jail!

Let it be known.....The state of misoouri is now aggressively prosecuting those caught tattoing in anything other than a licensed studio!! You can, by law, be charged with a felony! Also those proven to have tattooed a minor can and have gone to prison for felony child endangerment.This is TRUE info!!! Lets hear your thoughts on this Gabe,Joe Erich and Krystof...Taz

Sorry..misspelled ERLICH!...Damn ol wore out fingers!...Taz

Congratulations and Thank You Missouri, I hope other states start following them!

good job Missouri! lock all the scratchers up!!! the dirty bastards. i wish thay would do somethang about the problem here in memphis. i have to pay a 140 bucks a year for an artists license so that i can work in a shop while these scratchers sit around and do 10/15$ tattoos out of the house and then they come to a shop and expect an artist to fix the piece of shi* for the same price. i wish they would lock up all these disease spreading assho#@*

Hey thats not a bad price for a permit ours is 300$ plus cost of bis. licence, but I tottaly agree, shit we have scratchers in shops around here I spend 10% of my time covering up their crap. Then people have the nerve to ask me if I'll do some work out of the house, 'cause they think they'll get a better deal, (hello I own this shop). Like a 100$ is worth loosing everything I've worked for. Sometimes I have no clue where some of these people crawled out of. Luckly most of my clients have no proplem dropping a couple hundred for some great art. take it easy yall

I wish the authorities over here in the UK would take note. I'm sick of every bastard jumping onto Ebay and buying themselves a pile of shit tattoo kit and mutilating everyone in the vicinity. As for tattooing minors.................................................I would insert a 12" piece of copper pipe into the offending scratcher/tattooers arsehole, then i would feed a 2 foot length of barbed wire thru the pipe. When all the wire is in there I would pull out the copper pipe leaving the barbed wire in place..................................Then I would pull on the wire thus removing the offenders lower intestine via his arsehole. I reckon that should do it....................................

Texas is regulated by the Department of Health and has laws regulating the tattoo and piercing studios. They currently don't aggressively audit or check the studios, maybe every other year. However, last year a tattoo studio in San Antonio was caught with their pants down (without an autoclave) and fined $200,000.00 in a lawsuit. One of their customers contracted hepatitis.

In my state there are laws that fuck everyone from truely talented artists to idiots with needles and ink. I am a fairly new artist and I have done alot... well an excessive amount of fixing on scratcher work, but the other day someone called me a scratcher because I don't work in a shop. Well fuck you! If there was a way to work in a shop in oklahoma I would already have a job or own my own shop. So quit bitching. So for all you wieners who want to bitch about people outside of shops stealing your business you should bring these people in to the loop and quit being dicks because someone with a passion does something cheaper than you. And to you true scratchers out there. If you want to tattoo fine just make sure your clean, safe, and skilled before your friends skin pays the price.

In my state there are laws that fuck everyone from truely talented artists to idiots with needles and ink. I am a fairly new artist and I have done alot... well an excessive amount of fixing on scratcher work, but the other day someone called me a scratcher because I don't work in a shop. Well fuck you! If there was a way to work in a shop in oklahoma I would already have a job or own my own shop. So quit bitching. So for all you wieners who want to bitch about people outside of shops stealing your business you should bring these people in to the loop and quit being dicks because someone with a passion does something cheaper than you. And to you true scratchers out there. If you want to tattoo fine just make sure your clean, safe, and skilled before your friends skin pays the price.

You should check out Needled.com. She has a little tidbit about a tattoo parlor in Oklahoma that got raided. Apparently a woman reports that she may have been sexually assaulted and tattooed by one of the arrested tattooist. The tattooist admittedly gave the woman a MORPHINE shot and some PILLS because she couldn't handle the pain. Is it me or is there something wrong with this picture?

you know when tony ciavarro started tattooing it was against the law to tattoo in his home state but he didnt open up shop in his kitchen!!! he found work out of state! p.s. i havent seen anythang but crap come out of the kitchens of oklahoma it all looks like scratcher work to me the people that end up with the crap comming out of oklahoma have to go down to texas or farther to get it fixed!!!!! scratcher scratcher scratcher

Here's the Bitch in this situation. For the few years I lived in NH I'd seen an awful lot of shit tattoo shops opening up on the border of the than illegal MA. These were busy shops, people didn't think to looks for "good" tattooers, just tattooers. There were a shit load of crappy shops, and probably just as many crappy tattooers working underground in MA. What happens a year later they legalize it in MA, and most of the crappy shops in NH open shops in MA, and all those "Kitchen Magicians" in MA who'd had a bunch of money burning a hole in there pockets go and open there shops as well. Now you've got a state that probably couldn't handle the amount of shops they thought were going to open, having to deal with an even bigger influx of shops opening. My problem is this, our business left to its own devices will choke itself out. We put no limit on the amount of shops in a single town, let alone an entire state. When MA opened up I wanted to open up there, I thought that it was a great state, had a couple of good guys working with me. But the state was simply unprepared for the business, and I dealt with a ton of Bull shit, and chose to move on. Do I regret my decision, not at all. Out of all the shops that have been able to open, only a handful have been any good, and many of these "Kitchen Magicians" have already opened, and closed. Unfortunately more have stayed open than closed. And people continue to get poor tattoos, and travel now to other places for cover ups, and reworks. So where I don't agree with putting someone in Jail, I do think that stricter, more sensible health department regulations are needed. Not to mention a little common sense, and restrain on our part as a business. Trust me Oklahoma left to its own, and its "Kitchen Magicians" device, will be just another poor state to get tattooed in. Later JOE

take care of tattooing and tattooing will take care of you...........

I have read the responses to my last posting about oklahoma scratchers. And all i seem to read says don't tattoo in your house move to another state. Well I'm sorry I own 1500 acres 3 houses 6 cars and a small automotive paint shop. Move! To hell with that. Let a group of uptight polititians tell me my art is illegal. Fuck that! I will keep putting out quality home tats till I'm blue in the face. as for bad tattoos coming from scratchers. I'd be willing to bet there is probably an equal percentage of shitty tattoers working in shops compared to scratching crap into stupid people out of thier house. The fact is a good tattoo artist is a good tattoo artist and artists should be judged based on thier thier art not the building they work in. People pay me anywhere from 1000 to 10,000 to paint the same designs and images on thier cars, and guess what I started pinstripping and airbrushing without a degree and without a "proffessional environment" to work in. Remember a shop is just a building the art comes from the artist.

I gotta say it ( even tho every one is gonna want to remove my thumbs ) but you make some very valid points. Especially in your situation.I still think that you should be fighting to get in a studio.There was a question asked in an earlier post..."would you go to a doctor who practised in his house...Welllllll....YES!...My family doctor for many years DOES have his office in his home! Of course it is separated and immaculately clean but it is IN HIS HOUSE. And a better sawbones just don't exist ( hell the old fart still makes house calls in the middle of the night) All I'm sayin before ya all roast my chonies with a blowtorch is that ya gotta make SOME allowances for situations...There now that I've stuck my head in the noose Let me hear from all you guys who started out out in anything other than a shop location...OH COME ON...DON"T BE SCARED!!! I know you are out there...it's nothing to be ashamed of. Hell I started out workin in a carnival where our "studio" was an old revamped bread truck.Of course tha was ages ago but still....

Thanks for the common sense! The idea that you should let just any idiot with a gun and ink tattoo is dumb and thats not what I was going with. All I am saying is if your an artist your an artist. Thanks!

gun? ...GUN??????? Whats a GUN?

he called it a gun!!!!!! its not a gun you fu#king scratcher!!!!!!!! that just proved our point.. you must be uneducated on the subject of tattooing.. thats what makes you a scratcher if you dont kwow it is a machine and not a gun you cant be to educated in steralization... you dirty bas#ar*d SCRATCHER!!!!!!!

Hey everyone, I think that the fact that tattooing in Oklahoma is illegal sucks! I think that tattooing being illegal in any place sucks! But it is illegal to tattoo in Oklahoma. And we have to deal with that, or try to change it. But tattooing out of your house or at an underground shop will not help to make it legal. In fact, it might make it harder to get tattooing legalized. When all of the people that are responsible for passing these laws see underground tattooing, they see "criminals", people braking the law, people saying they "don't give a fuck". None of these people are going to want to help out criminals. I was born in Oklahoma, and lived there until about 3 years ago. I knew that i wanted to tattoo, but the last thing i wanted was to be looked at like a criminal. So i moved to Texas where i could work, and learn in a legal, professional studio until it legalized in Oklahoma. Tattoo artists already have a lot going against them, i would'nt want to add a criminal record to that. I'm not saying that everybody should do what i did, or that i know anymore than anyone else. I probably know even less. But i'm starting to think that tattooing in Oklahoma is always going to suck, and it might be a long time before i move back. Jeff Ensminger www.jeffensminger.com

well here in colorad you cant pay the health inspector to inspect your shop just throw your clave in the corner put up a sign and open the door. WHEN WILL THIS STATE WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!! i will say this in the town im in ive been in every shop and i have given them a personal inspection of consideriable respect and self satisfaction.to be honest out of the 7 shops i would slam 2 of them immedately due to undesirable cleaniness.the others are at or exceed the codes according to apt standards.so im glad to see the laws get cracked down on hopefully it will wake the sleeping senate here and rattle some cages enough to say we need to impliment something here. i will say that most of all the shops here do run a voluntairy standard which is along the line of the apt standards.so we just keep going and doing our best.

Two edged sword Erlich...when I came to this town from L.A. there were no regs at all...all ya needed was a $25 OCCUPATION LICENSE ...no health inspection at all....well bein the conscientious guy I am I raised hell for 5 years to no avail....FINALLY the local government got sick of me and told me that if I came up with some suggestions they would implement them ( this came about in part I think because a councilmans daughter contracted a very nasty infection in a nastier shop).OK so I gave them a detailed and reasonable plan.Six months later they passsed a whole BOOK of tattoo and piercing regulations that had nothing to do with any REASONABLE plan and in fact was mostly just ways for the city and county to make an assload of money from the arts but also made it nearly impossible to open a shop. What I'm sayin is...YES it is very important to have REASONABLE laws regarding our profession....however when the politicians get involved ANYTHING can happen!!! If only there were a way for us to police ourselves well...like in the old days when a baseball bat took care of the scratcher problems but alas those days are gone...Soooo...be careful what ya ask for cause ya might get it and more that ya DID NOT want!!! Taz