Lady Luck Tatto Expo, March 12-14, 2010

Last Thursday Lucky, Taylor, and I hopped on a plane to Reno, Nevada where we worked at the Lady Luck Tattoo Expo held at Circus Circus Hotel. The expo didn’t start until Friday so we had all afternoon and evening to get familiar with the layout of the convention hall, meet up with old friends, and, of course, get our drink on.

Lucky’s business owner, Dave, drove over from Grass Valley, CA and our friend Jerrett Querubin, drove up from Albuquerque, NM to hang out and work for the weekend. We met Jerrett at the Seattle Tattoo Convention last year and, because our original partner group was not able to make it to Reno, Jerrett decided to come instead. He stayed with friends while in town and tattooed at the convention.

Thursday evening the five of us hit up Nightmare Studios for the pre-expo meet and greet. Tayler had lived in Reno before moving to Seattle so he knew the guys at Nightmare and warned us that they were at a pretty high level of awesomeness. Turns out, Tayler was right and the guys (and gals) are pretty cool. We met Mike and Brandon, owners of Nightmare, along with Gunz and shopgirl Sophia. We hung out with them for a bit before they informed us that in correlation with the shop we could go across the street and get free PBR at Bar USA. Ummm, HELLO? Free PBR? We’re there!

We hung around for a little bit longer because we were told that there was going to be a fire truck party bus. What’s better than free PBR? A fire truck party bus. The bus ended up not coming but we hung out with the Nightmare group for a little bit longer and then headed back to the hotel.

Day 1 of the convention ended up being a lot like Day 2 and Day 3. The days kind of ran together but we had a blast hanging out with everyone at the booth. Matt of Dead Man’s Hand Tattoo Supply, distributer of Eternal Inks, sat at our booth throughout the weekend and he made the time go by fast!

On day 2 Lucky got to judge the black and grey tattoo contest; there were only about 20 contestants for the B&G categories combined but it was fun nonetheless.

There were many great artists and vendors on hand for the convention, I only snapped a few pics of my favorites for your viewing pleasure.

 

We had left the kids at home for the weekend so it made it able to go out for a bit after each convention day.  Some friends came up from Grass Valley to get tattooed and gamble a little bit.  Yes, we ended up getting those rediculously large frozen drinks to carry around. 

By the end of the night Lucky was dragging his drink behind him back to the hotel room.

By the time day 3 rolled around everyone was so exhausted that we just wanted to roll up under the table and sleep.

Lucky did another full day of tattoos and Jerrett got a few walk ups leading to one last successful day at the convention.

We said goodbye to our friends, packed up our stuff, and headed out to one last dinner before flying home the next morning.

We stayed at Tayler’s mother-in-law’s condo where Lucky and Tayler checked out all their “loot” they picked up at the convention.

A little more loot than I would have wanted but I couldn’t be mad, it was all pretty cool.

Overall, it was a fun trip – a little bit slower than usual but successful. Once the big shop opens the guys from Nightmare Studios will be coming up and doing a few guest spots along with a few people from other shops. Stay tuned to hear more on that later.

A huge thanks goes out to Tim Azinger of MOM Productions, Elizabeth and Trevor Burdock for sparking the idea of going to Reno in the first place,

 Dave Hawley,

 Tayler for hooking us up with all the insider deets in Reno,

 Maren for letting Tayler go in the first place ,

Matt Murphy from Dead Man’s Hand,

the team from Nightmare Studios,

Will and Amanda, Josh and Amanda, and Jason and Serena. We couldn’t have done it without you!

One last note, Reno is actually beautiful in the morning light.