Tyler Harrington, a tattoo artist at the State of Grace tattoo shop in San Jose, is the busiest he’s ever been. “I’m currently booked ’til mid-October,” he said.
As tattoo shops reopened and artists went back to work, the industry has seen a resurgence, both regionally and nationally. Data from Square, a financial services company that provides point of sale systems, shows tattoo sales compared with expected demands have surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
“After we first reopened, there was a huge boom in clientele,” Harrington said. “A lot of people had time to really think about what they wanted, and people also took that risk of, ‘This really made me think of my own mortality and I want to live the life I want to live without thinking about the repercussions.’”
The Square data shows that, nationally, the number of tattoos paid for using their system in July was twice as high as would be expected based on pre-pandemic trends. In the Bay Area, tattoos were up 20% in July, after being down 73% as recently as January 2021.
We spoke to seven Bay Area residents who got tattoos during or just before this resurgence. See those tattoos and hear their stories in the photo gallery below.
Left: Katie Bromley, 45, of Pleasanton, got her tattoo at O Tattoo Studio in Oakland in June, choosing to go there, in part, because “it’s a women-owned business.” “When the kids were really young I would draw a small heart on their hands when I dropped them off to kindergarten or preschool. I think we still did it in first and second grade actually,” she said. “I finally decided to have a heart drawn by each of them tattooed on my inner arm.”; Right: Alex Cortez, 39, of Alameda, scheduled his octopus mermaid tattoo at Tattoo City in San Francisco’s North Beach four months before he was actually able to get it due to changing COVID-19 mandates. “I had been exceedingly careful all winter, always masking and following social distancing guidelines, and I know Jen and the rest of the gang at Tattoo City were extremely careful, too,” said Cortez. “I’m so happy with my tattoo and I’m ready to go back and get tattooed again.”
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle
The change that helped bolster the tattoo boom was in motion before the pandemic, though, as the once-fringe art form gained more respect outside of its traditional spaces.
Karin Breur is a curator at the de Young Museum in San Francisco who has taken an interest in tattoos as an important art form. She began her first foray into the tattoo world during her work curating “Ed Hardy: Deeper Than Skin,” an exhibit mounted at the de Young after Hardy, a legendary tattoo artist, donated prints of all his designs to the museum.
“I just saw the de Young Museum as the perfect venue for a retrospective of Ed Hardy. He never had such a show and, you know, I also wanted to bring out the fact that with a lot of tattoo artists, they are called ‘artists’ for a reason,” said Breur. “Tattooing is an art form. And that’s something I wanted to introduce to our museum public or visitors that may not have been apparent to them.”
Respect for the art of tattooing has grown just as tattoos and other body modifications have become more mainstream. The permanent inkings, once seen as unprofessional or even seedy, have become more common among people from all walks of life.
“It’s had this national resurgence,” Breuer said. “Well, it’s really international at this point, among Millennials to be sure. But I think it even goes back as far as Gen Xers, being the first ones to kind of embrace the tattoo as something to celebrate and something to be creative about on one’s body.”
COVID-19 and related shutdown measures were devastating to this resurgence.
Petaluma Tattoo was on the cusp of its opening in early spring 2020, after owner Nick Rodin had spent five months working on acquiring the space for his new shop. “I believe it was like February 26 when we got the keys,” he said.
Just a few weeks later, Rodin had to begin the longest break of his decades-long career, as the coronavirus pandemic completely shut down the tattoo world, delaying his shop’s opening for almost a year.
“In the 22 years since I started tattooing,” he said, “I’ve maybe taken three weeks off of tattooing.”
As other industries did, tattooing had to reassess and recalibrate, as ink artists were unable to work for months and shops sat dormant while owners struggled to pay for them.
Harrington, of San Jose, a 12-year tattoo veteran who’s been at State of Grace for more than three years, said having to be away from the shop and tattooing during its shutdown took a toll on him.
“It’s kind of hard to explain, but in this tattooing culture, it isn’t work or a job,” he said. “This is a full-time lifestyle. It was emotional too, because we felt worthless. We understood that tattoos aren’t essential, but it was our way of life and it was rough for us.”
Harrington’s tattooing style, which was influenced by his love for cartooning, also changed dramatically during the pandemic.
“After being alone for about nine months, my artwork started taking a darker turn,” he said. “My mind wasn’t as clear and happy to make the happy stuff. The whole world was in fear.”
But the post-pandemic boom has been more than financially rewarding for Harrington. He said he also thinks the pandemic showed the tattoo community at its best.
“You had amazing people reach out. One client reached out and asked if I wanted their stimulus check because they didn’t need it,” he said. “You heard all the backlash and people fighting over the news, but you didn’t hear too much about the people coming together to help each other, and it was great to experience that first-hand.”
That same client would end up changing Harrington’s life in a more significant way, too, and changing the pandemic experience for the better for both of them.
“That client is now my girlfriend,” he explained. “She really looked out for me and saved me.”
As Petaluma Tattoo waited for it to be safe enough to finally open, Rodin said, the shop also experienced terrific community support, from clients and fellow artists alike. Locals reached out to buy gift certificates. People came by before the business was open to buy T-shirts Rodin sold on the shop’s front porch.
“That’s one of the things we love about Petaluma and the Bay Area so much. It’s just the connection to the community and everyone’s there for each other,” said Rodin.
And despite the imposed delay, Rodin now thinks his shop landed in a better position than if they had opened when they originally intended.
“The pandemic kind of helped us skip the first awkward years of building a clientele. It’s been a nice little surprise,” said Rodin.
Morayo Ogunbayo and Yoohyun Jung are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: morayo.ogunbayo@sfchronicle.com, yoohyun.jung@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @morayogunbayo, @yoohyun_jung
