August 2008-
 We're back! It's taken about 2 weeks since being back to write this, Sturgis bike week is a fairly chaotic experience no matter what takes you there. Life has thankfully settled back to routine. This was Alternative Arts' 4th trip vending Sturgis and its 4th consecutive trip to the Buffalo Chip Campground and Amphitheatre. I'm proud to say I'm a Buffalo Chip vendor, the Woodruff family (especially daughter, Toni, the vending manager) and their entire staff are a class act through-out. The number of people and services they manage rivals any large corporation and they pull it off amazingly well. Congratulations to father, Ron Woodruff, for landing a presidential candidate to speak at his event.
When people ask, "How was Sturgis?", I usually give a pretty short answer like, "fine, exhausting", or something to the effect of, "I'm glad it's over or I'm glad I'm home." The long answer however, would be what we go through to vend there.
Sturgis for us starts about 2 ½ months after we get home, our first deposit is paid to secure our vending spot for next year. Later in the winter, we send in advanced license applications to make our set-up day easier. In the spring, we pay our vending spot balance. When summer starts, the hard work starts. Vending 450 miles from your nice, comfy studio to vend in a hot, dry, dusty place is a logistical challenge to say the least. I've started with a place to work by converting a school bus into a three artist studio. The bus has every key component of a land studio. It has running hot water, autoclave, drawing station, tile floors, easily cleanable surfaces for countertops and walls, 5 poster racks full of art, two copying machines, 3 barber chairs, a massage table, plenty of storage for our gear, internet, and a cool glorious A/C! It took two years to figure out air conditioning, but the bus is cold even on the hottest day. There are no tattoo supply companies in Sturgis, so you must think of everything! If you forget anything, you better hope a local department store has it! About one month before we leave, I start ordering supplies, that way, if I find I've forgotten anything, I will have time to re-order before we leave. By "we", I mean myself, Fritz, my wife, Sabrina, and artists Chad Stewart from Charlotte, NC and Andy Canino from my shop in Littleton, CO. It's convenient to have a motorcycle at bike week to get around or for errands, as four-wheeled vehicle driving is nerve-wracking during the week. For this reason, and the apparent getting paid to ride because it's a tax deduction reason, Chad, Sabrina and I ride bikes across mainly the large vastness that is eastern Wyoming to get there. Andy follows in a car with trailer full of supplies in tow. Two sit down meals and 450 miles amounts to a 9 hour day on the road. We go straight to Meade County Courthouse, pay our fees and get our licenses and an inspection scheduled, we then go to the Buffalo Chip to get the bus placed. We store the bus at the Chip all year and this makes it much easier on us. It takes us a day to clean and set-up well enough to pass inspection. Once we pass inspection, we fine tune our set-up until we're ready to tattoo. The inspection happens the day after we get there, usually less than 12 hours after we arrive! After we're inspected and ready to tattoo, we usually go to neighboring Rapid City for a supply shopping trip and a nice sit down meal. This is our calm before the storm last ritual of sanity supper. On Friday, the pre-party at the Buffalo Chip begins, and so does 8 straight days of tattooing. Tattooing in Sturgis is not for the weak. It's kind of like tattoo boot camp. We start at 10 in the morning and work to 11:30 - 1:00 am that night. We work in an amphitheatre that is loud and crowded. My wife, Sabrina, has the hardest job during bike week. She makes countless trips up and down the stairs of the bus. She does the paperwork, gets price quotes while we are working, takes deposits and schedules appointments, gets us food and drinks, makes our stencils, and fills our tax forms for mid-week and final tax payments. While we're in the nice, quiet, cool bus, she's outside screaming over amphitheatre noise negotiating our next tattoo for us. When that day's concert winds down, so does the crowd, and so do we. Back almost immediately to the RV we've rented for as much sleep as we can possibly get before it all starts over again. On day 11, we pack the bikes and the trailer, store the bus, pay our final taxes on the way out of town, and take the same ride that always seems way longer than it did the week before.
Every bike week comes with that year's unique setbacks. This year it was mainly the weather as wind cost us two of our three pop-up tents, and we were able to work through an unusually strong bout of early week fatigue.
Although it is my 4th Sturgis Bike Week, this year felt like my first as I had finally assembled my "dream team", which included two artists capable of rendering magazine quality work and getting along in such tight quarters. Chad Stewart, who started tattooing in the same shop in NC as me 15 years ago, and Andy Canino, who is the best artist that has worked in my studio. We wanted to bring studio quality work to a chaotic environment where not everyone is a professional. We wanted to give people the same quality work they can get at home. We wanted to work on these travelers and hear their stories, and on all accounts, we succeeded.
In all honesty, it's as nice to leave Sturgis as it is to get there. So on that note, I can wait to get back next year, but the year will make me miss it enough to ante up again next year and start the journey all over again.
Thanks again to the Woodruff family and Buffalo Chip staff for providing us with this opportunity every year. Thank you Sturgis bikers for supporting us so enthusiastically every year. You and your stories are the real reason we come, I assure you, it is not for the weather.
 
These photos are of my favorite tattoo of the year. I rode along side our friend, Lyn Kalles of Washington state while Sabrina shot pictures of her. I later printed the best photo and did the portrait from that. She has a year to decide which landscape we'll use as a back ground. I can't wait to show you that picture.
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