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Tattoo You: It’s Victoria Ink
Thursday, August 20th, 2009 by GetawayBC.com
One thing becomes apparent when walking around downtown: there are a lot of coffee shops and few of them are open after five. Oh, wait, that’s not it. Oh yeah, tattoo shops. We’ve got a lot of ‘em. And we’ve got a lot of inked folk in this quiet little city. But that’s nothing unique to Victoria.
“Every city in every province or state has an overabundance of tattoo studios these days,” says Derek Dufresne, owner of Fleshworks Tattoos, where he is also an artist. “Victoria is no different. Most of the studios have been here for years. They’re not going anywhere.”
But Sarah Kramer, co-owner of Tattoo Zoo, doesn’t agree that we’re covered with tattoo shops.
“Do we? I don’t think we do,” she says. “I mean, the downtown core of Victoria is pretty condensed so it may seem like there’s a tattoo shop on every block, but some other Victoria-sized cities have 15 or 20 tattoo shops so six or seven in the downtown core is not really so many and there seems to be enough blank skin for everyone.”
And that everyone can include both locals and those popping into town for a visit. Yes, tourists: the much-maligned sector of the population who become a little less maligned when it’s pointed out they’re helping small local businesses when they stop in town and spend some coin. And that money does often go to tattoo shops.
“Tattoo Zoo is in a perfect location downtown because we’re easy to walk to and, if you’re driving, the Yates Street parkade is around the corner,” says the savvy Kramer. “Our local clientele appreciate that. But we also are in a bustling tourist area so we get a lot of tourists walking by who pop in to look and usually walk out with a new tattoo.”
Dax Brunet, a tattoo artist at Universal Tattoos, says they also get a good mixture of both residents and tourists.
“We’re lucky and we seem to get a good flow of locals and tourists,” he says. “The shop has been around since ‘78 so it’s a mainstay in the community. It’s always good to have a firm base and be good to your clients, ’cause in the slower months when there is no tourism they’re the ones that you are going to count on.”
But it seems like tourism or no, there is enough demand to keep all of Victoria’s tattoo shops running. “There seems to be right now,” says Sparky of Urge Tattoos, now on Cook Street. “Some shops do better than others and this city seems to weed out the bad artists. There have been a couple of shops over the years