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The first contact I had with tattoos came at the age of seventeen. I was like a lot of kids at the time in N.Y.C a runaway living in the streets. I was a Hard Core kid usually sleeping in the park when I couldn't find a place to sleep. I had a number of jobs usually in clubs I was a bike messenger, sold cloths on 1st Avenue, a part timer in a record store, but mostly monkeying around in the streets getting drunk and having a good time. I landed a job in a comic book store on west Broadway called Soho Zat. This girl there had gotten a tattoo and turned me onto Mike Bakaty. Mike Bakaty, Thom DeVita and occasionally Bob Robert's were the only guys tattooing In the city. So I got my first tattoo on the Bowery by Mike. If you know anything about tattooing then you know the Bowery is ground zero for the start of American tattoo culture. Tattoo studios were illegal when I got tattooed they were banned in the early 60's. Tattooing wasn't made legal in NYC till 1997 and when it was I was in the group of the first licensed tattoo artist to work in New York in almost 40 years. Mike Bakaty showed me how magical the world of tattoos could be. |
Years later I found myself I back in an underground tattoo studio (Jonathan Shaw's). On the lower east side tattooing was still illegal. It was also illegal in the state I was living in. Massachusetts had a ban on tattooing as long as N.Y.C. The decision to tattoo and to change the history of tattooing came at the same moment. This move took me all over the U.S. I worked with and continue to work with many incredible tattoo artists, did conventions, worked for a tattoo magazine, won a bunch of awards, and put my time in doing walk-in 14 hour days sometimes doing so many tattoos in one day I’m still not sure how I did it. But the thing that put the Icing on the cake was taking the state of Mass. to the Supreme Court and suing them and winning a legal battle that made tattooing protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution it took a decade. tattooing was and is now legal in almost every state in the US. |
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In 2000 I opened the first legal tattoo studio in Massachusetts in 40 years on Martha's Vineyard and then I opened Lefty's in 2002. I continue to do my bit to keep tattooing real and alive in America. All I ever wanted to do was make tattoos and keep the street shop alive. Lefty's is that and very much alive come check it out I'll be there.
Click on the link below to check out some of the legal documents and articles regarding Stephan's battle to legalize tattooing in the state of MA. |
