattoo. The thing is that the black ink is carbon-based while the color ink is pigment-based. The carbon-based ink becomes hard and creates a dam that keeps the pigment from spreading. Consequently, if you don’t have black, the pigment will just keep going and it’ll look like somebody just poured a bunch of crayons onto the floor. These guys who think they can tattoo like they are oil painting will find out that it ain’t going to work. Sooner or later that shit is going to look horrible. All of these new kids that are doing this neo-traditional with the 14-needle round lines—that stuff is going to be nasty in 10 years. Lines double about every five years. So if you start out with an 1/8-inch line and you wait a couple of years that’s going to be as wide as a piece of electrical tape. Whereas if you start out with a thin line and it doubles the line will still be thin. People don’t realize it, but all of the West Coast stuff and Sailor Jerry stuff ain’t got no big thick lines. Bob Shaw, Bert Grimm, Phil Sims, Col. Todd, look at all of their flash. It’s all nice thin lines. I have tattoos that were done on me that were done in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, that look fine. The lines started out thin and now they look like a five-needle outline, and they are 50 years old. These young kids don’t even know because no one ever taught them properly, they never served an apprenticeship. They just pick up a tattoo machine and think they can do whatever. Do you think the industry has moved to a point where there is no going back to that way of learning? I doubt it, because of the internet and everything being so accessible. There are a few people that are serving apprenticeships, don’t get me wrong. All of the new kids are using rotary machines because you don’t have to know anything, it’s just a motor. If it stops running you put a new motor in it. With a spring-loaded machine you need to actually know how to work on them in order to get them to work right. They actually work better but you have to know how to use them. So if you don’t serve an apprenticeship you don’t know how to work on the spring-loaded machines. If you don’t know your equipment you can’t do what it’s supposed to do. While there are certain fundamentals that need to be followed to create quality tattoos, do you ever think that these rules limit the creativity and artistic aspect of things? It’s sort of weird, tattooing just sort of goes in circles. There will be thin lines, big lines, no lines. It changes when they see it years later. Guy Aitchison is using lines now. It’s funny. Shawn Barber, a real famous oil painter, served a six-year apprenticeship in a traditional tattoo shop in San Francisco. He is probably one of the most renowned portrait painters right now but he tattoos with black, know what I mean? He don’t do that [artsy] shit. He does really nice, realistic-looking stuff, but he uses outlines. Because he learned that’s the proper way to do it and that’s how tattoos last. Do you think that the mainstream acceptance of tattoos and the celebrity status some artists achieve has been detrimental to the industry as a whole? It’s become too art faggy. People come into the shop and ask me how far in advance I am booked. I tell them that I’m not a fucking hairdresser, I don’t make appointments. I make tattoos. Bring some money, tell me what you want and we’ll make it happen. I just don’t get that attitude. Fill the shop with money. Some artists say they won’t do names. What are you, a fucking idiot? Names cost 150 bucks and they take five minutes. Come on, let’s do the math here. In some ways it might be a good thing that people turn down certain tattoos though, right? It’ll be because they can’t do a good job at the tattoo. They don’t comprehend what tattooing is all about. If you’re an oil painter or a watercolor guy you can do a painting and hang it up in an art gallery. A thousand people will walk past that motherfucker before some guy likes it enough to buy it. With tattooing you have one shot at getting what that fucker wants on him the way he wants it. Not the way you want it, we don’t have artistic license, it’s not my body. I have to put what he wants on him and I’ve got one shot at doing it. [Artists] think that they can tell people what they have to get, that’s not how it works. The client has to tell me what they want. I do tattoos all day long that I would never want on me. You have to realize that you have to put what they want on them. We know that you will do whatever kind of tattoo your customer wants to get, but given your druthers what kinds of work would you do? I really like doing big Japanese pieces. I also love doing big American Traditional pieces—eagles, peacocks, whatever. It’s weird because I’ve been doing it for so long that I’m pretty versatile in most aspects of tattooing. I like doing a good black-and-grey piece every once in a while too. When you have been doing it for as many years as I have, it isn’t as much about doing what I like doing the best as it is not doing the stuff I don’t like to do. I really don’t like doing portraits. I’ve done them and I can make them happen but they are a pain in the ass and time-consuming. They’re really tedious, so I just let the younger guys do them. I got to do a traditional Polynesian design the other day. It’s not hard to do, you just need to research this shit and draw it up the way it should be. One fascinating thing about tattooing is that while it is ever-evolving the root element—decorating the skin with ink—has remained the same. I have a tattoo on my ankle that was tapped in with wild boar’s teeth. It’s a traditional Samoan method. My whole chest was done tebori, the traditional Japanese style. I did it simply because I wanted to experience the traditional style. Maybe I’m different than some people. The one on my ankle is the only tribal tattoo I have and I have it because I wanted to see what it felt like to do it the old way. I had one of the members of the famous Sulu’ape family hand tap it with boar’s teeth and homemade ink. How did the totally badass “Rick Walters Hates You” shirts and stickers come to be? Well, back in 1974 I was on a motorcycle run up in San Francisco. I had been on the road for seven or eight days and I went into a photo booth. You know, back when it was actually a quarter. I took a series of four pictures or whatever. When I got back from the run I gave one to my sister, one to my ex-old lady, and who knows what happened to the other ones. About five years ago my sister posted the picture on Facebook and I looked at it and thought, that’s funnier than shit. I was at a tattoo convention in Vegas talking to Matt Murphy and he said, “That’s a fucking hate you picture if I’ve ever seen one. You look meaner than shit in that picture.” Two or three weeks later I get a package in the mail and it’s a stack of stickers that say, “Rick Walters Hates You.” I laughed and thought it was pretty funny. I started passing them out to a couple of people and the whole thing took off. It took on a life of it’s own. There are stickers, posters, T-shirts. It’s funny as shit. And eventually there were the stickers with the older version of you. I’ve got a deal with the guys from Black Market, the clothing company, where we did an art show and they made some shirts of my artwork. They took a new picture of me that looks pretty much the same way and it says, “Rick Walters Still Hates You.” You’ve also done some tattoos of the image as well. What was it like to be tattooing a picture of yourself on strangers? I’ve done a bunch of those tattoos. It’s pretty simple, it’s just a caricature. It’s a little bit strange. I’ve done so many of them I can knock them out quickly now, it’s pretty funny. When Bert Grimm’s shut down you went into a bit of a semi-retirement, right? What happened was that once Wanda Shaw died Larry Shaw sold out the property right out from under us. I wanted to kick his ass but I didn’t. I’m sure that his brother did though, Bobby worked with me at the Pike, and Larry sent us an eviction notice. That’s some pretty shady stuff. That’s how you found out the shop was closing? Yep. I worked there for 28 years, I was supposed to be getting a gold watch and a pat on the back and instead I get evicted. That’s the kind of thanks you get from some fucking asshole like that. Anyway, I quit tattooing for a little while. I figured fuck it, I’ll just retire. I had some money put away and my old lady had a pretty good job. That didn’t last for more than four or five months before I had a heart attack. That sucked. So I went back to tattooing. When you came back to tattooing you hopped around to a bunch of different shops for a day per week. What made you want to end your nomadic lifestyle and plant roots and set up a shop once again? Right down the street from where I lived there was a tattoo shop that went under. I’m not sure what the hell happened but they couldn’t pay their rent. I ran down and talked to the guy and told him that I would try and get a business license. I got one and went down to lease the building. We had to gut the entire place; it was a total nightmare. We built everything in the shop, all the counters and everything. Opened the doors up and we’ve been paying the bills ever since the doors opened. If in the first six months you can still pay the bills that’s a good thing. I’ve got a 10-year lease with a five-year option, so hopefully that keeps up. By the end of that you’ll be about 85 years old, right? So you should be ready to retire by then. Yeah, fuck that. I’m going to die in a tattoo chair. Getting a tattoo or giving one? (Laughs) Who knows?

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CIRCA SURVIVE

In many ways Circa Survive seem to have a life of their own. Over the course of five years and 10 albums, this Philadelphia-based fivesome have evolved from a scrappy post-hardcore act to one of the most original and uncompromising acts in rock, a progression that’s culminated with their latest album Descensus. Better yet, according to the band’s charismatic frontman Anthony Green it’s never been a better time to be in Circa Survive. “The dynamic of a band gets difficult as you get older and the more the band tours,” Green concedes. “Recently I think things have been effortlessly fun [within Circa] and we’ve evolved into a group that’s extremely amicable and filled with understanding and compassion. It’s just an ideal situation because those relationships that tend to deteriorate in most bands just seem to keep getting stronger within this band.” However, Circa Survive—which also includes guitarists Brendan Ekstrom and Colin Frangicetto, bassist Nick Beard and drummer Steve Clifford—have had anything but a fairytale existence since the last time we spoke to Green on the eve of the release of 2012’s Violent Waves. That conversation was dominated by topics such as his wife’s miscarriages and his struggle with mental illness which culminated with him getting the band’s logo tattooed on his head during a bender in Texas. “Yeah,” Green sighs, “for a couple of years it was getting a little bit difficult and adding drugs and alcohol to the mix definitely made things more volatile.” Green reached his turning point last January when he had to take his son home early from a screening of The Lego Movie and had a chilling realization that the opiate issue he had been hiding for almost two years was destroying the relationships that were most important to him. “I remember thinking on the drive home from the movie theater, I feel like all these people in my life that I love so much, I can’t do anything to help them anymore,” he recounts. “I can’t fix this. One way or another they’d be better off without me so maybe I should just leave and go be a fucking junkie and I’ll just kill myself.” When he got home, Ekstrom showed up and Green laid out exactly what was happening to him. They made a plan for Green to check himself into treatment and stay as long as they would keep him. “When I came home [from rehab], for months all I could do was play and write music, hang out with my kids and go to therapy. I didn’t have a cell phone, I didn’t really communicate with anybody. I just sort of spent some time with myself trying to figure out if this was something that I could do.” After sticking to this regimen and doing some heavy soul searching, Green decided that his suicidal instincts were just a barrier he was creating between him and the ones he loved. “At one point, I realized what would be best for everybody wouldn’t be for me to die or go away. The thing that would be best for everybody that I cared about would be for me to fucking deal with this shit and move on and really give being present and being the person I know that I am a shot,” he continues. “That feels better to me than anything. It feels better than any fucking drug. To just be accountable for my actions and set out to accomplish the things I want to do and be around my wife and kids, it feels like a gift. It almost makes me feel sad when I think about how much I wasted that over the last couple of years.” When Circa entered the studio to record Descensus, Green was two months out of rehab while the other members of Circa were dealing with similarly serious issues involving addiction and divorce. However, instead of letting these experiences splinter them as a unit, in many ways it seems to have brought them together. “I felt like I owed it to myself and to Circa to try to really put everything I had into the creative process and try to do what we started out doing as a band when there were these goose bump moments in the songs where we were guided by the song and we weren’t forcing anything,” Green elaborates about his mindset while creating this collection of songs. “I wanted to show myself that this was still right, that I wasn’t just in this cloud for the last 10 years. Anyone can put together a song, but I wanted this to come from a truthful place in me that’s scary to explore. I felt like I really had a lot to prove going into this record.” Musically, Descensus is a beast that Green describes as “the most psychedelic, drugged-out record we’ve ever done,” acknowledging the irony of the statement. (One just needs to listen to the stoner-worthy syncopated breakdown on “Child of the Desert” to confirm this statement.) However, maybe more impressive is the fact that climactic ballads such as “Nesting Dolls” contain the same level of emotional weight without an ounce of distortion. If anything, Descensus is more about creating a mood than defining a genre, which is why the downbeat, jazzy vibe of “Phantom” is able to flow so seamlessly into the stratospheric, delay-driven “Sovereign Circles.” Circa have created a distinctive musical identity of the past decade; however, this album sees them challenging their own conventions to create something that actively redefines who they are as a band. “Writing these songs was the same process as recording them, so it was the entire experience of being in studio together and creating on the fly that provided the catharsis,” explains Frangicetto. “Not so much the themes or content of the songs but the fact that we were all coping with our afflictions and healing our wounds by simply doing what we do best together.” Understandably Green was nervous about tracking vocals with a completely clear head for the first time ever in Circa—but if anything,the frontman’s signature falsetto sounds more powerful and inspired than it ever had in the past, a fact that he also attributes to producer Will Yip. “My original intention was for us to go in there and work on melodies with him and not worry about the lyrics until later,” Green explains. “The first song we worked on was called ‘Only the Sun.’ He had me sit down and take five minutes to write lyrics and when I tried them out l liked the scratch lyrics so much that we decided to keep them.” In fact, Green liked this approach so much that he wrote all of the songs in this manner over the course of an hour or two. “I feel like that awareness wasn’t there for a really long time in the sense that I was looking for other people for validation,” he continues. “This time around I had so much more confidence.” This statement is also true when it comes to Green’s recent ink—and instead of getting a tattoo he barely remembers or trying to buy pills from fans, this time around Green got the phrase “REAL LOVE” on his knuckles as an homage to both the Beatles and Mary J. Blige. “When I was in rehab my wife was sending me these letters with little stickers of hummingbirds on them so I got this badass angry-looking hummingbird on my wrist,” he continues, adding that Frank Guthier from Mercury Tattoo in Doylestown has done much of his work over the years. Yet despite the fact that he’s seen countless Circa Survive tattoos both online and in person, that experience never ceases to amaze him. “I don’t know how to feel about it,” he admits. “I don’t really think about it too much, but if I do I’m just like, ‘fuck, dude, that’s insane.’” If this all seems overwhelming to Green it’s because despite the fact that his band are universally loved and acclaimed, Green claims he’s still shocked at why people gravitate toward Circa Survive. “I haven’t been able to figure it out,” he admits. “We bring lots of honesty and passion into what we do and we never have any illusion about who we are but we’re also not trying to change the world with our music,” he says. “We’re just happy to be able to travel the world playing music, making songs that we like and sharing these moments with each other and with people that generally feel the same way about art and music as we do, you know? “It’s like this little community of people that for the most part are just like us,” he summarizes. “If someone listens to our band and it inspires them to change the world, that concept is way cooler to us.”

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Smoking hot chicks come alive

A Brian M. Viveros girl hits you like a shock of nicotine. You draw her in; she enters your bloodstream and goes straight to your brain; your brain activates your adrenal glands; your heart speeds up a patter while dopamine increases in your pleasure center; you exhale. Viveros’s women, who hail from a place in his brain called DirtyLand, often have a smoke. “I was a big-time smoker in 2000 and wanted to have something that was a part of me I could add into my work,” he says. “It is a recognizable element, something that would put a stamp on my work whether you liked it or not. And honestly these girls from the DirtyLand just love to smoke.” The girls’ cigarettes and cigars dangle from their pursed lips, red from either lipstick or a hint of blood. “The blood you see is from battles won,” Viveros says. “I think life in some ways is a struggle for all of us, you fall down but you have to get up. The women I paint are heroes, they’re victorious! They’re the ones that have just stepped off the battlefield taking that second to pose for my camera eye.” These women, battle-tested and strong, with their doe eyes and high necks, spin the idea of pin-ups around. Instead of soldiers having cute pictures of girls from back home, these girls are the warriors. Both guys and girls have embraced the women of DirtyLand. Many have had Viveros’s creations tattooed on them by the best in the buisness: Nikko Hurtado, Corey Miller, David Corden, Khan and Rich Pineda. “The female figure is just amazing,” Viveros says. “There’s nothing else more inspiring, beautiful and powerful to paint. It’s a rush, especially when you start to see her come to life. It’s like I’m Dr.Frankenstein ‘She’s alive… alive!’”

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GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER

Guess who’s coming to dinner. For starters, the man on the opposite page, chef Michael Voltaggio will be there. He and veteran war correspondent, Mariana Van Zeller are traveling to hot zones and inviting both sides of the conflict to break bread together. For Travel Channel’s Breaking Borders Voltaggio and Van Zeller are visiting places such as Israel, Sarajevo and Rwanda to learn about their struggles and society. Part of the culture is cuisine, which the Top Chef winner Voltaggio soaks up, blends with his taste and spoons out in the culminating meal. Thanks to American foodies and half of the people on Instagram meals have become fashion statements but at their core meals are nourishment. Food is essential to life. By sharing a meal you are promoting life and through Breaking Borders Van Zeller and Voltaggio are showing to the viewing public and the opposing sides sitting across from each other that all lives matter. INKED: How did this show come about? Voltaggio: I didn’t want to do reality TV or competition cooking. If I’m out of my restaurant I want to do something that is meaningful and real. Did you ever think that you’d be in a war zone? When I was younger I never thought that I would ever get on an airplane. Now my passport looks like a tagged wall. How does the food come into play? I get to experience cuisines from different places, but we also use food to bring people together. I’m getting exposure and learning about different cuisines and at the same time I’m using food to unite people who otherwise wouldn’t be. How do you get people to agree to a meal? We are not looking for good TV personalities. We are looking to bring people together who want to share their perspective on their conflict. What’s your goal with the show? We’re not making World Peace, I think it is more like “world awareness.” We aren’t trying to get a resolution by the end of the episode, just some common ground. People inherently don’t want conflict. The show is more about gaining an understanding of what these conflicts are. Do you come in with a planned menu? I realized that if I came in with a plan I wouldn’t get the true experience of these cultures, so I just rolled up some knives, threw them in my suitcase and whatever I experienced when I was there, I’d try to incorporate into the meal. When I was in Israel, they’re Kosher, and I don’t know how to cook without butter, so I thought: I can’t mix meat and dairy, I can’t cook with pork. Then I started getting inspired by the meals while I was there. I would go out and eat and try to do my version of something or use local ingredients or use a local tool that I had never used before. What are the reactions to your food? I’m a cook, I cook every single day so I don’t get to hear all of the stories about how food affects people. It’s not like I serve each dish and sit down with people and hear what they think about it. Now I get to hear what people think about my food while talking with them. I’m connecting with people on a much more intimate level than I ever have in my career. I’m learning about their culture, their food, and I’m learning about the hardships that they are going through. I’m trying to connect with them through my hands that work on a stove or a chimney. I feel so blessed to be able to have that experience with those people, it is more than just great conversation—there is a connection happening. Is sitting at a dinner table more important than being in another setting? I feel like nobody sits down at a dinner table anymore. Look at your dinner table—there is probably mail and laundry on it. In these situations these people would never have dinner together. They are not supposed to be at the dinner table and we are bringing them together. What do you hope the viewers take away? I hope they take away the balance between food, culture and the political situations. Despite the conflicts, look at the cuisine you can eat, look at the culture you can experience and the people’s outlook on life, it’s amazing. When we talk about Israel and Palestine, most people just think of rockets going off. Now, when I think of those places, I think about the coolest people that I have ever met, and some of the best food that I have ever experienced. I walked where Jesus walked—the experience was amazing. We just hear “Today in Gaza rockets went off.” As important as it is to hear that, it’s also important to know that these places are not just about the violence. What have you brought back from the meals? When I am out of the restaurant I think that I should be bringing something back to the restaurant, it is my duty to justify why I’ve been gone, whether it be equipment or a technique. What’s different about this show than, say, the other guys who have gone around, be it Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmerman or those other guys who have told these stories, is that I am going and actually cooking. There is nothing produced about it; I show up, I learn and write a menu on a note pad in my hotel room and I wake up the morning of the meal and I work my ass off cooking for those people. What do you add to the traditional meals? It is about me trying to understand what their cuisine is without trying to replicate it. I am trying to do it my own way. I get inspired, I get shown the best ingredients, the best markets, the local techniques and how I can take those and mix them with my cooking experiences and produce a great meal. I’m nervous to death when we sit at the table. What if they say something like “This dish is shit?” Every meal I cook on the show is the most important meal of my life. Did you get tattooed during your travels? I did. In Israel I went to one of the oldest tattoo shops in the world. I met the guy who was in the family line with the man that started it. The shop is there for people to document their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. People used to stand in line with wooden carvings of Biblical images. They would dip them in ink and then put it on your skin and tattoo over that. The tattoo artist told me that he does those tattoos but now they are in a book. I asked him if he had any of the blocks, and he said they are priceless, they should be in a museum but he has them at his house. I asked him to bring them and tattoo me the way people used to get tattooed back in the day. He said that he had never done it and I said, Cool I have never been tattooed that way, so lets go through this together. So he got them, he sticks it in this inkpad and it was the archangel Michael fighting the Devil. My name is Michael so I thought it was appropriate. What I didn’t realize is that because they weren’t on a stencil you can’t wipe while you tattoo. All the blood and ink that was bubbling up while he was tattooing me would have wiped the design off, so he was nervous as shit while tattooing me. But when he was done it was one of the cleanest tattoos that I have ever gotten. It was rad, I was really stoked to have that experience. Who do you go to in the States? Dr. Woo is a homie. He did the lion on my hand and he did the eagle on my right knuckle. Between him and Jason Stores at the Tattoo Lounge I pretty much just see those two guys now. Jeremy Swan did the rose on my right hand. The first time I got a tattoo by Woo I Instagramed it and Jason Stores texted, “You finally got a hipster tattoo from Woo.” It became a back and forth kind of joke. How were your tattoos received in your travels? I just got back from Rwanda and there isn’t a tattoo shop there, that I saw. People will stop me in the streets, they will grab my arms, the word “tattoo” is said a lot. Some places don’t have native word for tattoo so you’ll hear them speaking their language and then in the middle say, “tattoo,” and I see people pointing. I find that most are complementary, I get a few dirty looks but they are intrigued by it. It’s a good way to break the ice and start a conversation. It draws people in, they take pictures with their phones. Sometimes it makes me a little nervous because they are touching me and ask me questions in their language and I can’t communicate back to them. And your restaurant is named “ink.” We named the restaurant ink. because it was short for “incorporated” we kept thinking “inc…something, inc.”, then we said lets do it “ink.” with a period because anything in ink is permanent. Some people come and expect to see flash on the walls but that’s us. We’re a fine dining restaurant. There are guests who are tattooed and there are guests who are in a suit and a tie. In the kitchen, I want people to be themselves because I think people perform better that way. When my brother and I worked for Williams-Sonoma the associates told us, “We want to thank you because you made it so we can have our sleeves rolled up or have an earring.” Because we were associated with them, their workers across the board felt freer to be themselves. Everybody should be able to express themselves no matter where they are.

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MY FAVORITE INK – BETTY BOMBSHELL

My favorite tattoo is my “B” on the inside of my upper right arm. It’s the letter B inside a human heart, with a prince’s crown—Traditionally done. I got it to represent my seven- year-old son Baron, who is my entire world. I live in Washougal, WA, on the outskirts of the big city [Seattle]. I wouldn’t call it tattoo friendly—in fact, I’ve been accused of being a Satan worshiper, and I’ve gotten looks that kill from other parents while volunteering at my son’s elementary school. But I love it out here! Tattoos have played a huge role in my life. From being a tattooed mother to a tattooed model, it has brought great beauty to my life and opened up so many doors for me. I wouldn’t have it any other way. As a model, my biggest inspiration from the start was Viva Van Story. I admire her work so much, even now almost nine years later. These days I really strive to be like the models Sabina Kelley, Miss Mary-Leigh, and my good friend Heidi Lavon. When I’m not modeling I am a busy bee. Baron and I have two English bulldogs and a horse named Luke. I keep a house and home for us all. I like to ride my horse, I enjoy crafting and I love to cook and bake. I’m just an old fashioned country girl with tattoos.

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LIVE FAISST DIE LAST

With any progression-based sport there are just a handful of true pioneers—the fearless few who created it and set it on course. But of those originators, it’s rare to find one who is still relevant today. That’s Ronnie Faisst, one of the founders of freestyle motocross. Faisst grew up racing dirtbikes in Mays Landing, New Jersey, turning pro at 18. But when he moved to the West Coast, he was integral in a creative, new freestyle movement and destined to play a part of every first for the sport—the very first contest, the first presence at the Gravity Games, Warped Tour and X Games. Faisst was an OG of the famed apparel brand Metal Mulisha, built on the hellraisers that not only set the tone for FMX as badass athletes with nerves of steel and arms of ink, but also legitimized the sport by back flipping into living rooms around the world. Faisst headlined the Crusty Demons of Dirt Tour and most recently starred in Nuclear Cowboyz, an arena spectacle that combined circus acts and pyrotechnics choreographed with death-defying freestyle moto. Over the decades, he not only earned respect, but four bronze metals. Yet those are not the accomplishments that he’s most proud of. “To be able to do it for 18 years and still enjoy it is an accomplishment that’s better than taking home medals. It was good timing for me—moving to California when I did, being part of the movement, doing what I love. I still wake up and want to ride,” said Faisst recently, while pulling wet season weeds from the backyard track at his home in California. He’s also bounced back from fractures, a broken femur, concussions, a torn ACL and multiple surgeries. And while Faisst remains at the top of the FMX game, he’s already got himself racing the Off-Road Pro Lite Truck series. “It’s a way to keep yourself going in motorsports. You might not want to be riding moto past 40. I’m not quite there yet. But you can race trucks in your 40s, all day long. I’ll probably do three races this year. The sport’s been around for a while, but it’s on the upswing. It’s got TV coverage now and there are a lot of moto dudes who have crossed over and done really well,” Faisst explains. His longtime FMX buds Ricky Johnson, Jeremy McGrath and even Twitch Stenberg are now racing trucks. Faisst counts the Mulisha’s Brian Deegan as one of the best drivers in the series. And like every other aspect of the sport, Faisst was also on the cutting edge of the massive freestyle moto/tattoo crossover. “I was like 14 and got tattooed by this biker guy in my town in South Jersey. His name was Al—long hair, big burly beard. He basically just did flash off the wall, typical biker tattoos,” laughs Faisst, “No shading, straight outline… real basic. He used to tattoo at the 4-H Fair in my town out of a little ghetto trailer.” Faisst’s ink expanded in California when he started riding with FMX godfather, Mike Metzger. Metzger was already moonlighting at Soul Expressions in Temecula and started stabbing Faisst’s arm. “He introduced me to Dan Adair, who’s the owner and that’s how I got heavily tattooed really quick. Dan was like, ‘Just give me love as a sponsor and send people in, and I’ll tattoo you whenever you want.’ Honestly, I was there every Tuesday for probably two years. I’d just give him all my sponsors’ gear—sunglasses, shoes and clothes. We went from my arm to my chest and my lower legs.” He acknowledges that motorcycles and tattoos were interdependent long before he came along, but feels that FMX helped spark the growth. As Faisst met the other guys in the shop, he’d collect their work. “It was like, ‘Well, I’ll have Fabian do my back.’ And then Aaron Mason, who actually still works there, did both sides of my ribs and my upper thighs and my butt cheeks. Then Dan wrapped up everything,” Faisst adds. Recently he’s had some work done by John Caleb at Chapter X Tattoo in Orange County, an artist he met through Stenberg. “He tattoos a lot of guys that are connected with Famous Stars and Straps like Yelawolf and DJ Clever. He redid the names on my neck, tied up my throat and just redid my knuckles.” While Faisst looks to rise in the off-road truck game, the fire still burns for one X Game gold before he retires. Down the road he can see a few possible paths. “I’ve always been into martial arts. I can see myself opening a dojo or getting into the fashion world. Whatever I’m going to do, I am going to make sure I’m passionate about it.”

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