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CAREY HART
HART LUCK IN VEGAS
by Chuck B.
Photos by Jonathan Williams
From the May 2006 issue of Prick Magazine.
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 Chuck B. and Carey Hart on a Las Vegas sound stage during the filming of the opening
credits for the second season of A&E's Inked. |
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Carey Hart is a world famous freestyle motocrosser. He has revolutionized the sport and is one of the pioneers of his industry. He is the first person to backflip a motorcycle – a trick that is now pretty much a requirement to be a true contender in the sport. He is also one of the first sports stars to get heavily tattooed. Basketball players played their part in bringing tattoos into the sports world, but most of their tattoos are just junk.
Carey's mainstream crossover appeal has allowed him to be in movies and TV shows and has even crossed over into the music industry in a way seeing that he is now married to pop singer Pink. With all this going on in his life, what more could he do? Revolutionize another industry, that's what. With his love for tattoos and his star power along with the glitz and glamour of his hometown of Las Vegas, he had an idea to break into the tattoo industry.
Being from Vegas and having more tattoos than the average person, it was an obvious choice to open an upscale shop in a high-end hotel and casino. He also decided to further bring tattoos to the masses by allowing a reality TV show to be filmed inside his shop. Say what you will about the show and it’s format, but after talking to Hart it became obvious to me that his heart is in the right place and his love for the tattoo industry is true, not contrived by TV producers. Here is what Carey had to say about all owning Hart & Huntington Tattoo Company, becoming a reality TV star and being one of the first motocross riders to get tattoos.
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First of all, what inspired you to open a tattoo shop?
Honestly, it started off as a novelty. I've always loved tattooed women and I got pretty heavily involved with tattooing at a young age. I moved backed to Vegas around 2000, 2001 and I just had this itch to open a tattoo shop. It wasn't going to be [anything] really crazy, but I just went out there with really good artists to do something kind of cool and unique. Honestly, it came up over a drunken conversation one night and a couple of days after that I had a meeting with George Maloof, who owns the Palms hotel, and four months later we were open. So it just kind of snowballed from there.
So that's the only tattoo shop in a casino in the world, right?
Yeah, we're the first and as of now, only. I'm sure down the road someone will get creative, but yeah, we're the only tattoo shop in a casino right now.
When you first started getting tattooed, was that during your motocross days? What got you into it in the beginning?
I knew at a young age I wanted to get tattooed. I remember in first and second grade I'd draw on my arms all day long at school, come home and my dad would yell and scream at me. Then I got my first tattoo about a week before my 18th birthday. Just like most people's, it's really bad. It had this skull and flames and my old race number and it was on my chest. It's pretty rock 'n' roll. I really started getting heavily tattooed around 21, 22. I did both sleeves inside of a year and then a few months after that I started on my back, and on my back out it just kept snowballing.
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With all the farmers who had kids in the motocross circuit at the time, did you get any flak for being the rebel with tattoos?
Yeah, it was pretty brutal. You have to think back – when I was getting heavily tattooed it was really only [Mike] Metzger and myself [and] a couple of other guys that were heavily tattooed. It wasn't good. That's when motocross was trying to get up to full NASCAR image. That's back when I was actually just racing. It was tough, kind of a hassle, to hear all the shit talking going on, with team managers saying, "Oh, that's not the image we're going for." And they wouldn't really let my riding speak for itself; they were just trying to look at the tattoos. So, it's kind of why I fucked off racing altogether, and started freestyle full time.
So it's kind of a blessing, actually that it kind of pushed you into doing crazy backflips and all that stuff you can't do on a race track.
I transitioned back when I was 22, 23 years old. I was just like, "You know what? Maybe racing isn't what I'm cut out for." And then you do something that's more of an individual sport, and you know you don't have to be fucking cattle.
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So what do you think of that industry right now? It's like football vs. NASCAR – it's big.
It's funny how things come full circle. Because of freestyle motocross, it's opened up the eyes to the racing world a lot. I'm sure the corporate high-ups don't like it, but a lot of guys are heavily tattooed now and it's making them individuals, not just another little young kid with a nice haircut with a race T-shirt on. It's actually setting us apart as individuals. Who would have known? Here I am, it's ten years later and I sponsor Josh Hansen, who is one of the top supercross racers. It's pretty rad.
So all of that success obviously enabled you to be at a level to open up a tattoo shop inside a Vegas casino. How does having that type of shop compare to all the other tattoo shops that are along the Vegas strip?
When I first decided to do this tattoo shop, me and my old partner at the time, we wanted to do something very comfortable and very inviting to first timers and other non-tattoo industry people. The shitty part about the tattoo community is there's a lot of amazing shops out there, and there's a lot of fucking cheesy shops out there. We want to get away from the whole attitude – bright lights, ground metal or some music when you fucking get through the door. I mean, I go into tattoo shops now, as heavily tattooed as I am, I still get lied to at tattoo shops. We want to get rid of that whole persona. It doesn't need to be that way. We want to have a very warm, comfortable environment, a lot more about art. People might slam us and say, "Well they're a turnover tattoo shop." But we're not. We're all about the art aspect whether it's tattooing or painting on a canvas or painting on ground metal. I mean, it's about the art of tattooing.
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So did the TV show kind of happen after that fact or did it happen simultaneously or how did that come about?
We came up with the idea for the TV show when we were getting ready to do this whole build-out process and open the shop. We were like, "Maybe we should shoot a pilot, see if there's any interest." The number one thing in the world right now is reality television, so why not kind of jump on the bandwagon and shed some positive dramatic reality light on tattooing? So we figured, "What the hell?" We hooked up with the production company at the time and they got together a budget, we shot a pilot basically around the building and the shop and all the shit that went into getting the doors open. Picked it up, chopped it, A&E picked it up, and here we are working on season two.
There's been a lot of positive response and negative response within the industry itself about shows like Inked. Being a media person, I see the positive because more people are getting tattooed, it makes people excited to get tattooed. Have you gotten a lot of flak for the angle that you’re taking vs. old school mentality?
Actually, surprisingly, no. No one really has the balls to say it to me, but you hear all the background talk. You know, people are like "Hart doesn’t tattoo," or "They're in a casino, how serious can they be?" But we have the respect of a lot of the serious tattooists. I mean, Mark Mahoney, he opened up his shop and let us come do a story on him and his people. Rick Walters is at the tattoo shop all the time. We actually just went to the Salt Lake City tattoo convention and had a really good presence and threw one hell of a party. I think people from the outside looking in only see us as "Oh, some fucking dirt bike dude who has a tattoo shop and a TV show." Well, if you're that close-minded in the way you look at it, well yeah, of course you're going to hate on us.
You've served your time under the tattoo machine though. You're more tattooed than a lot of tattoo shop owners.
Exactly.
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So tell me who did all your tattoos, what's the meaning, the people you want to give props to for all this amazing work.
I first started out getting heavily tattooed by Dan Adair, who owns Soul Expressions down in Temecula [Calif.]. He's tattooed Metzger, and [Ronnie] Faisst, and Twitch and a bunch of moto-heads. He's the one actually that I give all my credit to for having an interest in tattoos like I do. And then I've been fortunate [enough to have] been tattooed by Scott Harrison. I've been tattooed by Cartoon quite a bit, and then the artists in my shop, they're amazing. [Other artists who have tattooed Hart include Franco, Dave Logue and Ben Corn.]
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