Pull out a map if you want stories of New York City’s music history. 1520 Sedgwick Avenue is where DJ Kool Herc’s house party birthed hip-hop. Near 98-81 Queens Boulevard in Forrest Hills, four non-brothers began rehearsing as The Ramones. The corner of Vanderbilt Ave. and Targee Street in Staten Island celebrates the Wu-Tang Clan, and you can book a walking tour to see all the hip-hop history in Brooklyn. However, for real music history, go to 94 St. Mark’s Place in the East Village, and book a session with Fun City Tattoo, the oldest walk-in tattoo shop in Manhattan.
“Charles Manson used to call the shop quite frequently,” Maxx Starr tells HollywoodLife. Maxx, a multimedia artist, and entrepreneur, co-owns the store with Big Steve. While Maxx preserves the stories and tales of Fun City Tattoo, Big Steve, who has spent twenty years working inside the shop, focuses on the art of tattooing, ensuring Fun City remains one of the most revered and respected shops in the city – and beyond.
Mythical tattoo artist Jonathan Shaw illegally opened the shop in 1976, and it became the first legitimate walk-in shop at the start of the next decade. While running Fun City, Shaw tattooed folks like Iggy Pop, Kate Moss, Jim Jarmusch, and Naomi Campbell. John Joseph of the Cro-Mags and Freddy Madball of Madball got inked at the shop.
To celebrate the shop’s place in music history, the owners – Big Steve and Maxx Starr – put together a playlist of some musicians and artists tattooed at the East Village destination.
While Fun City was quick to embrace punk and hardcore, the shop wasn’t ready to embrace Charles Manson. “[Manson] would ask us to buy things from him, which we never did,” Maxx tells HL. Eventually, he swore if we didn’t buy anything, he’d curse the shop,” they say. “Our shop assistant kindly declined at the time. The day following we were robbed, and an electrical fire occurred in an apartment upstairs. The shop was safe from the fire, but we couldn’t enter the building for a week while the fire department investigated and completed safety checks. It all could have been dumb luck or not.”
Dumb luck is a part of every success, but only if you make room for it through hard work and perseverance. Tattooing was only made legal in Manhattan in 1997, the practice having been outlawed in 1961. As for why, Smithsonian Magazine cited fears of a Hepatitis B outbreak and authorities hoping to clean up the city ahead of the 1964 World’s Fair.
However, the practice continued – just underground. Many illegal shops opened in basements and other spots outside the public eye. While most of those parlors have come and gone, Fun City has remained, thanks to its dedication to the craft. The shop has a history of merging fine line work with punk aesthetics while also celebrating traditional American tattoo styling and clean black-and-white needlework.
It has drawn a long line of devoted clients, including a who’s-who of stars. Joan Jett, Ramones, and The Velvet Underground members are just some of the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers who left Fun City with new ink. 2Pac, Young Thug, SZA, Willow, Frank Ocean, Miley Cyrus, and Demi Lovato have traveled to be inked by this prestigious shop. Demi Lovato, Childish Gambino, Action Bronson, Lula Ike, and members of The Flaming Lips, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Stray Cats, and Korn have all been inked here.
The best part of Fun City is that they don’t get starstruck, thanks to the general vibe that’s found within the shop’s walls. “I and our whole team treat the client the same way – celebrity or not,” Big Steeve told PAPER in 2018. Everyone who walks into the shop is given the same level of respect, and this creates an environment of equality and understanding. The shop has a policy against taking pictures with celebrities, allowing those stars to feel as comfortable as anyone else coming in off the street.
This isn’t to say that there haven’t been some wild moments in the shop’s history. “We once had an older couple come into the shop near closing time, neither of which had ever been tattooed,” Maxx tells HollywoodLife. “The woman took a sewing needle out of her purse and asked if we could tattoo her friend with it instead of one of our tattoo machines. We told her we, of course, could, but it would take a moment for us to sterilize.”
“In the meantime, she explained to us that her friend didn’t want to know the tattoo he was about to get, then whispered that she wanted him to get a small banana on the top of his foot,” he adds. “They stepped into the back, and she handed him a black velvet bandana to cover his eyes with. While he was getting the tattoo, she rubbed his palm with a feather. He didn’t budge once. When the tattoo was done, he paid the shop, handed her some cash, and they went their separate ways.”
Among the stars that Fun City has tattooed, the shop had a wealthy regular that would drop a $1000 tip whenever he came in for some work. “The last time he came in, he fell asleep during the session and went to the bathroom on himself,” Maxx tells tell HL. “We didn’t say anything out of niceness and because of his routinely good tips, but he still never came back. We heard he got arrested a couple of months after this last visit for selling forged Picasso paintings. To this day we aren’t sure if it was the incident or imprisonment at fault for our never seeing him again.”
Perhaps the best thing about Fun City is that anyone can come to see them. The shop still offers walk-ups and appointments. You don’t need to be a celebrity to get a piece of New York City history etched into your skin. The shop’s current artist lineup includes Joel Baca, Ryan E, Dylan Kraus, Diego, Tessa BX, Jesus Antonio, Emilio Alonso, and a monthly artist-in-residency. Book an appointment while listening to the playlist Steve and Maxx have created EXCLUSIVELY for HollywoodLife.