Don’t you think you lose some badass cred by taking away some of the hurt?

At the end of the day, no one is giving out trophies for being tough. In the beginning I was like, “Oh no, fuck that shit.” Then, at one point, I lined 18 backs in one year and all these guys were going to a spa to get numbed up before coming in, and they would lay as stiff as a board and get four hours out of that shit. So I started to think it wasn’t so bad because they weren’t moving around or pissing and moaning that they need to get up every 10 minutes. It’s just another tool for big work, especially if you’re looking at a 20-plus-hour ordeal.

You also have a lot of large-scale black-and-gray work in your portfolio.

I love to do black and gray and have a bit of Jack Rudy influence in my work. I’m in southern California and I see a lot of people with color tattoos and it seems to just go; it doesn’t hold up well under the sun. Black-and-gray just gets better as it ages. You use the skin tone and it has a more natural look on the body. It’s my favorite work and it’s twice as fast to do.

Where are you working these days?

After two and a half years at Victory Studios, I’m moving on to work with Chris Paez and Alex Garcia at Dolorosa Tattoo on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. I’ll still keep working five to six days a week.

I heard that you have some merchandising deals in the works too.

I have an old friend who owns a big company in San Diego that prints shirts, and she has a couple of her own lines as well. We’ve been talking about doing something over the past couple of years but just started to get it together now. So I’ve been working on about 12 designs and we’ll see how it goes.

Are you still customizing Vans shoes?

I’m still doing the shoes. More recently, I did a pair for Horiyoshi III and he sent me an original painting and hand-painted thank-you letter. That was really cool.

How did the shoe thing get started?

One day, my sister came over with a pair of white Vans on, and I grabbed some Sharpies and started messing around on them. It was really fun. Next thing you know, I was doing more and trying different formulas to get the result I wanted with different pens and materials. I started posting pictures of the shoes back in the MySpace days, and people were ordering them from all over the world. It was really crazy. I’d just be smoking so much fucking weed all night and doing shoes after I tattooed all day. I’ve done over 200 pairs of shoes.

Would you ever encourage your kids to have a career in tattooing?

I don’t think so. I’ll let my kids make their own choices, but it’s not something I necessarily want my kids to do. I think the industry is oversaturated. Everybody knows a tattoo shop and artist. People are comparing prices. I just see so many garbage tattoos these days—way more bad tattoos than good tattoos, done by people who don’t know anything about it. I don’t know if it’s the TV shows, or people coming in and seeing our lifestyle and wanting that. It’s attractive. It attracted me at some point. But it was a way, way smaller industry back then. I bet you anything that 90 percent of those tattooing in the last 10 years don’t have a clue about making needles or mixing ink. It’s big business now, but unless you are coming to the table with some serious fucking art skills and great people skills, you’re never going to make a living. If you don’t have a reputation for making good tattoos, you won’t survive.

How long do you think you’ll be doing it for?

I have a good 10 years in me at least. Depends on the people: If they keep calling me for work, I’m ready to do it, and I really enjoy doing it. I don’t know how to do anything else so I might as well stick with it—people keep telling me I’m good at it.