247 Ink Magazine (December/January) 2016 Issue#12 | Page 169

I’ve heard they have gone as long as an hour on previous seasons. Sometimes when people have been called down and they can’t decide between the 3, I’ve seen it take anywhere from it being a quick unanimous vote to them arguing for 45 minutes. So the viewers see a condensed version of everything, and I think because I tend to speak up a lot when I think something is wrong, often times that will be the one thing that’s chosen, it looks like all I have to say is argueing things, but I don’t like watching things I don’t believe in get accepted because bad things happen when people don’t speak up. Do you find when you tattoo people now, because they watch the show, they think they’re experts when they walk in? No, I don’t think people that come to me pretend they are experts already, if anything people on the internet that have opinions on tattooing and think it’s really worth something because I think the show has given people… I think it’s a good and bad thing we’re being judged on TV because we’re giving people what quality tattooing should be, but we are also giving people an opportunity to think they know everything but they don’t. Your artist is trained to know what they’re talking about and it’s our job to educate the customer instead of the other way around. You and Ryan were tattooing about 5 years at the time of taping, did that come up at all? Nobody really questioned our skills for the amount of time we’ve been tattooing, if anything people gave us praise for that because we’ve done a lot of good things in the little time and I think that made an impression. It could 167