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| Thursday, August 30 2007 01:33 PM |
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Subject: Base Weblog |
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Greg Irons 3 |
The storefront itself was an old meat market equipped with a metal rail near the ceiling (for sliding animal carcasses) and a wooden freezer box. We cut a large window in the side of the freezer box and set up our tattoo stands in the freezer itself. Being a large shop, we were able to put a small gallery space in the waiting area and held art shows by artists like Dave Mann and D.E. Hardy. At first Dean and I worked alone in the shop but in the years that followed, Terry Tweed and Leo Zulueta worked there as well. Ed Nolte, then silk screener extraordinaire, first introduced Greg to Dean. Ed had been doing the silk screening for the newly formed Last Gasp Comix in San Francisco. Nolte had known Greg since the 1960s and had printed many of Greg's designs on T-shirts. By the 1970s, Ed was doing a lot of silk screening for San Francisco tattoo shops and knew of Greg's interest in tattooing. It was during one of the Barbary Coast Gallery shows that he introduced Irons to Dean. From this meeting Greg was offered a chance to get into the tattoo business.
Greg started working the six to midnight shifts at the #394 location. It was soon very obvious that Greg was going to quickly move up through the ranks. All those years of poster and comix artwork served him well in the tattoo world. He had developed a drawing style that lent itself naturally to tattooing. It was during this time at Dean's that Greg drew up his first flash set to be produced for sale. This four-sheet set was never produced, but some of the designs ended up on the 1982 set that he did with Pete Stephens.
Greg worked at Dean's for a year or so and then went north to work at the Tattoo Emporium in Seattle, Washington with C.J. Danzl and Pete Stephens. This connection with Stephens produced two of the most sought after sets of flash in the 1980s. The photo to the right is an example of Greg's tattooing.
Late 1982 found Irons back in San Francisco tattooing for Henry Goldfield at #404 Broadway. Seen below is a flyer that Greg did while working with Henry Goldfield. During these years Greg built up a loyal following, tattooing at, and designing t-shirts for most of the American conventions. Greg put out a very well received second set of flash in 1984. By this time, he was having a big influence on the tattoo world; his flash designs were beginning to show up everywhere. It was not since Mike Malone in the 1970s, that one person so changed the look of U.S. tattooing with their production flash.
After a couple of years tattooing on Broadway, Greg developed an ulcer and was in need of a vacation (even if it was a working one). He went to Europe for a bit of R&R in Amsterdam, followed by a month or so of tattooing with Tattoo Bertje in Oostende, Belgium. Greg arrived back in the States in time to attend the September 1984 tattoo convention in Houston, Texas. He shared a booth with the Tattoo Archive , and as always, Greg's tattooing was in great demand. Having a work ethic that was unmatched, Greg would be one of the first on the convention floor in the morning and one of the last to leave at night. Greg was able to make enough money from this convention to take his dream vacation to Thailand. Just before leaving for Thailand, Greg was offered a position at D.E. Hardy's world famous Realistic Studio in San Francisco. He was very excited about this opportunity and produced several back piece designs to be hung in the shop on his return. The photographs below are more examples of Greg's tattooing.
On November 14, 1984 Greg was hit and killed by a city bus in Bangkok. As fate would have it, Greg had just received a magic tattoo from a Buddhist monk in Chiang Mai. In a postcard written at that time he said, "The tattoo came complete with religious ceremony at a monastery in the out-back, took three days to negotiate, but worth it. The 100 year old monk blessed it and gave me a secret mantra to go with it." So much for magic tattoos!
Gregory Rodman Irons was laid to rest with a Buddhist ceremony at the Berkeley Buddhist Temple on November 24, 1984. The Rev. Kusada read passages from the Sutra, Iron's name was then offered, and friends and relatives took incense and spoke some thoughts of him, sprinkling his cremated remain with incense.
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