Jonathan Shaw is a world traveling outlaw artist, novelist, notorious folk hero and apocalypse philosopher. A legendary tattoo master, trendsetter, and innovator and creator of underground art, Shaw was born in NY to big band legend Artie Shaw and movie star Doris Dowling. He was raised in LA where he learned to tattoo on the legendary Pike boardwalk from old-school California masters. After running with the likes of Jim Morrison, the Manson Family, and Charles Bukowski, Shaw fell prey to heroin addiction and a life of crime, before fleeing 1970s Hollywood to travel the world as a merchant seaman. After living and working in South America for decades, he returned to the city of his birth, where he founded Fun City Tattoo, the first street tattoo shop in NYC since tattooing was criminalized there in the 1960s. He is the author of Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes (HarperCollins, 2008), Vintage Tattoo Flash (2016, Powerhouse Books), and Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist (Turner Publishing, 2017).
.. .this one is really, really good. The thoughtful inclusion of so many unknowns, the representation for The Bowery, The Pike and LA, it works. And it tells a story in a way only another historian can really read. A fine, keen contribution to the legacy of the art itself. ...if you buy any collections at all, this one is for you. It's not only different, it's in a class of its own. VTF2 has the best possible stuff, from the super sweet and rare...I've ever seen. ...Beautiful. Go buy this book. -Jeff Johnson, author of Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life in Ink