sailor jerry
You can know about a thing. Or you can know how it’s made.
Before tattooing became fashionable, it was something deeper.
Ink pushed into skin by hand. Lines that had to hold. Marks with deep meaning that had to last through sun, salt, and years at sea.
To understand that world, you should know Norman Keith Collins.
Before he was Sailor Jerry he was a kid jumping freight trains out of Reno. He fell in with carnival workers, drifters, rail riders. The kinds of people who lived light and moved often.
He learned early how to trade. A small tattoo for some cigarettes. Ink for cash. Something permanent…for something temporary.
He started with stick-and-poke. A crude, painful way of driving ink into the skin by hand. Back rooms. Port cities. One tattoo at a time. But even then, Collins paid attention. He watched older men work. He asked questions, and over time learned which lines held and which bled to blur.
In his early twenties, he left the trains for Chicago to apprentice under Gib “Tatts” Thomas. It was there he learned discipline. Sanitation. Placement and composition.
When the Great Depression started closing doors, Collins joined the U.S. Navy, which meant steady pay. And a way out of the Midwest.
The Navy sent him to Honolulu.
And it was there, between Chinatown and Pearl Harbor, where Sailor Jerry was born.
Where ink met sailor culture. And where American tattooing would change forever.
Sailor Jerry’s Tattoo Parlor opened up in a neighborhood filled with bars, brothels, and transient sailors looking for a final night before shipping out.
Inside the small shop, machines hummed. Antiseptic cut through cigarette smoke and sweat. Sailors leaned forward in cracked chairs, flipping through flash designs. Eagles. Anchors. Women. Clean lines. Bold shapes. Simple colors.
Sailor Jerry studied Japanese irezumi and collected its prints. But he didn’t copy the style. He stripped it down to the studs, rebuilding it with heavy black lines. Solid colors. Simple compositions made for American sailors and hard use.
Eagles looked ready to strike. Anchors carried weight. Women stared back with sharp curves. Designs meant to survive voyages, sunburn, and years of work.
For sailors, tattoos weren’t decoration. A swallow marked 5,000 nautical miles. Two meant 10,000. Anchors promised stability. Daggers through roses held love and abandoned love in the same image. Pin-up girls served another purpose.
As time went on, Sailor Jerry’s Tattoo Parlor became a quiet temple for men headed to war and men trying to leave it behind.
And as veterans came home marked, the style spread. In port cities across America, barbershops turned into tattoo parlors. Working men sat down and picked a mark.
And ever since, trends have come and gone. But American Traditional never did. The designs stayed loud. Simple. Defiant.
Today, the same flash still lines tattoo shop walls everywhere.
The needle hums. The ink sets.
And the work holds.