Spider's Den of Tattoos

If it were possible to give fewer stars, I would.  My husband and I went to Spider to have memorial ink done in honor of our 2 children.  Our experience was not good, pretty much from the start.  We arrived on time for our appointment, and I had my artwork all ready to go.  Spider was NOT ready, and then claimed that my artwork needed "cleaning up".  He sent us away and when we returned the next day, he had completely changed my artwork, not just cleaned up a line or two.  He complained that he was up all night working on it (although for the life of me, I don't know why, since it was exactly the way I wanted it to begin with.)  He did my outlines, and that was 4 hours.  He said he couldn't do the color for a couple of weeks, and in the meantime would work on my husband's designs.  We had shown Spider examples of what my husband wanted, and when we returned, the artwork bore no resemblance to the examples we had given him.  In frustration, we left and did the drawings ourselves.  Spider gave my husband a lot of attitude, but did the outlines.  The day we were going in to have the color done, we got lost (because he had moved shops and we had bad directions), so we were about 5 minutes late.  We called to get better directions and we were told that since we weren't there on time, he had given our appointment away to someone who was there and we would have to come back another day.  Excuse me?  All the times were were there, and had to wait extended amounts of time (even when we were the first appointment of the day!) and all the times we were sent away because he wasn't ready (or we had to watch him fumble through piles of crap looking for our stuff because he was so disorganized!) and he give away our appointment over 5 minutes?  Really?  Then he is screaming in the phone at  us, and threatening us, and thinks we are going to re-schedule.  He said he knew where we lived and had a gun and was sick of our "shit".  Did I mention that he quoted us a price, and we paid for all our tattoos up front?  And then he refused to give us any portion of our money back after his refusal to finish my husband's tattoo.  His drug problems and his criminal record should have discouraged us from using him in the first place, but he had done our daughter's tattoo just a few weeks before her death and we thought he would do a good job.  The quality of the work was ok.  The bullshit we had to endure was inexcusable.  He is unprofessional, rude, disorganized, and not a very good person.  And he is dishonest.  As far as we are concerned, he owes us a refund of 1/4 of what we paid.  We did finally find a good artist to finish my husband's tattoos, because after the threats, we decided it was safer NOT to have that mad man do the work.  

You've been warned.

I came here because my mom wanted to get a tattoo with me and she found this place while she was on her way to work.  It's located in the plaza with the Yoshinoya and Bo 7 Mon Restaurant right next to the 22 E/W freeway entrances on Harbor and Trask.  The shop is very clean and very roomy.  

I went in on a Saturday with my mom to meet the artist she had talked to earlier.  Jeff Kincaid was his name and he greeted me in a very friendly manner.  He asked me what I wanted and where I wanted my tattoo so I told the general idea of what I wanted, but after seeing his artwork, I told him that he could design whatever he wanted for me.  He set up my appointment to be on the following Tuesday and told me to have a good day.

So I came back on Tuesday for my appointment with lunch for Jeff n hand since I figured he hadn't eaten yet.  He was really grateful.  So after he finished his lunch, he took me to his area and started working on my piece.  He didn't draw it on paper - he free-handed it different colored permanent markers on me instead.  He told me to look at it and that if I didn't like it he would do it over.  I went over to the mirror and I absolutely loved it.  It was amazing.  After I saw it and approved of it, Jeff started on me right away.  

My first session took about three hours.  The whole time Jeff talked to me and made sure I was okay.  This wasn't my first tattoo so I was already aware of what to expect.  The pain's pretty tolerable if you focus on something else - I usually listen to my music from my iPod.  However, Jeff kept me pretty entertained by talking to me the whole time.  He was really funny and interesting - we talked about everything from his family, books and music!  I was able to talk to the other shop workers as well - Sticks is hilarious!  

At the end of my first session, I was really happy with my tattoo.  Jeff even told me that I was his top 5 customer since I didn't complain and was so interesting to talk to!  Haha.  He taped me up and then went on to tattoo my mom as well.  After her tattoo, I made my appointment to come back in a few weeks to finish my piece.  

Jeff really made my sessions very enjoyable.  His artwork is amazing and he's a really nice guy.  I'll probably come back in the future to get something else.

Spider is a cool guy who does some amazing work on the flesh canvas.  This shop is located off the 22 E in the plaza so it was easy to find with lots of parking and near by stores like a donut shop and liquor store.  The work Spider does is really amazing but at times he looks tired but it doesn't effect his work so its all good.