Rod Creamer would provide his tattoo artistry for free, if he could afford it.
He admits his hardships of recent years, as he’s been laid off, lost his house and car and has been buried with medical bills from a blood clot he suffered several years ago. But Creamer, 43, persevered. His father provided him a loan to open Sideshow Tattoo, knowing his son loved the tattoo industry. The shop at 1520 E. 23rd St., suite M, opened about six weeks ago.
At age 18 and just out of high school, Creamer started tattooing himself and opened his first shop, The Ink Addiction, in the mid-1990s in Lincoln, Neb. More recently, Creamer drew unemployment after he was laid off as an industrial mechanic, and he joked about the current state of tattoo artistry.
“It’s kind of funny,” he said. “It seems like it’d be one of those businesses that’d be hurting really bad, but it’s not. Some days, I sit down in the chair at noon to tattoo, and I don’t get out of the chair until afternoon midnight.”
Tattoos mean something different for everyone, Creamer said. He’s experienced people of all different socioeconomic backgrounds at Sideshow Tattoo, from those who pulled up in $60,000 vehicles to those who couldn’t pay their next month’s rent. Some customers just come in to see what the experience feels like, he said.
“I like the people that come in, and they’ve really thought about it,” Creamer said.
“They’ve had a parent or a grandparent die, and they want to have them memorialized.”
Female customers frequently request butterfly tattoos, Creamer said, and he recently asked one woman why. She replied that butterflies symbolize change for women. She wanted hers because she was experiencing a divorce, Creamer said.
A 61-year-old man stopped by Sideshow Tattoo one day while waiting for his pizza at the nearby Fun House Pizza Delivery. He’d always wanted a koi fish tattooed around his arm, so he got it. He later returned with his landlord, a man also in his 60s, who got a tattoo memorializing his brother, who had died years earlier.
“They just sat in here talking like two grumpy old men,” Creamer recalled. “It was a real kick.”
Creamer, who is thankful for customers who allow him to do what he loves, said some tattoo artists get arrogant and let the industry fill their egos. Instead, he is more concerned about the quality of artistry that leaves his store.
“I tell my guys that work for me that it be the 10,000th tattoo that they’ve done, but it might be that person’s first tattoo,” he said.
For now, Sideshow Tattoo is open from noon to 10 p.m. seven days a week. For more information, call 816-252-0948.
J. Jill to close
J. Jill, an outdoor tenant at Independence Center, will close in mid-July. In early June, women’s clothing retailer Talbots Inc. signed an agreement to sell all of its J. Jill brand assets for $75 million, a move that is expected to close about 75 J. Jill’s stores.
