Club Tattoo Interview Series, Part 4
Posted by: Alex | Friday, January 11, 2008 1 comment
RB: So, before…this for each of you separately…before Club Tattoo and everything…what did you guys want to do when you grew up…when you were a kid?
SD: Well, mine was a rock star.
TD: I wanted to be a nurse.
RB: Really?
TD: Yeah, started college got into the math and the chemistry and decided it wasn’t for me…I was a people person. And then I went into the corporate world and got into sales and marketing and that’s where I found passion and found success…so…
RB: How did you two meet?
SD: When I was still playing with Chester…she was a caller onto one of the radio shows and was telling me…
TD: What?
SD: Don’t go into the whole story about that…
TD: That makes me sound so cheesy…
SD: She thought that…
TD: No, no, no, no…wait, wait…
SD: …her ex husband was having an affair with my ex girlfriend and…
TD: OK, my ex husband did…
SD:…And decided that she thought she was going to tell me on the air…but it wasn’t my girlfriend when she called…
TD: OK, it was like 3am, ya know…
SD: A girl I used to date…so she was trying to tell me something that…
TD: Had already happened and had past…we actually…our history…we were parallel for many years before we met. We were at the same functions…same parties…my ex-husband and his ex-girlfriend did work together, so we were at the same place at different times together. And so I hear him on the radio tattooing and I had just gotten into tattooing, so I heard this and I knew about his band but I didn’t know about the tattoo shop so when I heard the tattooing…I raced home and call on the line and I’m going to say we met and a week later we were moving in together and a year later we were married…
SD:…Yeah, we hit it off like right away. It was weird.
RB: That’s cool…so how long have you been married…ten years…but together…
SD: Eleven
TD: Yeah
RB: Cool…so is it sort of gratifying…running a business with your wife and sort of best friend?
SD: It can be, yeah, it can be…
TD: I think it’s more gratification than stress…there definitely is a fair share of stress that’s there being married but I personally feel like there’s a lot of empowerment, a lot of trust. We can go home and work in our home office any hours of the evening if we wish to, and be parents and then switch gears to business partners, and then back to parents and we get to have a lot of control of our life. So there’s a lot of reward involved and when I first married him, he had the shop for a couple years and I used to say to him, “I don’t know how you do that (unintelligible with banging noise) thing…I don’t know about all that.” And then once I got a taste of it, I was hooked.
RB: How about the kids…what happens when the kids want to start getting tattoos and piercing?
SD: No way, eighteen…
TD: Yeah…
SD: Or you get your ass kicked…
TD: Yeah…
SD: No…it’s not for fun…
TD: They won’t see it that way though…
SD: Serious respect has to come with getting this stuff; it’s not a game. If my kids even think about it before eighteen…
TD: It’s over…for them…
SD: Yeah
TD: Well this is very…it’s very benign to them. They are raised in this atmosphere. We don’t have them at the tattoo shops very often at all. This is an adult environment; it is not an environment for children. They do see body art, they see us getting tattooed, they admire it. Our littlest boy, who’s six, he loves putting his little fake tattoos on…
SD: (Interrupting) Yeah, he does fake tattoos.
TD: You know…and little mohawks…they think it’s cool…but they have a different appreciation for it because it’s not presented to them as a stigma.
(Unknown): Yeah, exactly…
TD: You know… “ohhhh…look at that tattooed person over there”… “What? My mom and dad are tattooed.” You know? And they really do have an appreciation for it and hopefully we’re teaching them good work ethic by being around them a lot and teaching them how to be a business person, first and foremost in their life, regardless of whatever business they go into.
RB: Sort of too, doing what you love for a living is something…I mean me personally I wasn’t raised with, so…
SD: No?
RB: That makes it interesting…
SD: Damn right. You know, my mom always told me that I could do anything I want and I think I get a lot of my passion for trying whatever I want from her and my grandfather…
*Thora laughs
SD: My Dad, I think…he was the nine to fiver. “You got to do this; this is what you have to do to make it,” you know, “to be above water”. I think they come from a whole different era where just being above water was OK, as long as they weren’t sinking it was OK, and that’s not where I want to be. I want to kick the world in the ass…
TD: He wants to be in the yacht *laughing
SD: It’s not about that…
TD: No, no
SD: It’s about the (unintelligible because Thora is talking over Sean)…it’s never been about the money for me…it’s always been about the (unintelligible because Thora is talking over Sean)
TD: (Talking over Sean) Yeah, But wouldn’t you rather be in the yacht than a little…what are those things…called…a dingy?
SD: Well of course but it’s never been about that for me; it’s always been about creating something cool and having fun while I’m doing it.
RB: Well I don’t think any real artists or creative people would say anything differently, you know…true artists….
And next... the exciting conclusion. Then, an interview with Chester Bennington.
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