The Apex Podcast

Inked Chronicles: Unraveling Tattoo Artistry, Travel Hacks, Social Media Trends, and Celebrating Podcast Growth

October 13, 2023 • Apex Communications Network

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Ever wondered what goes into creating a tattoo sleeve? Join us as we unwrap the fascinating world of tattoo artistry, alongside our co-host, RJ, a human canvas for the talented Chris House from Nimbus Tattoo. RJ takes us on a journey through his sleeve-creation process, from mapping characters and villains on Google Sheets, to enduring long hours in the chair for a masterpiece. 

As we switch lanes, we share some handy travel hacks that'll make your life easier. We discuss the benefits of the Ventra app for seamless navigation through Chicago - forget about Uber! Plus, we've got some unexpected geographic nuggets about the Tennessee border that might just surprise you. 

Social media's influence on different industries cannot be overlooked, and the tattoo industry is no exception. We discuss this evolving business model and how it has shifted power dynamics. With a collective reach of 2.5 million followers, the implications are huge! 

We discuss the significance of brands owning their mistakes and spinning them into humor. To wrap up, we share our October highlights, celebrate the growth of our podcast subscribers, and build excitement for our upcoming episode. You wouldn't want to miss out!

Follow Us on Social:

Jan Almasy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-almasy-57063b34

RJ Holliday: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-j-holliday-jr-b470a6204/

James Warnken: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswarnken

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/51645349/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ApexCommunicationsNetwork

Website: https://www.apexcommunicationsnetwork.com



Speaker 1:

Hit the button, rj. I did it, I pushed it. It's why we are now on the air. So behave yourself, because the good people are not listening.

Speaker 2:

My arm itches. I want to hit you so bad.

Speaker 1:

So, for those of you that haven't been listening to the last couple of episodes, that you're joining us now for the first time. I'm John CUVX Communications Network and this is RJ Holiday.

Speaker 2:

What's going on everybody?

Speaker 1:

RJ's arm is itchy because this man has gotten a lot of tattoos in a shorter period of time Expected my arm. How many do you have you gotten in the last three months?

Speaker 2:

In the last three months, oh, only two, it was only two. And I got both those in under a month.

Speaker 1:

That's what it is OK.

Speaker 2:

So you got both of them under a month apart September, and then first week in September and then first week October. Yes, sir.

Speaker 1:

And these aren't small tattoos Like these are like what was your average? What's been your average chair time? Do you think?

Speaker 2:

Seven hours with Chris, oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

Sitting there, Not small tattoos Shout out to Chris House Nimbus Tattoo.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

He's been getting a lot of shout outs in the last couple of episodes.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, well, because I was there and then I came back for three weeks and then I was there again and now I'm more than likely going back near the end of the year, just so he can finish up my arm like fully, fully, finish it All the yeah that was actually interesting.

Speaker 1:

I want you to explain that for anybody that has not ever gotten a tattoo, or people that maybe, like me, maybe only have like two or three tattoos, what is the relationship between, like, the person getting the art and the artist when it comes to creating a sleeve Like? I thought this was really interesting the way that you explain why Chris was so invested in it.

Speaker 2:

So, like when, when I first met Chris, I kind of went over the idea that, like, like I've always want, I've always wanted, even before I started getting him, I had like a Google Sheet on my computer of the heroes I wanted in the villains I wanted, and I broke that up between like a hero arm sleeve and a in a villain leg sleeve and they're kind of one. They're kind of one to one, a character for each series. And when I went to Chris he was fully on board and Did my first. The first one that he did was gone and the last one he did this month was you skated from you Hockey show on my shoulder.

Speaker 2:

And it is a super interesting process because the like, like you said, these are like big installations on on my arm. It's not there, they're not small. I mean the. I have one that takes up the entire inside of my forearm, one that takes the entire outside of my forearm, the full circumference of, like my bicep and tricep. I have three characters that go around around that and then I have an entire. The last one that I got just got almost caps off my my entire shoulder. So in the process of that and as you're drawing them up and whatever they don't exactly like fit together perfectly. And there's there's like a very, very fine art of tying an entire like arm sleeve together at the very end. And Chris and I had, like you know, a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy conversation after the one that I got last week about, you know, artists and their willingness to sit there and basically take a day to go over the entire sleeve, everything that they've done in whatever it may be months, years, multiple years, whatever, whatever it may be to finish this and then actually like tie everything together. So in total, I think between all my pieces and I think I'm pretty lucky in this that I had like three I ended up with three areas in between my tattoos that didn't warrant like just bringing the background over or extending a part of the piece to just like fill that hole, because it was just it was it's not big enough to put like a whole character, but it's too big to just be like oh, you know, I'll just color over this because it would look a little weird.

Speaker 2:

So we were going over some, some ideas and we settled on these eyes from a creature character in a series called Chainsaw man. They're kind of amorphous in the way that the eyes show up in the series. So for filler spots that are, you know, oblong, weird shapes and whatnot, they they're perfect because you can kind of draw them however you really want to fit those spots. So he started and did the one on the front of my form and it turned out like fantastic, like the color was fantastic, the way it fit in between the spaces was fantastic, and we've kind of decided because the character in the series had three eyes that those three spots on my arm are going to be filled with those three eyes.

Speaker 2:

And part of the conversation that Chris and I had was, you know, a lot of artists like kind of wouldn't say refuse, but kind of begrudgingly don't offer out there that, like last last session, to come back and see the sleeve, like through the finish line.

Speaker 2:

And Chris is really unique in the fact that probably at this point, coming back and finishing the sleeve and by what I mean by that is he's doing the other two eyes he's going to go back through my whole arm and touch up all the pieces that he personally wants to touch up or that he wasn't happy with the way that they healed. And then, based on where we put those eyes on my arm. He's like actually adding like ambient lighting and effects back to the rest of the tattoos that he's he's already done and that'll end up finishing off my whole sleeve, and he's honestly been more excited about doing that and completing the whole thing than some of the individual tattoos, which is not the norm right, but it's like he's just, he's been doing it, oh yeah, all that art together for so long that I think seeing it all come together and final mass, yeah, we, we were sitting there at breakfast, though.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one day and he was just like staring at my shoulder, I caught him out of the corner my eye. He's like do we been talking about that piece since the first time that you came down here?

Speaker 2:

and it's like finally on your shoulder and he was like that's so fucking cool right, right, yeah, that's awesome well, and then, like I told him to, I go to some degree like I can give you the ideas, but you're the one that's come up with all of these drawings and how they'll fit on my arm and what you want these characters to look like. I was like I don't think that I would ever be happy with that, with my arm to the fullest, if there was a shred of doubt in my mind that you weren't happy with it. So I was like I'll come back. I I said I was like I'll come back for as many sessions as that takes until you're happy with it, right?

Speaker 1:

right, which is a sacrifice of everybody's part. Right, like it's not just you know, I want to. When you start to get tattoos at that level, it's not like, ooh, I'm gonna, you know, pay a hundred bucks to get this tattoo because I'm at the beach yeah, it's like yeah, this is an investment in you are a walking art piece well at this point.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was somebody at the gym the other day was like, so you're just like a billboard for him. Now I was like, yeah, if you'd be surprised how many people I've suckered into going down there and seeing him right, right, well, because they are beautiful tattoos, man, like I've never I've not seen tattoos at that level.

Speaker 1:

You know, you're one of the only you're one of the only people that I know that has tattoos that are that detailed. Yeah, and that are full.

Speaker 2:

I'm super excited to get it all finished off. Chris has been nothing, nothing but great. I love going down there. It's like home away from home, down there. Now I'm pretty sure if they, if they could persuade me, they'd love for me to move down there yeah this to Atlanta oh yeah, they're like. So when?

Speaker 1:

you move in closer every time I go down there. They're like when you do you with coming closer does a trip. Flights from Atlanta to Akron, canton or Cleveland are not that expensive.

Speaker 2:

You can visit all the time it's it's cheaper than driving to Columbus, and and two-thirds the time yeah, yeah, I was just thinking about that with Chicago, because I was just yeah, so it's been, it's been really it's been quite the experience does Georgia charge income tax?

Speaker 1:

state income taxes range from 1% to 5.7%. I'll get close yeah, you can move to like southern Tennessee and live on the Tennessee Georgia border there we go.

Speaker 2:

I could swing that.

Speaker 1:

I'm about to like Google that now just to make sure that Tennessee does border Georgia, otherwise I'm gonna feel really stupid.

Speaker 2:

I think it is closest point it does it like it does cool.

Speaker 1:

All right, all right yeah, tennessee, alabama and Georgia aid, county aid. Oh, tennessee actually borders Mississippi, alabama and Georgia on the bottom there that's a.

Speaker 2:

It is a long state that's where the, the old Tennessee twins live the old Tennessee twins yeah, the two guys that tattoos with me yeah, taylor and Tyler.

Speaker 1:

Taylor Tyler.

Speaker 2:

What which I learned was like Taylor, that's Taylor's not even his first name. Oh really it's Sean, what which would be so much easier to distinguish them. But they, they, they're twins who look very similar and they go by Tyler Tyler.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I was like middle name.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's both their middle names. They both have distinguishing first names. You're making it more difficult on people for no reason.

Speaker 1:

I'm weak, weak, oh well, you know what. Honestly, I was thinking about turning this episode into the 52 theses episode. I feel like we should just keep talking about travel and like going out and doing stuff and doing things that you, that you do in order to grow and be excited, or figuring, figuring out ways to get stuff done. So I'll give somebody a couple of little travel hacks for Chicago. You're going to go visit Chicago. Since I was just there, there's this app called the let me pull it up here Ventra D-E-N-T-R-A the Ventra app. So if you're going to visit Chicago, there's a couple of different rail lines. Right, there's the blue line, there's the red line and then there's a purple line. That are like the main ones you can hop on If you're looking to like go from the center of the city and go up north, to like go to a beach or go to Uptown, go to Logan Square, like any of those. Well, I lied, Logan Square is on the blue line, but if you're looking to go to the beaches or anything like that, you get on, you get on the red line and you go north. They all meet in the center of the city. The blue line connects directly to O'Hare Airport. So you can literally land your flight at O'Hare and, without having to rent an Uber, you can walk down. The airport connects directly into the train station. You can hop on a blue line and take that to the center of the city. It takes like 35 minutes to ride that train, Versus taking an Uber and getting stuck in traffic for like an hour and a half trying to leave O'Hare. So that's like Travel Hack 1.

Speaker 1:

2. That Ventra app you preload dollars on there. It's only like $2.50 per ride and you can transfer trains unlimited times if you need to to get to your destination. So that is exponentially cheaper than paying for an Uber or anything else like that. You just download the app you like, take you know, attach your debit card to it, preload dollars into it. It goes into your Apple wallet and then when you walk up to the train station, you just double click your phone, pull it up it's like a Ventra you know card or whatever and then you tap it and it automatically withdraws it and you can go. I paid $15 for a whole week's worth of going in and out of the city. Damn, what a steal.

Speaker 2:

Meanwhile, when me and Jenny went to Colorado, I paid $25 an hour to park in a parking garage. An hour Dude it was they, they every. So that was like on the weekend we went in and like turned around and needed to park in the parking garage to change and get ready for the wedding and yeah it was like somewhere between I can't remember because there were so many charges.

Speaker 2:

We had to park. We were there for like five days and we had to park in a parking garage. But the infrastructure for Denver is not made for all like the tour tourist stuff, so there is really no public parking. And, yes, every night it said it was only $7 nightly parking but it ended at 5am so by the time we would get out to the car to leave, to go do stuff, we were getting charged like $25 to $35 a night to park in that parking garage which is better than the $59 for valet parking every night through the hotel.

Speaker 1:

Man, they just like just the same parking business. That was the most there was.

Speaker 2:

The most expensive part of the whole trip Was parking, Was the parking garage. And even this is the crazy part Even if you go to the mountains, they have this little digital thing that you have to like scan to take up one of the parking spots. You can't even park on the mountains for free or they'll come and take you. I do.

Speaker 1:

It was nuts, hey, this is why. This is why universal tracking and like chipping everything and having digital stuff everywhere is not always the mood guys.

Speaker 1:

I was literally just talking to Sam yesterday about, because I'm looking at you know what could my next car potentially be? Because I'm tired of paying for my Silverado to you know shit out on gas like crazy. I mean I just like because I've essentially replaced everything in that engine over the last couple of years because I work on my own stuff, so the engines essentially brand new. It's got like 300,000 miles on it. But the issue is is that it just eats gas. I mean it gets like 18. 22 tops right. So I was looking at-.

Speaker 2:

Dude, what you should go look at. Oh what, what are you looking at? And then I'll tell you what I-.

Speaker 1:

No, I was just gonna say. My little brother was like, oh, you should get one of these fully electrics or go get a cheap not cheap, but get an entry-level Tesla or something along those lines. I'm like, dude, no, I'm looking for a sub-2010s car with the least amount of electronics in it possible that still gets good gas mileage.

Speaker 2:

Dude, I'm telling you right now Jenny got that Hybrid Sport CR-V 42 miles a gallon and they have-.

Speaker 1:

And that's like a kind of like a SUV thing right.

Speaker 2:

I think they consider it like a compact SUV or whatever, but they have the 2022, 2023 Hybrid Accord. The thing looks sick and it's the same thing, and it's a smaller, lighter car, so you're probably doing better than 42 miles per gallon.

Speaker 1:

And they only cut it's only like 27.7. Yeah, it's not terrible for a car.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'll have to peek into those, see, because like half of me wants to like get a car right and then the other half of me is like Struggle Well no, go to-.

Speaker 1:

Well, struggle and save, but also like move to, like go to somewhere like a Chicago or a Jersey where Apex, like if I just networked in that city we could like really expand efforts and then just not have a car for a year. You know like live in a city and not have a vehicle, no pain, no car insurance, no gas bill, nothing but what I don't know. We'll see, We'll see what happens. I know for sure I'm gonna have this car, I'm gonna have the truck over winter.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because I think what I'm planning on is Not just the tires.

Speaker 1:

Looking at, yeah, new tires and alignment. It's got fresh brakes. I mean like it's a solid truck for having 300,000 miles on it. It's a good truck. It just yeah, no bueno on gas. But I knew that I'm like I'm not gonna buy a brand new car right before an Ohio winter Like I'll ride this I'm just asking to get it all salty.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'll ride this truck out through winter and then take a peak, take a ganda. What are the new year's deals? So if anybody's listening and they're like have been looking into cars with decent gas mileage that have like front wheel, all wheel drive that could fit somebody that's like 6'2, 240, then hit a brother up, shoot me a DM, I wanna know what people are looking at as far as the vehicle goes.

Speaker 2:

The train thing when I was down in Atlanta. Chris and both of his apprentices all have like either fully electric or partially electric cars. I think Chris is a Prius and it was super nice too and got sick gas mileage. It was like all what. It looked real sleek. And I want to say Josh is one apprentice got like a new, like electric, like Subaru, and it was pretty sick too.

Speaker 1:

Dude speaking of Subaru is. So I took this. I took this girl out on a date on.

Speaker 2:

Saturday went on a date. You never know how dare you what? Yeah, you never told me.

Speaker 1:

I'll tell you now I wasn't. I saw you on.

Speaker 2:

Friday.

Speaker 1:

I didn't know, that's right, I forgot what you guys got Portage Lakes hiking loop, like nap park or something like that. And then we went to Kasai up in green, because she lives in Kent, but she's the, she's like an athletic trainer for Kent. And so we I was like, well, let's just be halfway when we imported to lakes and then we'll go to a restaurant in green. And so I pull up right, and I was five, 10 minutes late per usual. And I was like, well, you know what are you park? I'll go park next to you. And she was like, oh, super.

Speaker 1:

I was like, okay, so I pull in and I'm expecting like you know, I don't know, I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't a Subaru BRZ with a racing exhaust and a fin Like I had a picture of that car on my wall as a child, that sports car. And I pull it and she's repping like a 2022 Subaru BRZ and then we proceed to go on this walk and she was like, yeah, this is just all paid off at this point. It's got almost 100,000 miles on it. It's just my beater. Now I was like this is your beater, a six speed manual Subaru BRZ.

Speaker 2:

What is well, I will say, and I want to bring this up Subaru's gotten some. Some, especially girls who drive Super Bruz, have gotten a bad rap recently because of that meme. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 1:

I have no idea, but I have a feeling that I can get it's the one stand up comedian.

Speaker 2:

Hold on it's. She's one stand up comedian. It's from some show, but I see it all the time on Tik Tok. Because we're not Tik Tok Instagram, because I follow like car stuff.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And they clip the thing in and it's a scene from the show and she, just like she, goes God. What did she say? She goes hold on.

Speaker 2:

She says I'm trying to find it because I want to say it right, but she just like I. She goes, driving a Subaru doesn't make me a lesbian. I drive a Subaru Subaru because I'm a lesbian. So so the Subaru community is just getting. There's so many videos of that clipped, of her just saying that she's. She's just like I thought. I thought I thought Subaru was just a nickname. She goes, I drive a Subaru because I'm gay.

Speaker 1:

I want to know who this comedian is.

Speaker 2:

I found the clip, but I don't know what show it's from here. I'll post it. Oh, it's from a show. Yeah, it's a. Where do I do chat?

Speaker 1:

here. Yeah, it should be in the bottom right hand corner.

Speaker 2:

I see, I see here. Okay, I see it. Wait, where is it?

Speaker 1:

Oh, everyone, I don't know why it's just giving me a loading bar.

Speaker 2:

You want to know the funniest part, this is a. Tiktok account from Ramsey Mazda Subaru. This is a dealership post of this.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, dude. I feel like at this point, brands that are like struggling to try to keep up with social media trends are literally just shit posting. Well, okay.

Speaker 2:

So first off I said this Like a sling gym account. Yes, but I said this months ago. Do you remember the jerseys dance floor debacle? Yes, I told Chris he should immediately have offered a dollar dog night because I would have been fucking hilarious it would have been. It would have generated so much. I was like at that point it's already all over Facebook.

Speaker 1:

It's all memes.

Speaker 2:

It was like I think M bar was what trending on Twitter or something like that it was trending on Twitter.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God.

Speaker 2:

If they had been like every Friday is dollar dog night, oh my God, that would have dude, it would have been a hit, they would have shut down the bar, it would have been a hit and there have been so many people there, I know, I know.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes that's just like you got to leave, like crazy shit. Like that happens. You just got to lean into it and try to make that's what comedians do really well? They take long shit and turn it down Dog night.

Speaker 2:

It would have been genius. I think I could have just generated them so much money because they would have gotten respect from the community. They would have been like that. They were like owning it yeah.

Speaker 1:

Owning it. And what happened? God damn, I'm weak.

Speaker 2:

I totally forgot that. That happened too. Well, we'll have a couple links, I guess, in this episode for anybody who's looking at the meme we're just talking about. I also wanted to send you this. Speaking of podcasts, I did the Nimbus podcast when I was down there, so if you like the business stuff that we talk about on here, you'll really like the episode that I did with them down there. So they have like a very, very like kind of cutting edge or on the front of the industry way that they choose to run their shop with their artists in comparison to how shops used to be in the past, and it's actually like really interesting how different their approaches to running a shop with like hype. I think they said like combined, all of their artists have like 2.5 million followers or something like that. Wow.

Speaker 1:

And a lot of reach.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and just kind of like a little tidbit of what we talk about is, with Instagram and the way the tattoo industry is moving, there's really not a need for shops like the way they used to do them, in a sense like ooh, you would go to a prominent shop because they always had good artists. You know what I mean. Now a lot of that power is back in the artist's hands, with them being able to self promote through Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and all that that they like. In all honesty, I think they even say in there that they aren't like a good artist with good followings and whatnot. Don't need the shops themselves, and I guess over the next few years you're going to see a lot of people just do like private studios.

Speaker 1:

Hmm, hmm.

Speaker 2:

Which I thought was pretty interesting.

Speaker 1:

I really enjoyed the episode. I mean, I think that you guys oh did you watch all of it, yeah, yeah, I was listening to it. Well, I guess I did watch it. Yeah, listen to it, and stuff like that, bob and I. This is what did you say, bob, and you sat and watched it.

Speaker 2:

The night I got home we watched all hour and a half of it together. I hate watching.

Speaker 1:

I hate hearing myself your intro. It's like I'm not used to having so many cameras on me. Which one do I look at, like from right off the rip? It was cool, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

I had to preface that I wasn't an artist. I said I do not do this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm just going to get that out of the way. Right now, I am not one of them, I just got adopted.

Speaker 2:

I was brought into the fold after the fact, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, cool. I don't think there's any events to promote this week, so first Friday was last week. October went pretty well.

Speaker 2:

There was doggoes all over the city.

Speaker 1:

Today is Columbus Day. Today is Columbus Day, national Indigenous Peoples Day Whatever you wave at this point but it's a federal holiday, so federal organizations are off-organt and our banks kind of shut down. But we're still in here. We're still out here doing work According to this podcast For you To make sure that you have your weekly entertainment from us. So if you haven't shared this episode with a friend or you haven't shared this podcast with anybody yet, you should do it. Do it now.

Speaker 1:

Do it now, share it with people so we can get that subscriber kind of. We have been trending upwards. Each episode has been getting more and more listeners again, since we've been putting out more consistently. So and then, like RJ said, if you want to check out his interview, check out the link inside of the show notes and we will Jump out of this podcast With the sweet sounds Of RJ's clock.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can't believe that thing still works. God damn Every time I hear that.

Speaker 1:

Every time I hear it go off, I go to the helemaal's please.

Speaker 2:

That'sbirth of Kukuclock, but we'll Nothing, nothing strange going on next week, so Expect another podcast monday of next week everybody later.