As Pepe Nunez appears round at his eclectic assortment of prints, work, sculptures and spiritual antiques that wrap across the partitions of his tattoo store on Freedom Boulevard, I ask him what his mother and father take into consideration his occupation. Nunez, a homegrown Watsonville tattoo artist, says he was raised by a single “conventional Mexican mom,” and was the center little one amongst his siblings. So whereas his brothers and sister have been smothered in powerful love or pampered with items and reward, he was left on his personal to search out his place on the planet.
“I used to be extra just like the invisible child,” says Nunez (no relation to this author). “[My mother] wasn’t too strict with me.”
And but, when he determined to pursue tattooing, he says she had a number of issues concerning the path he had chosen. Had he began utilizing medicine? Was he in a gang? Was he worshiping Devil?
“At first she was apprehensive—as all mother and father are,” says Nunez. “However after she’s seen what I can do, now she likes it, or she will no less than respect the truth that that is one thing that I’m actually critical about and one thing I like to do.”
After spending greater than a decade as a tattoo artist in Silicon Valley, Nunez has returned dwelling. His store, Classic Calavera Tattoo, is ready to open someday this week in a location close to the intersection of Freedom Boulevard and Inexperienced Valley Highway that beforehand housed a motorbike store. Despite the fact that enterprise was booming at Black Lagoon Tattoo in San Jose, Nunez says he at all times knew he wished to return to his hometown to encourage the following technology of native artists and assist Watsonville of us inform their tales by means of his artwork.
“This was at all times my objective: to offer again to this neighborhood,” he says. “There’s a lot life, quite a lot of hardworking folks, quite a lot of battle. There’s lots of people right here that want somebody that may assist them get throughout the particular person they’re … every part I’ve gained from different locations, I’ve introduced again [to Watsonville].”
However his return has been something however simple. It was greater than a yr in the past that he first began wanting into what it might take to arrange a tattoo store inside metropolis limits. What he discovered was a slew of restrictions on the occupation written into Watsonville’s municipal code by former politicians. For years, he questioned why there have been no tattoo retailers in Watsonville—why so many promising artists left the world and by no means got here again. Now, all of it is sensible.
“Going by means of all of this,” he says, “it feels just like the restrictions are retaining [tattoo] companies out.”
OVERDRAWN LAWS
In as we speak’s local weather, opening up a tattoo store not carries the middle-finger-to-the-establishment connotation that it as soon as did. The painful and costly artistry is a part of the zeitgeist of a present technology that values freedom of expression and individualism. However in Watsonville, that’s not the case.
Written into the municipal code as Physique Artwork Amenities, tattoo retailers face lots of the identical restrictions as liquor shops and hashish dispensaries. They must be 500 toes away from parks and faculties, 750 toes away from one other tattoo store and 300 toes away from a liquor retailer, bar or restaurant with a bar. Additionally they must endure an annual inspection from Watsonville Police Division, and not more than 25% of any window may be lined “with materials that obscures the view into the Physique Artwork Facility from the surface”—as a right for individuals who may be getting ink in a non-public space.
If that wasn’t overbearing sufficient, retailers should go earlier than the Watsonville Planning Fee for an annual evaluation, the place they might have their particular use allow—which prices $6,000—revoked. Oh, and so they must reapply for the expensive allow each 5 years.
“The ordinance takes a really powerful stance on tattoo retailers,” says Suzi Merriam, the town’s Group Improvement Division director.
Merriam says that this was an intentional transfer by a largely conservative metropolis council that was compelled to replace its guidelines round tattoo retailers when a potential enterprise proprietor wished to ascertain a location inside metropolis limits practically 20 years in the past.
On the time, Watsonville had a de facto ban on tattoos that dated again to the Sixties, a time when, in line with Pajaronian and metropolis information, 1000’s of troops stationed at Fort Ord that have been coming out and in of the Central Coast throughout the Vietnam Conflict usually visited South Foremost Avenue in Watsonville, an space of the town identified on the time as a red-light district for its bars and nightlife. The worry then was the proliferation of blood-borne pathogens by means of prostitution, and soiled needles used for tattoos and medicines.
In 2007, nevertheless, issues have been a lot totally different. Geoff Wells and his mom—and lawyer—Kate Wells have been threatening litigation in opposition to the town due to the de facto ban. They claimed, as plaintiffs in other cities successfully have, that it was unconstitutional as a result of tattoos are a protected type of free speech. The Watsonville Metropolis Council struggled to shortly compromise on the restrictions that tattoo retailers ought to face because it wrestled with fears that the companies would promote gangs. Because of this, the Wells household sued the town twice over the course of a two-year battle.
Geoff Wells says that a few yr into the struggle, he was able to name it quits. However after talking at a metropolis council assembly, he acquired some motivation from then-Watsonville Metropolis Councilman Greg Caput, now the 4th District County Supervisor.
“Caput stated, ‘You’re a second class citizen and we don’t need second-class companies in our metropolis,’” Wells claims. “I used to be going to stroll away. I used to be going to surrender and go some place else. However after I heard that, I stated, ‘Fuck that.’ I used to be going to struggle it till we received.”
They did.
Freedom Tattoo opened in 2008 simply a few doorways down from the place Nunez arrange Traditional Calavera Tattoo on Freedom Boulevard.
Freedom has since moved from its Watsonville location to a spot off Soquel Drive in Aptos. Establishing within the unincorporated space of the county, Wells says, was “tremendous simple.” Aside from being topic to the standard inspections from the County Health Department as part of state law, he confronted few restrictions whereas making the transfer.
“We don’t want any particular licenses, any of the bullshit that Watsonville has,” Wells says. “And that’s the way it needs to be. Tattoo companies are simply that. They’re companies like another place.”
The Metropolis of Santa Cruz in 1984 repealed its prohibition on tattoos and lumped them in with different private care companies reminiscent of nail salons and hairdressers. Town additionally up to date its Downtown Particular Plan in 2020 to permit tattoo retailers in sure areas within the hall, following a dispute with a business owner the year prior.
Scotts Valley and the county additionally deal with tattoo retailers no in a different way than different private care companies. However Capitola, like Watsonville earlier than its present ordinance, has a de facto ban on tattoo retailers in place that dates again to the ’60s. Their ordinance says that tattoos can solely be executed beneath a physician’s supervision.
Larry Laurent, the assistant to Capitola Metropolis Supervisor Jamie Goldstein, says that Capitola has seen no pushback to the decades-old ordinance in recent times.
If there’s, he says, the town would then take a look at what is remitted by the state.
Though Wells considers his struggle in opposition to Watsonville a hit, he argues that the present ordinance is yet one more de facto prohibition on tattoo retailers. If he had not pulled out of Watsonville, he wonders the place precisely Nunez would have put his store. It took him a number of months to discover a location that match throughout the restrictions, and he believes it might be even harder to take action now with further faculties, bars, eating places and, now, Nunez’s store.
“And the unhappy factor is that nobody [on the city council] goes to alter the zoning for tattoo retailers till somebody sues the town once more,” Wells says.
CULTURE SHOCK
Pondering again to the conversations the Watsonville Metropolis Council had whereas it developed the present physique artwork ordinance, then-mayor Manuel Bersamin says that “the Watsonville of that time period isn’t the Watsonville of as we speak.” Particularly, he says that gang violence and crime spiked throughout the Nice Recession, which coincided with the tattoo concern and fueled their fears {that a} tattoo store would empower native gangs. He additionally says that the town council was within the midst of turning into extra progressive and Latino, and that even the council members who supported this have been apprehensive concerning the affect a tattoo store would have on the world’s youth.
“Watsonville was altering,” Bersamin says. “Watsonville remains to be altering, and we will’t neglect that.”
Nonetheless, he says that the false connection the town council made between tattoo retailers and gang proliferation—one which the town’s personal police power shot down on the time—is tough to look again on. It was powerful then, he says, to separate the Watsonville that he grew up with, a metropolis that struggled with violence and alcoholism due to its giant assortment of “cantinas” in South Foremost Avenue, from the neighborhood that Watsonville was turning into.
“I believe we have been attempting so laborious to interrupt that stigma that Watsonville had for years that we couldn’t see tattoo retailers for what they have been,” says Bersamin, 69, who after he left the town council acquired a tattoo of his mom. “We didn’t know that they’d develop into one thing so acceptable in the best way they’re as we speak, particularly in Watsonville.”
Present Watsonville Metropolis Councilman Francisco “Paco” Estrada agrees with Bersamin. The kid of Mexican immigrants, Estrada, 39, says that the troubles the council voiced again in 2007 have been the precise conversations he had along with his mother and father when he was youthful. For his mother and father, having a tattoo meant, amongst different issues, that you simply have been in a gang.
“Despite the fact that I heard that rising up again and again, I didn’t consider any of it,” Estrada says with a chuckle. “As I acquired older, I discovered concerning the explanation why folks get tattoos. They inform a narrative of who these individuals are—they’re part of their id.”
Estrada revered his mother and father’ needs and waited till he not lived beneath their family to get a tattoo. Now, he has three, together with a sleeve on his left arm that Nunez did for him. He says that his mom was initially unhappy that he acquired a tattoo, however “her view on it modified identical to her view on quite a lot of issues have modified.”
“My mother and father aren’t the identical type of conventional Mexican mother and father that they as soon as have been,” he says, including that their views on issues reminiscent of LGBTQ+ rights have modified as effectively.
When Nunez was youthful, he additionally related tattoos with gangs and medicines. It wasn’t till he was out of highschool that he noticed the eye to element and creative prowess that went into the occupation. A gifted artist as a child, Nunez stated that he gravitated towards the craft quickly after.
“I noticed it for what it was, a fantastic craft,” he says.
He hopes his artwork can do the identical for others. He highlights the truth that he’s bilingual—talking fluently in Spanish and English—and desires to be a useful resource for Spanish audio system who’re curious about getting a tattoo, however have been intimidated due to the language barrier. That roadblock, Nunez says, has solely contributed to the misconceptions round tattoos in Latino-heavy communities like Watsonville.
“It’s all about making folks really feel secure, welcomed and brought care of,” he says. “I believe that’s stopped a number of the older folks from getting tattoos, not having the ability to talk what they need. That’s one factor I wished to deliver right here, too: high quality work for the frequent working man, all of the Mexicanos and all of the folks that aren’t bilingual to have someplace they’ll go the place folks can perceive them. I wish to care for folks right here.”
