In 1976 there was only one shop remaining in the area, run by an old school guy named ‘Tattoo Mike.’ Mike was a gruff old guy whose lack of patience with the military that came from Fort Ord to get tattooed was legendary. I use to cringe when he would inform the GI’s they weren’t in Denny’s or Motel 6 if they needed a drink of water or wanted to take a break because they were feeling light headed. Definitely from the old school! Mike did several tattoos on me at about 16 years of age and for some reason never barked at me. I guess I knew when to keep my mouth shut! When I was growing up in Monterey the three or four blocks that surrounded Alvarado St., Monterey’s main street, was littered with bars and tattoo shops. We counted the bars you could walk to in five minutes one time and I believe there were over thirty. As far as tattoo shops go, a guy named Alexander had a tattoo setup behind a pipe ‘dummy’ railing in the Owl Club, a pool hall and beer bar. He sold his oil paintings there along with all the traditional designs popular at the time. He did my second tattoo, an eagle on my upper arm for $8.00 when I

Then there was Okinawa George, who had a little 8x10 foot space in a shooting gallery. You could play pin ball machines, shoot ducks on a pond with .22 rifles or get tattooed. George did my first professional tattoo, a name, and charged me $2.00. I spent many hours of my youth hanging out in these and five or six other shops in the downtown area. Monterey was a great little town at that time. The navy would pull in for liberty and filled my
head with visions of tattoos, dragons sewn inside the sleeves of Navy uniform tops and far off exotic places and people. I had a dream! After Jack and Eileen opened Gold Coast, I naturally found my way there. This was where I spent my spare time when I wasn’t working at the local newspaper as a printer. Not long after Gold Coast came to town, Jack offered me an apprenticeship. I was able to take a 90 day leave from my job at the newspaper so I jumped right in. At the end of the 90 days I had two choices, either give up my good paying job with all the benefits, including a lifetime
guaranteed position or roll the dice and see what happened. That was in 1977 and I’ve never looked back. Of course I missed out on the paid vacations, the Blue Cross paid for by the company and the chance to have someone tell me what to do all the time, but you gotta take the good with the bad. In 1979 Jack and Eileen decided to open a shop in San Francisco and offered me Gold Coast at a more than reasonable price. By then they had two shops, the Monterey shop and another in Salinas. I opted for the Salinas shop because the rent was cheaper so we closed the Monterey studio. I have owned Gold Coast since then except for four years in the early 80’s when I sold it to Bal Dasa and moved to Hawaii to open Banzai Tattoo on Oahu. In 1986 I sold Banzai to Bal and took over Gold Coast once again and have owned it to this day.

With our recent move to 639 Lighthouse Ave., just two blocks up from world famous Cannery Row, Gold Coast Tattoo is now in it’s eighth location. This is the 4th Monterey Location and we’ve had two in Salinas and two in Marina. Our new studio is 2500 sq. ft. of traditional ‘street shop’ space with six tattoo setups and a private piercing room. Now THIS is a tattoo shop!