Ma ked f< »r life
Local tattoo artist's brand brings in business
By Dana Johnson
Staff Reporter
Ralph Spangler doesn’t get tattoos
any more.
“It hurts too bad,” he said, even though
he has 30 tattoos, including some he did
himself.
“I’m a real whiner,” he said.
Spangler is the owner of Ralph’s
Hungry EyeTattooatl 12 S. 9th St.,and
has been giving customers tattoos —
and pain — for 12 1/2 years.
“They don’t have to take the pain,
we give it,” he said.
But that’s not the motto of the shop.
“The customer always comes first,”
Spangler said.
This means modem sterilization
techniques, including ultrasonic clean
ing machines as well as dry-heat and
liquid sterilization. This also means
talking the customer into relaxing when
receiving the tattoo.
“It’s kind of a painful deal,” Span
gler said.
Customers sign a release form be
fore taking the chair and are given strict
instructions on how to care for the tattoo
when leaving. They also leave with a
Hungry Eye Tattoo bumper sticker and
key chain, courtesy of Spangler.
“We tattoo everybody, from all walks
of life,” he said.
Spangler says that there are no county
regulations for tattoo shops, and that he
has never had any problems.
“I think the only regulations is on the
business itself, not necessarily the tat
too,” he said.
And there are few restrictions at
Spangler’s shop, except for age restric
tions, Spangler said.
“Under 18 with written parental
consent only,” he said, even though
Spangler said there has never been a
problem.
The strangest tattoo that Spangler
has ever done was a facial tattoo almost
ten years ago on a Lincoln man.
“I did a mask on a guy. It completely
surrounds his eyes and down his cheeks
and back to his ears,” he said.
“They (tattoos) are designed to en
hance their facial expressions,” he said,
even though he admits himself that some
are strange.
There’s also not much that Spangler
— ^—
refuses to do. Some of the artwork that
people bring in gets distasteful in the
way of subject matter, Spangler said.
“There’s things I don’t like fodo, but
I m here for the money ... I don’t like
doing anti-Christ things and I don’t like
to do racial things. I have done it, though,”
Spangler said.
Spangler said he doesn’t have a
favorite design or a specialty.
“I’m pretty versatile,” he said. One
often-repealed design, however, is the
Tasmanian Devil. He’s done that one
hundreds of times, he said.
One thing he can’t do is remove the
designs.
“I can cover them up with new de
signs. . .but I can’t remove them. Well,
I could with a razor blade,” he said.
In his personal life, Spangler, 37,
describes his marital status as “chang
ing.”
“I’ve been married three times, di
vorced three times, my girlfriend is
leaving me now, and I’ve got another
one on the line. Six kids... 2 to 11, no,
I take that back 2 to 16,” Spangler said.
In 1980, Spangler opened a shop
near Lake Ozark in Missouri, but he
said “it was just dead.”
Other than the brief Missouri ven
ture, he has kept his business in Lincoln
and says that lately the shop is busy all
the time. Generally, though, spring and
fall tend to be busy times, he said.
Spangler does up to a dozen tattoos
on a good day. The majority of these are
walk-ins, but Spangler does take ap- 1
pointments. He even has regulars which
includes one customer who comes in
once a week to have his tattoos “worked
__ n
on.
Spangler had friends in the tattoo
business 12 years ago and thought he
was “rather artistic” and decided to gel
into the tattoo business also.
Now he is having the same influence
on his apprentice, Jeff Kohl, 23, who
has been practicing with Spangler for
six months.
Kohl said that he pestered Spangler
into teaching him the trade.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone,”
Spangler said.
So Spangler gave Kohl the chance to
prove that he would be an asset to the
business.
“And he has proven to be,” he said.
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Photos by Shaun Sartin
- .. ^ . -. .
Top: Ralph Spangler outside his store at 112 S.
9th St.
Riaht: Jeff Kohl, 23, Spangler s apprentice, re
ceives a “leas” on experience from his mentor.
Above: The Brady Bunch consisting of Bob Full
I_I
ner, Bob Jensen and Kohl display their Hke tat
too®. which they got after their event-filled trip to
Brady, Neb.
Nextj>age: Kohl shows off his newest tattoo of
Ace Fraley, guitarist for the rock band Kiss.
f
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