Interview: Mike Rubendall Talks the Legacy of the Bowery and Tattooing Off the Body

Mike Rubendall wants to bring the magic back. In New York City, he says, magic has been overlooked.

His magic is tattooing. Based primarily in Massaqpequa, New York (on Long Island) and with a Kings Ave Tattoo outpost on the Bowery in NYC, Rube specializes in "Asian-inspired" work. In 20 years he's progressed from local apprentice to one of the best in the world. Frank Romano, the man who taught Rubendall calls him "one of the top five."

The claim came in a segment of Vice's Tattoo Age, one of the first mainstream profiles on Rubendall. Since, he's appeared on TV and expanded his output beyond the body—notably through cap collaborations with New Era and a jewelry line with Jeff Cooper Designs.

Talking with Complex, Rubendall reveals that St. Mark's and rock n' roll inspired him to tattoo. He also discusses the pitfalls of tattooing in the media and the challenges of transfering a hand craft to the art needs of corporate America.

"I started listening to rock and roll in the late '80s, and heavy metal. Being around St. Marks and the New York crews, I remember seeing a ton of heavily tattooed guys and it was intriguing to me. It always had this sort of magic look to it. It wasn’t as hip back then as it is now and when I got into it, you know I didn’t get into it to make any type of money, or gain notoriety, I just had a passion for it and I loved it."

"I was seventeen years old, I started in 1995. I learned from an old school guy named Frank Ramano [owner of Da Vinci Tattoo in Wantagh, NY], so any type of information given was earned. There was no magazines, no videos, or how toss. The artists I was working with kept trade secrets very close to the chest and it was very different from today. There are schools now and kids learn on their own (the industry is so exploited). It was rough and tumble, it wasn’t a customer service oriented business and difficult to get any type of information. When I started I did free tattoos for about a month, because I was an apprentice and people would line up out the door to get free tattoos and slowly, but surely I moved up to half price. Hundreds of people, but I wasn’t allowed to tattoo girls and I was only allowed to do outlines on legs.

"They had to wait until I was half price, so that I could color them in. I would tattoo with this terribly machine. Now you tattoo with a free pen, but then we had these terrible machines. Frank would give me one crack with the machine and his philosophy was if you could tattoo with that piece of shit, you could tattoo with anything. I believe it helped, so I did that for about a year, and I washed cars to help the shop—just got physically and mentally abused, but that’s the way it was. I worked my way up the ranks, but I’m glad I had to go through the thick and thin of it, because I feel like it builds character and now a days kids don’t learn how to tattoo that way."

"I feel like there is a ton of history [on the Bowery], so I wanted to reconnect with that. Basically electric tattooing was born here. Samuel O’Reilly, he took the electric pen and turned it into a tattoo machine. There is history in the making. Then came Charlie Wagner and Jonesie. This phenomenal tattoo lineage is here and it being the birthplace, I felt like I wanted to almost carry the torch and bring it back, resurrect it because it is kind of dead now. There are not too many shops on the Bowery at the moment. It is a nice neighborhood and now tough to afford the rent, so it’s a shame that the history is kind of dying off.

"At the shop we all have our own specialties and we continue as equal parts of past and future. We want to work together to depict strong historical connections, combined with a unique approach. I think all of us create out of the love for tattooing, we do all the things we think are cool, all the things we thin are cutting edge. We try to keep it fresh and kind of challenge status quo and that alone can kind of push the art and elevate the art."

"I like being creative and I think my work lends itself to different mediums, not only tattooing.

"I feel like when you deal with major companies, they are not used to having artwork done by hand, everything is done by computer. So you get all these different art directors with all these different ideas and they want you to make all these changes. But it takes time, you have to redraw the whole thing. It is not a computer program, it’s like they dug up the iceman. "You mean you don’t do this on a computer program?" It does take a lot longer just to make the slightest adjustment, so that’s been challenging."

"It is good and bad. The shows, I don’t think do it justice, but that is the road I think the business is heading in. I think that I could bring something positive and maybe represent the industry in the positive way, but the shows are painful to watch. It’s just, I don’t know, I don’t think they care about tattooing, they care more about what people want to see on television.

"Because of television and it’s more acceptable. The mystique is gone and there is no more biker stigma, or any of the negativity that comes along with it. So it makes it easier for tattoos to be on your soccer moms, doctors, lawyers… It’s out there on the web and in magazines, blogs, there is more information, so people do their research and pick and choose different artists."

"People are getting larger scale work. I think, for me, the things that are in fashion now have always been in fashion. I like American traditional, traditional Japanese, and our clients and friends have always been drawn to that. I think the general public, they are drawn to it more, because more of it is out there with the web there is such an abundance of tattoos. So I don’t see it as any different, I just see it on a larger scale, even on women. That’s the only trend I’d say I see is larger scale tattoos. "