Shane Lindley

Shane has been tattooing twelve and a half years beginning in September of 2009. He has always been fascinated by people with tattoos. He grew up in the hot rod motorcycle world and saw a lot of tattooed dirty biker folk. He thought it was the coolest thing. Shane was fortunate to draw as a kid and never stopped. His older brother began tattooing a few years earlier and helped him get his foot in the door after Shane begged his brother to teach him when he turned 21. He started with traditional, claiming it was easier to learn. As he grew up, he did more still life, charcoal realism. When learning to tattoo, portraits and realism scared him, so he stayed away from those styles for the first part of his career. Shane wanted to learn the foundations of a good, strong quality tattoo, starting with a drawing and adding a strong black outline. Without a strong black outline, the tattoo won’t stand the test of time. The traditional style reinforced that idea. Shane began tattooing nautical stars, boxy letters, crosses, and roses. He does a little bit of everything from traditional to new school, neo traditional, and some realism, but makes sure to say he is not a realistic artist. Shane started in street shops where you either did the client’s design or did the artist’s design, sometimes could be flash off the wall. Doing things like that will help teach you and mold you into doing other styles and mastering other types of tattooing. Shane likes to say that he is a well-rounded tattoo artist and that he loves what he does, it’s the best job he’s ever had. He works 12 to 8 every day. He’s not out digging ditches. His hands hurt, sometimes his lower back hurts. He’ll pay for it as an old guy, but he’d never trade it for the people he meets and helps them de-stress.

“I mean, I’m not rich, but that’s cool. It’s not about the money. It’s just about doing cool tattoos.”

Have you ever been called a bad influence during your career as a tattoo artist?

Well, you have some that aren’t too keen on tattoos. They think it’s against the rules. You’re not supposed to have them. You’re not supposed to mark the body, some religious may say, oh, you’re going to hell for that. It’s marking the temple. But I mean, I can go on and on about religion with that one. But anyway, people look at you different. It’s one thing when you have a tattoo that you can easily cover and hide, nobody can see it, nobody knows it. So nobody’s gonna throw that judgment. But when you have your neck or your face or your hands or your head tattooed, people look at you differently, they treat you different almost more or less as a scumbag. Rather than a normal human being. Most times a lot of people are close minded. And until that changes this’ll never change, but cool thing about the times we’re living in now is tattoos are becoming more acceptable. This generation coming up is going to be heavily tattooed, hopefully not like the mumble rappers that you see out and about with just face and hand tattoos and have none on the rest of their body when they didn’t earn that shit. And I’m sorry, but don’t get shit all over your face that doesn’t make any sense. Why put six nine 50 million times across your face. I’m just saying you don’t have to look like a shitty desk in detention. It’s okay to think about what you want to do and get tattooed it’s forever. You know, if you’re going to get a face tat, make it tasteful, everybody in the world has to look at that shit. You can’t hide it. It’s not going away. Be considerate about what you do. If you don’t like how people treat you, then don’t get stupid shit tattooed on your face or your throat. Just sayin.

Does that ever affect you at all?

Well, yeah. It makes you feel like shit. Sorry, but yeah, it could. I’m not a sensitive person, so my attitude towards somebody who wants to look at me crazy is clearly I don’t give a shit, but some people do and some people are a little softer than me and their feelings get hurt and they feel like, I don’t know, put down I guess almost like a walk of shame for just trying to express their self, to tell their story. It’s nothing wrong with getting a tattoo, you know, I know people suck.

Have you ever had a young child think your career was so cool and incredible and want to do what you do? What is your usual reaction to that? What do you say to them?

Absolutely! Don’t. You don’t want a part of this shit. You don’t want nothing to do with this life. It’s hard. Like, it’s a fun job. But it comes with its problems too. There’s no guaranteed income, period. It doesn’t come with benefits. You have to purchase all that shit. You have to keep up with all these supplies. You have to deal with people--you know how hard it is to work for the public. A public service. It’s awful. People are rude, they’re hateful. They want to pull that Joel Bieber law firm shit, it’s my tattoo and I want it now, they want a price haggle. They want to argue and they want to try to draw the shit for you and it’s like please stop. This is what I do. I don’t come to your job tell you how to do it. I got my portfolios right there. You see the level of work that I’m putting out. If you don’t like it, don’t get tattooed by me. Maybe I’m not your person. If you like it, cool, let’s get tattooed. But I want a general idea, and then they let me do what I do because my name’s on it. I want them to be happy with it first and foremost, but in order for me to do a good job on it, I need to be happy with it. But it’s hard to work for the public and as the years have gone by it’s almost night and day as far as the way things are operating now, as far as the way we schedule appointments, hell, I lay all my shit out on an iPad who the hell seen that one coming. ten years ago it was all paper, actual skin and I still do skin a good bit of the time. I just like this career. It takes its toll, you lose time with your family. I miss out on so much because I work Saturdays, so I miss out on time with the kids. I miss out on time with the wife like, it tests a lot of things. It tests trust, it teaches you patience. If you don’t have patience, you’ll never fucking make it. It’s stressful sometimes. You have to tattoo like, drawing on people permanently. You fuck up, there’s no going back to that. Yeah, we can do cover ups. Yeah, you can go get laser, but if you do this shit right the first time, then you ain’t got to worry about all that. Tell my lower back that shit, it hurts all the time from leaning over all day. But it’s cool, either way, I love what I do because I do have a lot of free range and be a free spirit. I’m not doing the same thing every day. It’s not like a industrial job. I mean, yeah, you have your moments where you’re slam busy and that’s the way you want to be. You want to be busy. You don’t ever want to be sitting around doing nothing. If somebody wants to do it and they’re truly serious about it, I’ll root for them all day long, that’s cool. It’s great business. It’s fun. I’ve learned a lot, I’m still learning every day. But most people aren’t serious. And it’s not easy to get an apprenticeship. It’s not easy to get a group of tattooers to teach you how to tattoo. They don’t got time for that shit. That’s why here we don’t really have an apprentice.

What is the earliest memory you have of interacting with me?

When your dad started his apprenticeship at the pony, that’s when you started to come out there and let’s see. That would have been 2008 so that’s what was at 13, 13 years ago. 14, 14 it’s been a hot minute and you were running around in tiara crowns doing pageants with too much makeup on yeah. You’s a little bitty thing, just a little girl run around in frilly dresses and shit.

What was it like having me as a small child around if you can remember?

You would call me Joe Dirt for some odd reason – “because you sounded like him” – all white trash, huh? I sound all white trash. That’s why [she] called me Joe Dirt. It was Joe Deer-tay by the way.

Do you have any specific moments you remember that you knew a bigger influence on someone?

Like anybody? In a positive way? Damn, I have to think about that one, you should’ve hit me with that one yesterday, I could’ve thought about it. Let me think about this. Heidi [pictured], have I helped you in a positive way? I mean all I do is go to work, man, Cooper rides motorcycles because of me. I mean it’s pretty good. I gave him a hobby rather than him picking up bad habits, kid ain’t a drug addict or drinking at 15 like It’s pretty fucking good. I mean, by next year, it’ll probably game over for that shit. But, you know, I’m just saying I’m giving him props right now. I mean, I’ve talked people out of depressing times, um, hardships, listened, I do be on that damn psychiatrist level shit, people be talking and it’s funny, I could give advice, but I fuck up my own shit all the time. I don’t know. I guess I don’t know if I’ve ever truly inspired anybody, but I hope that the advice and information and shit that I’ve shared with people through the years, if it’s inspired them awesome, I hope it has if I could help anybody make their life just a tad bit easier, that’d be great.

Would you say that you have an influence on the people around you?

I would hope I do to some Syd, I don’t know. I can’t say if people truly do, I would like to think that I’m not a complete moron. And I have a little bit of sense of what I’m talking about. I have my moments. You’ll have to ask your dad that one too because I’ve told some philosophy shit to him for a decade now and I don’t know if it’s inspired him or not. On a serious note, if it’s inspired him to do any fucking thing I mean, the old man’s damn near old enough to be my fucking pappy.