for a few years now Scott Sterling and i have been taking these roadtrips to visit older tattooers,and friends...we both have a thing about tattoo history especially the word of mouth stories so we go see people and ask for the real skinny....Erik Inksmith said we kept him up until 4am wondering about some of the questions we had asked him the day before.
Anyway Scott Sterling and I decided after a few failed attempts previous years to go down and visit Mike Wilson, Angelo ,and Erik and Bev Inksmith and everyone at the inksmith and rogers .Christmas party ......Which was such a great week...the highlight was getting a tigerhead tattoo from Mike and Erik...Mike lined Erik shaded.....anyway......
On the drive down there we went thru georgia and Scott and I began talking about people that had shops there,nefarious and otherwise...Erik had a shop there screwy louie,fast freddie and Sailor bill killingsworth etc...Now there was a character SAILOR Bill killingsworth...carney....scoundrel....in some peoples eyes I do not know alot about bill but i know a little.
Sailor Bill worked alot of places... A few i know of are Norfolk Virginia,Columbus Georgia and on the pike. His address on the Pike is 26 chestnut pl. which was leeroy minughs address...(I think they were calling it tattoo headquarters when bill was there)so at some point bill worked there but someone like bill he probably worked anywhere there was a naval or army base or carnival.
Now throughout the years i have heard lots of great sailor bill stories...most of them involved bad tattoos and guns....or both....
One story was Zeke Owens was at bills shop and they were having a spat about something and Zeke went in the bathroom closed the door and went #2(for lack of a better description) any who..a few moments after Zeke sat down a bullet came through the door above Zekes head...the kicker is bill did not know he was going #2...and if Zeke had been standing draining the main vein...well...you get the idea.....
Now Sailor Bill and Fast Freddie had a tattoo shop war going as they both not only had shops in the same town...(Which Scott and i had heard that they would driveby each others shops and shoot out windows etc..).well we found out not only were they in the same town but they shared a parking lot!!!!!!!! two guys that hate each other chasing the same nickel....
That was almost as good as hearing about Sailor eddie looking thru binoculars trying to get the designs off his rivals shop walls across the street.....
Deb Yarian who I see on here maybe able to enlighten us on more stories about Freddie and Bills war...Erik told me deb knew freddie well and i seem to remember Deb asking me if i knew freddie at some point.
Mike Wilson told me he saw some photos of Bills tattoos...one was a shark...but Mike said it looked more like a sardine/cigarette combo...are ya sure one of my tattoo photos did not slip into bills???
My favorite Sailor Bill story was a sailor or a customer came in and asked Bill to do a snake and an eagle on him. Bill says no problem,does the tattoo and after he had finished the sailor looks in the mirror and sees that Bill had forgot to put the eagles head on!!!!!!
I mean I can see forgetting a talon or two...or the tongue or a spot on the snake but to forget the eagles whole head!!!!!????
So the sailor says "hey bill you forgot the eagles head.....to which Sailor bill replied...."THE SNAKE BIT IT OFF....NOW PAY ME OR FIGHT ME"...............
BOB ROBERTS:
"Roberts started tattooing in 1973 under the tutelage of Bob Shaw and Colonel Todd in Santa Ana, California. From there he would work with Cliff Raven before going on up to San Francisco and working with Ed Hardy.
While Roberts is strongly associated with Los Angeles, the first iteration of his Spotlight Tattoo was in New York City during the days when tattooing was still illegal. He rented a loft and worked in one half while living in the other. Eventually the scourge that is New York real estate led to him getting kicked out of his lease, so Roberts returned to the west coast and opened a new iteration of Spotlight Tattoo in a garage on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Eventually the spot would move into a proper shop next door, where it still is today.
Over
the years Roberts would try his hand at many different styles of work,
but he always came back to the American traditional that was the
backbone of his days tattooing a dozen people per day on The Pike. Like many tattooers from that generation, Roberts understood that he wasn't just an artist, he was in the service industry.
"If you’re a photographer, the important thing is what you’re taking a picture of, not you—if I want to be an artist, I can go buy brushes and I can go buy paper and make art," Roberts told BME in 2009. "But, if I want to be a tattoo artist and nobody’s coming to get a tattoo from me, I’m not a tattoo artist. So, the future and where things are going and the approach, it’s not up to us, man. We’re secondary. The important thing is the person getting the tattoo, not me."
Over the course of his 40+ year career Roberts must have tattooed thousands of people, if not tens of thousands of people. His legacy will be carried on by his son Charlie, who is naturally a tattoo artist as well. Roberts will be sorely missed by not just those who knew him, but by everybody who appreciates tattoos around the world. Below we've gathered some of the many tributes that have been pouring out over the last day.
RIP Bob Roberts- INKED.
"Bob Roberts was the founder and owner of the famed Spotlight Tattoo in Los Angeles, California and was known for his intense watercolor style, detailed compositions that pull from Traditional American Tattoo flash, Tibetan Thangkas Paintings, and outlaw motorcycle imagery.
Bob was born in Los Angeles, California, March 9, 1946, Bob’s dad owned a store in downtown LA on Eight and Broadway. Bob would go to work with his dad on the weekends, which would lead to him exploring the block and the surrounding stores. According to Bob, “they had a lot of tattoo shops, so I used to go into all of them until I got thrown out, and I just always loved it, man. I saw all these people getting tattooed and from a young age it just nailed me to the wall.” As a young adult, Bob played saxophone in Rock n’ Roll bands for many years. During this time he was still painting a lot of flash designs with the desire to find a job. “I thought I could be good at it (tattooing); I loved drawing the designs. So I went to a few shops and went, “Hey! Where can I get some ink and some guns?” And they just told me to get the f**k outta there.”
One day in 1973, Bob was driving down the hills of Laurel Canyon when he ran across some friends hitchhiking. A fringed leather jacket with a Japanese dragon done in Indian beads caught his attention, so much that Bob stopped to inquire about the design and who had made the jacket. When Bob asked Truly if she made the jacket, she said she did, so he asked if she did it herself. She said, “Yeah, and I’m a tattoo artist too.” Bob explained that he was looking into getting equipment and machines. Truly explains “I have a whole outfit I could sell you.” “So, I bought some machines and some flash (that I still have) and a power-pack, and that’s really how I got started”.
Shortly after, Bob would get his first three tattoos from legendary shop “The Pike” in Santa Ana, California, currently known as “Outer Limits Tattoo''. Originally opened in 1927 by legendary Bert Grimm, The Pike is the longest continuously running tattoo shop in America and is still in operation. There Bob would be tattooed by Bob Shaw, “I told him I was interested in working there. I’d bring him stuff that I’d drawn and I’d get tattooed by him, so he gave me the ultimate challenge: bring some people in that’ll let you put a tattoo on them. Well, I was in a rock and roll band at the time and these guys knew I could draw, so I told them to come to The Pike with me to get some free tattoos—I was bringing two carloads of guys a week down there. And I did alright, you know? I guess they figured, “Well, I guess this means we have to give this a**hole a job.” And they did!”. After his apprenticeship under Bob Shaw and Colonel Todd, he would take over Bert Grimms’ chair, working alongside Bob Shaw. After 4 years working for The Pike, tattooing dozens of people a day, sometimes more, Bob took a 4 month hiatus before working for Cliff Raven at Sunset Tattoo in West Hollywood. From there he would go on to work with Ed Hardy at Realistic Tattoo in San Francisco, California. After working for Ed for three and a half years, Bob then moved to New York City to open his first iteration of his Spotlight Tattoo in New York City during the days when tattooing was still illegal. He rented a loft, living in one half, tattooing in the other. Unfortunately, the owner of the building would eventually sell it, forcing Bob to reconsider his options in where to tattoo. “I wasn’t gonna live and work in the same place again, and I couldn’t afford to open a shop on the street and then get a separate place to live in plus, I was burned out on New York, so I came back”. Returning to the west coast, Bob opened a new iteration of Spotlight Tattoo in a garage on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Eventually, Spotlight would move into a proper shop next door, where it still is today.