UMAMI BURGER

The boys from Dice Magazine and I went to Umami Burger near their offices on Hollywood Blvd. I gotta say man that is a good burger, and the cheezy tots ruled

SPRING IS HERE...

There is no doubt that our short wet winter has passed.
Flowers, butterflies  and fuzzy caterpillars are everywhere.

The Amazing Mr. Benny

Ravens Books

Here is the book mark that Pierre Mitchell placed in my book. The art is all by Cliff Raven , hand lettering and all. This thing is so cool.

DESERT TRIPPING

My birthday was a few days ago so Spitfire Girl and I headed out to the desert for some music and BBQ, our first stop was Pappy and Harriet's in PioneerTown, if you have never been do yourself a favor. The best smoked chicken in the world.  We had an excellent time.

The next day we hit up some crazy ass swap meet in Yucca Valley,
Spitfire kept asking why I was not taking photos, seriously I thought
I may have been murdered, this was like the opening Barter Town scene
in Thunder Dome. CREEPY!!!

 I digress, we made a wrong turn and ended up in 29 Palms, I mentioned that Cliff Raven had a used bookstore around these parts and low and behold I drove past it twice.

 Cliff Raven was really the reason I started tattooing, he was creating the most amazing art and tattoos his entire career. Cliff's work had a certain playfulness that was really not present at the time in the tattooing. Cliff made most of the tattoos on my teacher, Bob Horn, those tattoos were the first example of really amazing tattooing that I had ever seen, those tattoos are what piqued my intrest in tattooing. Bob Horn, my teacher, worked for Cliff at The Famous Sunset Strip Tattoo in the late 70's-80's. Cliff's tattoo aesteic and tattoo philosophy was passed down to me through my teacher. The tattoos that Cliff did on Bob were and are even still the most elegant tattoos i have ever seen. I find it really amazing that I can draw a straight line in my personal history back to Cliff.

So I find the store and I am kind of freaking out and I can see all the signs that used to say tattoo shop, if you look close you can see how the weather has really eaten off the repainting of the signs that used to say tattoo and Cliff painted over when he got out of the tattoo game. I was really walking into a piece of my own history I had heard many stories from my teacher about driving out to the desert to get tattooed by Cliff.

Upon entering we are greeted by Cliff's longtime friend and business partner Pierre MItchell. Pierre was kind enough to chat with us and let me take some photos of a few of his tattoos. The koi Cliff did and I can only guess how old it is, the cherry blossoms were made by Kazuo Ogouri, on his first trip over to the states in the 1970's.

I picked up a great book on 17th century natural history Lithography.
My next trip I need to spend some more time really searching his
stacks of books.

Bisley??? is that the guys name?

This is the start of Leigh's inner arm
I think we are coloring it in real soon .

MOUNTAIN WHO

I never knew that the old style mountain dew labeling has so much style, complete with hillbilly and Mountain Dew mouth. This is a real thing Mountain Dew mouth apparently after years of Dew consumption all of your teeth fall directly out of your head.