Issue 15 will be distributed exclusively to Living Proof Members. Sent to our members for September, 2026.
Smith Street Rod and Gun Club for Living Proof Magazine, Issue 15.
“On a blazing day in the summer of 2003, I sat in my friend Ben Mclellan’s crib on south 3rd street in Williamsburg, waiting for him to give me a tattoo. Rest in Peace ZYRE. Ben was playing a Fu Manchu CD on a desktop computer as he set up his shit. On a coffee table filled with blunt guts, blackbooks, Dipset mixtapes you could buy around the corner on Havemeyer and half empty beers, there was a copy of a recent issue of International Tattoo Arts Magazine. I picked up the mag and half-interestedly flipped through it, stoned. I arrived at a feature on flash by a young tattooer based in Florida named Bert Krak. I was immediately blown away. This dude was doing exactly what I had been looking for; it was familiar, but I’d never seen anything like it. Graphic, powerful, bold, no nonsense, no bullshit. Ben smiled and agreed, Bert was the shit. Remember this was 23 years ago. Tattoos weren’t nearly as popular as they are now, they were underground. There was no social media, the internet was unreliable and new. You had your local shops and then you would learn about tats from word or mouth or more traditional forms of media. Seeing Bert’s work in that copy of ITA wasn’t just refreshing, it felt important.
The early 2000’s was a precarious period of revisiting more traditional motifs in tattooing and integrating it alongside the new-school aesthetics that had dominated popular tattooing in the 1990s. The resulting look was a highly stylized, often overwrought, over colored and overdone take on the tried-and-true standards of American tattooing. Roses, skulls, daggers and pin-ups became highly elaborate, owls replaced eagles, and aesthetics and imagery from outside of traditional tattoos became commonplace. It was to suggest that the simple, bold and not to mention fast style of tattooing that had been the standard as long as electric tattooing had existed was not enough, and that it could be improved upon and that the apparent way of doing that was through more lines, more shading, more color, more work, more imagery, and more time under that buzzing fucking needle.
Bert’s drawings in that magazine were obviously traditional tattoos, but they had a newness that didn’t dismiss history. He is an expert in traditional American tattoo imagery, but in that magazine feature I could recognize a progression. It was that rare marriage of timeless and new. His flash appeared to effortlessly take the tradition of tattoos and apply them to working in the present. It was clear that he could draw a fucking skull, but he also seemed to understand when enough was enough, that certain things can’t or shouldn’t be fucked with, but he also wasn’t afraid to try some shit. These seemed to be lost concepts of many of the tattooers working at the time. He also wasn’t just larping some old tattooer from the great depression as some others thought to do. He clearly knew his shit and part of that was knowing that to excel one must uphold tradition but can’t simply dwell in the past. There was then and there continues now to be a simplicity, a directness and a boldness that not only defines his work but has come to define the contemporary practice of traditional tattooing. Work within the parameters established by the generations before you but carve your own path.”
Writing by Ned Vena
Issue 15 of Living Proof Magazine featuring: H.R., SABER MSK, Erik Ellington, Smith Street Rod and Gun Club, Wally Champs / Clarks Originals, Crack Gallery, Tadanori Yokoo, Kunichi Nomura, Addison Kirst, Last Resort AB and Adrian Douzmanian.
Issue 15 will be sent to members of Living Proof New York for the month of September 2026.