NYC's Underground Tattoo Years Revealed in New Intriguing Book

Clayton Patterson, the Lower East Side documentarian known for capturing some of downtown New York's most rebellious eras on film, has spent nearly a decade putting together "In the Shadows: The People's History of NYC Underground Tattooing" — a lavishly illustrated tome released this year by Tribal Publishing, the outfit run by tattoo aficionado Patrick Kitzel. Patterson is listed as the book's editor in chief, with Kitzel handling content arrangement and design. The prolific Patterson, who jokes that the project "took too long to finish," has already completed a Volume II and is at work on a Volume III. "In the Shadows" touches on the earlier history of skin art, but its heart is the period from 1961 to 1997, when tattooing was outright illegal in New York City. The ban followed an alleged Hepatitis B outbreak in the early '60s, though another theory holds it was part of an effort to "clean up" the city ahead of the 1964 World's Fair. Patterson sat down for an interview in his Essex Street storefront, a former dress shop, to talk tattoo culture downtown and beyond. "This book has taken me nine years to do," Patterson said. "Most of my books are anthologies. I do anthologies because I don't want it to be my point of view, I want it to be fair. I want it to be unbiased. I tend to have a radical point of view." His other sprawling anthologies include "Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side" (2006) and the three-volume "Jews: A People's History of the Lower East Side" (2012). Patterson is also known for shooting the most extensive surviving video of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot, well before everyone carried a camera in their pocket. "It was a police riot," he said flatly. True to his habit of documenting everything, the new book covers a sprawling range of subjects: profiles of ink artists, Lower East Side gang tattoo culture, biker tattoo photographers, tattoo magazines, queer tattooing, hardcore punk rock tattoos and even the Long Island tattoo scene. As for why tattooing was outlawed in the first place, Patterson says it came down largely to prejudice. "Tattooing was blue collar — cops, construction workers," he said. "Tattooing was considered very low brow. People were against low-brow culture." Patterson's own involvement with the underground scene began around 1986, after he spotted an ad in The Village Voice for a club whose members were interested in body art — everything from tattoos and piercing to plastic surgery. The group, called the Tattoo and Body Art Society, met at East Village artist Uri Kapralov's 6th Sense Gallery. When founder Roger Kaufman could no longer run it, filmmaker Ari Rousimoff and Patterson took over, refocusing it purely on tattooing and renaming it the Tattoo Society of New York, with regular meetings on the first Monday of every month. "We used to have 100 people," Patterson recalled. "We would have entertainment, fashion shows, tattoo contests. It was $5 to get in." When Rousimoff moved further into art and film, Patterson became president of the T.S.N.Y. For 15 years, he and his wife, Elsa Rensaa, put on the International Tattoo Convention at the Roseland Ballroom — with Rensaa at one point personally tattooing hardened Lower East Side gang members. Patterson also published several issues of a magazine called the Tattoo Gazette. After New York finally legalized tattooing in 1997, the club quickly disbanded. Patterson says he was part of the core group pushing for legalization, alongside then-Councilmember Kathryn Freed and Wes Wood, who ran a tattoo shop and supply business. Around the same period, in 1995, Patterson also got involved with Wild Style, a European tattoo and sideshow festival, crossing the Atlantic annually to take part — though he noted Europe's tattoo scene was, at the time, "about five years behind America." Tattooing turned out to be just one expression of a bigger theme running through Patterson's life and work. "I've been interested in Outsider Art," he explained. "I've always enjoyed things that were underground." By the 1980s, with MTV putting heavily tattooed rock stars in front of a mass audience, skin art kept climbing toward the mainstream, extending a renaissance that had begun in the '70s. "What you started getting was [tattoo artist] Lyle Tuttle doing like a small wristband of flowers or leaves," Patterson said. "Then you started getting into Ozzy Osbourne had a tattoo... and punk and hardcore [punk]. There were a lot of tattoos... California, [tattoo artist] Ed Hardy... Guns N' Roses, Rolling Stones, the Stray Cats. Music is a large dictator of style culture." Add in the influence of social media, and today an estimated 30 percent of Americans have tattoos, with the figure climbing to around 40 percent or more among people under 29 — and inked women reportedly slightly outnumbering inked men. Asked about nonpermanent tattoos designed to fade over time, Patterson was skeptical, though he added, "I won't judge it." On facial tattoos specifically, he said the decision deserves real thought, laser removal or not. "My advice to kids is [if you want] to make a mark that's permanent in a visible place — you have to give that thought," he said. "Tattoo artists traditionally would not do hands or necks or faces: There always could be cases where the person changes their mind, and they didn't want to be responsible for that... Vali Myers tattooed her own face," he noted, referring to the late bohemian artist and dancer. He once gave similar advice to a chef he knew, telling him not to tattoo his hands: "You could be limiting yourself." Politicians are another group that might want to think twice, Patterson said — though he pointed to Brooklyn Councilmember Justin Brannan, a former hardcore punk bassist who rolls up his sleeves in his official photo to show off his forearm tattoos. Tattoos, Patterson notes, have spread through every level of society. Despite skin ink's deep roots in working-class, military and prison culture, it was also fashionable among the upper class in Victorian England. "Churchill's mother had a tattoo," he said. "She had a wristband, like Janis Joplin. Rich people used to go to Japan in the early 20th century to get tattoos — that's a long boat ride." These days, getting tattooed is about as common, and as easy, as getting a manicure. "It's beyond mainstream," Patterson said. "There's really high-end tattoo shops where you can spend $1,500 an hour to get tattooed." Asked whether the tattoo "fad" will eventually wane like all fads do, Patterson doesn't think so. "There's a natural instinct in people to be marked... It feels like you have control over your body, in a way," he said. "There's lots of reasons to get tattoos. For some people it's a real calling — exotic, rebel, criminal, military, working class — not anymore. Lots of everybody has tattoos — except for people who follow strict religious doctrine." Judaism, notably, prohibits tattooing outright — Leviticus 19:28 reads, "You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead nor incise any marks on yourself: I am the Lord." Even so, Patterson points out that "Lew the Jew" was the moniker of a famous historic New York tattoo artist, and he's featured in the book. "I guarantee, you have tattooed rabbis," Patterson added. "Guarantee it."