Wild Rose
Wild Rose Tattoo… Recently I found out that Wan, Gong, and Otta had to close the doors of WIld Rose tattoo shop in Seoul. I started thinking I wanted to make a post and tell some stories of my experiences there. This place means a lot to me and I don’t know how exactly to explain it in writing. I’ll have to start from the beginning of the story.
Around 8 years ago, when I was only a couple years into tattooing, I was eager to start traveling. Before I tattooed I spent most of my time playing in bands and going on tour, I was obsessed with being on the road but found it frustrating to coordinate with other people in order to do so. When I got into tattooing I started learning about dudes who were traveling all over the world doing tattoos. I realized that could be my way out, my way into adventures without having to rely on other band mates etc. I remember Chad Koeplinger saying in an interview how wherever someone asked him to come visit, he would just go. I thought that I would also live by this value. My favorite tattooers early on were all in Barcelona, which before I tattooed felt like a far away exotic place that I would never have the opportunity to visit. So once I felt like my tattoos were good enough to travel ( they weren’t by the way) I decided I would try and go to Barcelona first. This is relevant because it was on this trip that I first met Wan. The Barcelona convention was huge. Conventions aren’t like this anymore, I swear every morning there was a giant crowd of crazed tattoo fans and massive line to even get inside the building. I was in awe and it was the first time I saw dudes around tattooing like rockstars… Chad Koeplinger, Wan, Javier Rodriguez, tons of people. I was fanning out at the time, I was nobody barely able to keep my hand steady while holding my liner. I could go on for a while about this trip alone, but I the most important thing that happened was meeting Wan for about 2 minutes. We had corresponded online so he knew me slightly, All he pretty much said was, “Hey man nice to meet you, you should come work in Korea sometime!” So after I got home I thought about it, I thought what the fuck? Korea? I don’t even know if I had ever even thought about Korea in my entire life up until this point. I wanted to go, so I hit up Wan and asked him if the offer was serious. He said yes I was really invited, so I booked a flight. Thinking back I don’t even know why I was invited in the first place, maybe just my willingness to go. Having zero idea of what I was getting into, I packed my bags and went to the airport.
I remember being pretty nervous when I arrived, I hardly knew Wan, knew nothing about Korea, didn’t know where I was going to stay, I didn’t even know how many tattoos I had to do since Wan booked all my appointments for me. I’m soft spoken and not super outgoing. I wouldn’t say I’m anti-social, but I’ve never been the life of the party… more of the fly on the wall mostly. Around that time Wan was sort of a legend within tattooing, he was traveling a lot, doing tattoos like no one else was doing, partying, and everyone seemed to have a blast with him. He seemed really cool to me and I was worried I wouldn’t be as fun of a person to hang out with.
(Wan is the type of dude who can make friends with anyone/everyone around, then get those people to make friends with each other, and then get everyone to have a good time together. And then when he wakes up the next day, he won’t remember anyone or anything. He would say “ wake up with a fresh start everyday” which is part of his genius.)
He picked me up from the airport and drove into Seoul, got food, showed me around to the shop and introduced me to a bunch of the other guys. He also checked me into a cheap hotel that normally rents rooms by the hour or night for people to have sex after dates and shit like that. You could always hear people getting it on walking through the hall to the room. It was only a few minutes walk from the shop and the fridge was stocked with beverages that I wasn’t used to seeing, like corn water.
I was exhausted from the travel but I decided staying in the room and resting was not the right move, so I met up with Wan in the evening to see what we would get into. He picked me up on his red vespa and he was wearing a helmet with a sticker on the back that said “TRUST ME” instead of trust jesus or something. We went around to a few places and met friends, and eventually we got food and were wandering around now with a bigger squad of homies. There were people playing music on the street and I remember dancing around, joking, meeting friends, and having a good time. Everything was so new and different for me and I was still riding the initial wave of what I guess could be described as mild culture shock. At some point Wan, myself, and Otta were all riding on the back of his vespa on the way to a club. I can’t remember but we must have been in Itaewon or something. The club was a tiny basement room packed full of people with a dj up on a stage. Definitely not the type of place I had ever found myself in before. So I’m dancing and stuff and everyone is pretty hammered, the guys keep taking my arms and wrapping them around girls forcing me to dance with them. I don’t remember people responding poorly to me but I was uncomfortable being concerned with invading personal space. It felt so awkward to me but I was kinda just like fuck it and went along. Keep in mind I’m a white american, I have green eyes, 6 feet tall, and covered in tattoos in Korea where tattooing is illegal. I think I stood out a bit. I remember ending up outside smoking cigarettes with a girl who could barely stand up and didn’t really speak english. She was trying to get me to go somewhere with her and the other guys were kinda like laughing and saying go, go! I didn’t have cellphone service, I had no Idea where I was or where I was staying so I decided it was a bad idea. I found Wan and Otta and we started to walk down the street, Wan said “ We need a taxi man, I’m too drunk to drive the scooter.” I felt relieved not having to get back on that thing that night. Then, after walking maybe two blocks, Wan sees his scooter and changed his mind “ I’m no longer drunk lets drive the scooter”… I’m holding on for dear life as we take off, these dudes scream and laugh, blow through red lights, drive on the sidewalk, and weave through traffic. I was thinking to myself, well this is how I’m going down, on the back of a vespa with two homies in Korea. We made it back to the hotel and after dropping me off, Wan and Otta went to the shop to keep partying (this was standard practice at the time). I walked over the next morning to find them both passed out on massage beds.
I think my first appointment was at 1:00. So Wan and I walked somewhere to get coffee, which he doesn’t drink. I remember thinking how do you party this hard and not drink coffee? Anyway, it was probly 12:50 and I was stressing about having an appointment in 10 minutes and not being at the shop with a drawing ready. Normally I was always stressing about drawings and spending all morning doing them before my clients arrived. Wan didn’t work this way, he was basically like chill out man we have 10 minutes ! I’ve learned that when chilling, 10 minutes is a ton of minutes depending on how many minutes you compare it to and how much you choose to enjoy it. So since that day, I have worked the way Wan showed me to work;
The client comes in, you talk and figure out what they want, where they want it, and how big. Then you chill and smoke a cigarette, then you draw. If you’re hungry then you order lunch and see if the client wants to eat too. Then you smoke more and do the tattoo. Then maybe instead of lunch if it’s the end of the day, you invite them for dinner with the squad and continue to hang out. More friends are made and more good times are had.
On this trip Wan pretty much handled every interaction for me, since most clients didn’t speak any english. This made it super easy for me because I could tell he would talk them into better designs and placements for me, and also he would charge them for me.. Somehow I was super busy tattooing everyday and I was having the time of my life.
Wild Rose was also a clubhouse and meeting place for the entire squad. As far as I can tell, these first trips were at the peak of when this squad was the largest and most active. Every evening people would start turning up at the shop. Once everyone was done tattooing, we would all go for dinner together somewhere, and end up partying the whole night together. Everyone was so cool and happy to spend time with me. I made friends on this trip that are still my friends today. I decided I was going to say yes to everything that came up, like try this food, try these cigarettes, drink this, play this game, gamble on this, watch these movies, drive the scooter, get on the back of the scooter, dance, hangout naked at the bath house... I got shown around so many places, tried new foods, saw new shit, and met so many cool people.
The next destination on my trip was a convention in Belgium and my heart was breaking to leave Korea. I had a few more destinations in Europe and the UK on my trip before I went home and I didn’t want to not show up… But if i could go back now I would tell myself to bail the Belgium shit and stay in Korea… although that ended up being another ill experience. But anyways, the last night before I was supposed to leave we went out for a huge dinner with everyone that I had met on the trip. It was mad fun, everyone made me feel loved and welcome. They said for me not to go and my heart was really breaking to leave the next morning at 10am. After getting back to my hotel in the middle of the night, I called the airline and changed my flight so i had another two days. I woke up to the hotel phone ringing around 8am. Confused, I picked it up and on the other end it was Wan. He had kept partying in the shop and woke up, packed my whole tattoo case, and dragged it over to the hotel for me to make sure I got to the airport. I went outside to explain that I had changed my flight and didn’t have to leave yet. He was still drunk. We sat on the curb and smoked a cig together.
Since that trip I’ve been back to Wild Rose a bunch of times. Wan and I have travelled a lot together over the years and even though he lives across the world, we are close friends. We have actually had a lot of inzane experiences together since then, in some pretty far out places. I’ll have to save those stories for another time. Unfortunately during those early years of my career when I travelled the most, I wasn’t documenting things the way I do now. When I started tattooing it completely consumed my life. Everything else fell away and I put all my effort into doing tattoos. This also meant that I stopped shooting photos, skating, playing music, and other things. I have been on some next level adventures over the years with not much to show for it besides the fading memories and stories that I’ve told over and over, that no one really ever listens to or understands. I think thats partially why I shoot photos of everything now, I don’t want to look back on the past and regret not documenting it. Everything is always changing and moving on.
I can still remember the smell of Wild Rose and the feeling I had my first day tattooing there. I pretty much remember everything about it. I wish I could convey how important that place was to me and how the experiences surrounding it changed my life, career, and ultimately lead me to being the person I am today. I wanted to write this down today, because I just found out recently that Wild Rose had to close. Tattooing is still illegal in Korea so I guess complications can arise. It broke my heart to hear that news and I don’t want to lose the stories and memories that I have from those years.
So peace Wild Rose, I look forward to seeing what comes next
also thanks to Wan for all the archival photos from those trips
