My name is Adam Lunoe and I was born and raised in New York City. I soon became the kid in grade school who stared out the window and drew in his notebook all the time. This was not yet a medical problem, just Adam getting lost in his head. I spent most of my time lost in there somewhere as a matter of fact. It must suck now to be a kid like I was then, fortunately they pretty much let me draw, having not yet grown the balls to give children strong psych meds to make them behave in class. I sure went through a lot of paper. I got through Art and Design high school and a stint at Parsons School of Design, wanting to draw cartoons and after drawing tattoo designs for friends, it occurred to me that I might be able to do the tattoo as well as come up with the design for it.

After a long time trying to get someone to teach me how with the results you would expect a clueless kid with an armload of drawings to recieve, I managed to get Spider Webb to start me off in 1983. I had read his Pushing Ink book before starting out and it changed the way I thought about tattooing. There was one drawing in a whole portfolio that he had anything like a positive reaction to, and I took the hint and did a whole flash sheet of stuff based on that one design (a mechanical yellowjacket with a samurai sword btw) and he let me work for him and started me out. An eternal tip o' the hat to Spider for that and for everything else he let me in on.

Tattooing was still against NYC law then, and there were a handful of shops, all pretty stealthy. Spider was upstairs from a hardware store in the wholesale flower district. There was an S&M cathouse upstairs. Tattooing was not a stripmall thing yet. I bootlegged for years after that, doing mostly black and gray, lots of fine line stuff. It was the Eighties... back when Yuri Kapralov was running the NYC Tattoo Society out of his gallery on East 6th Street, the first monday of every month. Fine times, and everything changes with time. There may have been twenty or thirty people showing up at Yuri's, and that was pretty much everyone in NYC and some of the folks from surrounding areas. These days, I think there's more than that tattooing on a slow day on some blocks in the Village...

At a point in the Nineties, I hung up my iron for several years, and among other things, worked as an EMT. I guess I like work that makes stories, but most of the EMT tales ended kinda poorly and they all start out beat, and the ink spark lit up again when the local tattoo ban was lifted in 1998. I worked here and there, had my own place for a minute and a half in which I learned that I was no businessman, generally shook the rust off, built up speed and learned new tricks despite what they say about old dogs...

The last five years I was in the Bronx with the inimitable crew at Champion Tattoo up on Broadway, where there is never a dull moment or a day without an eye roll and a belly laugh. Champ is a genuine gent of the old school, there was not even a mold to break after he was made because he was made one off. Working for his brother Cubo was like working with Bugs Bunny despite the fact Cubo's from Queens and I believe Bugs is from Brooklyn. It loses nothing in the translation. The subway series never ends with these guys. Let me not fail to include Jen and Larry, my brother and sister from previously unknown parents, Jen with the beaming smile and Larry the human mountain all pure rock. Larry has drawn acres of flash, and Jen will be up to speed tattooing by the spring flood and make me proud to have coached her when she was starting. Certainly not least, although someone has to be last, Jasmine and Sheila, Jasmine returning to Champ's after a couple years on the road and Sheila taking over piercing from Jen. It has truly been a privilege to work with these people. If it sounds like I am going to miss them, you are getting the picture, I will. But I couldn't get them all in the bag, so I had to leave them in the Bronx.

I relocated to San Francisco in November 2007 and immediately found a new home at Soulpatch on Haight Street. It is a lovely open plan shop with four tattooists working along with two piercers. Marcelo has been piercing for sixteen years, Shannon for four, and the both of them are very serious about what they do, and as a result the place is lined up with folks wanting piercings. The ink side works very very well also, Joey Rodriguez being the senior artist in the lineup, originally from Seattle, he's also going to the Art Institute here in SF and is phenomenal. I wish I could draw like he can, and he makes it look easy. Jennifer Overbury has been tattooing since 1992, started out at the Diamond Club here in SF, she can do anything and has a real fine eye for traditional Japanese themes. Lango is from San Diego and got to San Francisco a little before I did, he started out doing graffiti but became a solid tattooist with a great sense for outlandish takes on neo traditional styles, plus he is doing a huge multi panel mural on the outer walls of the shop.

Soulpatch tattoo is located on the corner of Haight Street and Clayton one block west of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. The street itself is a show worth a visit if you are within half a continent. the website is http://www.soulpatchtattoo.com and the shop itself is open noon to eight seven days a week. You have to drop in to make an appointment, but thats standard. The phone number is 415 552 3444. See you there!

All contents of this site are © 2007 Adam Lunoe.