NEW TIMES: What’s the advice you’d give someone who wants to get their first tattoo?
JONNY: The old maxim: good tattoos aren’t cheap and cheap tattoos aren’t good.
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NEW TIMES: How is working in a tattoo parlor in a small college town different than working in one in a big city?
JONNY: There’s way less of a freak factor—you don’t have dudes spray painted with glitter coming in on roller blades or anything like that. But there’s also more variety in small towns because people are more into different things, and are less likely to go along with the fads.
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NEW TIMES: Do you ever have down time, and how do you deal with it?
JONNY: We do all kinds of stuff, from dressing up as superheroes to playing hockey to smoking cigarettes and watching episodes of Metalocalypse. We also spend time devising plans to prepare for the impending zombie apocalypse.
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NEW TIMES: What’s the most bizarre tattoo you’ve ever given?
JONNY: That’d have to be a tattoo of an old man in a wheelchair who was drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette while getting a blowjob from a blonde hooker.
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NEW TIMES: What aspect of being a tattoo artist do you most enjoy?
JONNY: Just facing the different challenges that are presented everyday. You’re always seeing something new, even if it’s just keeping yourself from being bored.
This article appears in Dec 11-18, 2008.