This weekend in Mesa, six downtown businesses were transformed into tattoo shops.
A barbershop, boutique, a coffee shop and an audio equipment store hosted tattoo artists from around the Valley in a pop-up tattooing event that came and went in a day. At Nebula Vaping on Main Street, Dominic Romero tattooed three small purple hearts on the top of a customer's foot. Nearby, Juan Hernandez waited patiently for his turn under the needle.
"This is his whole arm right here. I’m his canvas. I’ve known him since he was a kid so, I let him draw on my arm, you know," Hernandez said.
Hernandez showed the tattoo sleeve of intricate skulls on his arm, all inked by Romero. Of course, that was in an actual tattoo shop. Hernandez said this feels a little different.
Spectators were also packed into Prime Cut and Sew a block away. It’s a boutique and barbershop that opened this summer. Roman Romero is one of the store owners and said when he was growing up here, downtown Mesa was not weird. Now, things are changing.
"We just really want to change that stigma and get people down to downtown Mesa and let them know that it has so much more to offer, and it’s growing really fast right now," Romero said.
One of the event’s creators and the chair of the Mesa Arts and Crafts Festival, Mark Svoboda, explained what he hoped a pop-up tattoo event would accomplish.
