Haight Street Habit: Once the thriving center for free love and all things groovy, San Francisco’s famous Haight Street today feels more hipster than hippie. Amidst the overpriced thrift stores and numerous free-trade coffee options, trendy tourists will be thrilled to find there are roughly a half dozen tattoo shops on the street if they want to commemorate their trip with something a little sharper than a Golden Gate snow globe.
For the true ink connoisseurs Mom’s Body Shop is the only tattoo artist owned and operated shop on the street, and probably the most expensive.
Originally intended as a response to the egocentric custom shops and private studios popular in the late 90’s, proprietor Barnaby Williams envisioned Mom’s as an old-school street shop where anyone could walk in and get inked the same day. Today the shop caters to clients wanting custom work as well as designs picked from the wall.
Williams doesn’t remember who first thought of the name, but he knows plenty who would be willing to take the credit.
“Several people I know say they came up with the name in conversations with me and I’m not going to argue,” he says. “A bunch of us were talking about different ideas and the name Mom’s stuck in my head as a good one. You can’t fuck with mom.”
Mom’s Tattoo Shop was the culmination of one man’s quest for a place to call home, and a bunch of maxed out credit cards. In the process of opening his own shop, Williams left the neighboring shop he was working at to open his own because he wanted to do things differently. Evidently the staff felt the same way, as all of his co-workers jumped ship to follow him.
“We’re the only true tattoo shop on Haight,” Williams says. “There are other shops that have tattooers, but they are not a tattoo shop. We only do tattoos- we don’t sell bongs, we don’t have leather goods and we don’t have sunglasses. I don’t trust a gynecologist who sells tires. It doesn’t bode well when the driving force behind the shop is not tattooing, but making someone who’s not a tattooer money.”
“As an artist most of what I do is custom even if it is derivative.”
Williams has been working as a tattoo artist for about 15 years. He has a bachelor’s degree in fine art from
San Francisco Art Institute. He says owning the shop is not so different than working in it, except when he needs to discipline the staff, which he prefers not to do.
“I am not a confrontational person when it comes down to stuff and I hate having to be the boss,” Williams says. “That’s one of the reasons why I only hire people with ten years experience. Having a mature crowd, even though sometimes older people can be just as idiotic as young people, has made it easier. I own a shop so I can have a place I want to work in,and I also only work with people I like”
The full time staff has a combination of experience that adds up to over 60 years. Other than the shop Williams formerly managed and mutinied, he says Mom’s has been at the Haight Street location in San Francisco longer than any of the other contenders.
“We opened in ’98 and it was a really good season to open up, really good economy. We were doing really well from the beginning,” Williams says. “Of course there weren’t six other tattoo shops on Haight Street back then. Now there are six other shops and they all suck. But I say that because I’m bitter. It’s my street I feel. I’ve been here longer than anyone else.”
After eight years on a street popular with tourists, partiers and gutter punks, Williams and the rest of the staff all have their stories.
Vaughn has been a resident piercer at Mom’s for three years. Even as a kid he was interested in body modification and would often read National Geographic, and not just for the boobs.
“Sometimes shock will cause you to get nauseous, and this girl didn’t exactly make it to the bathroom,” Vaughn says. “Well her vomit made it, but from five feet away. I’ve had people pass out and hit the floor and I wasn’t even piercing them, they were just watching me pierce their friend.”
“I had a girl try to convince me she was over the age of 18 because she could put her entire hand in her mouth,” Williams recalls with a laugh. “That was her validation, that only a girl over 18 could do that. And once I tattooed a girl’s butt and she was so turned on that she wanted to have sex with me right then. I said no and she basically got crazy in the middle of the shop.”
The normal crazies like a guy in a pink unitard riding a unicycle into the shop aren’t the only benefits to working as a tattoo artist in San Francisco.
“San Francisco is Mecca, in the world of tattooing,” Williams says. “It goes through waves, but San Francisco has classically been known as the center of the universe. The availability to watch and learn from people just rocks my world. I’m satisfied that I do a good job and I do good work in a really competitive market, and that makes me a better tattooer on a regular basis.”
Photos by Brian Frank
