Black Wave Tattoo

Shopped hard for tat… Bad reviews… No website… it just expired ???
This is a well known tat business that is art and graphic design oriented and there is no website and almost no Internet presence at all… no thank you

I went here years ago with a friend. We both got work done from some dude «Yetti». $ 2500 later we were left with tattoo nightmares, and 2 owed sessions. Yetti left the shop and never finished our horrible tattoos. Guess thats a good thing. Don’t ever go here!

wow, what a waste of time. For two weeks I played around with these guys trying to schedule a «consultation.»
I finally got it. Saturday at 3 I was supposed to meet with Seymour to discuss my tattoo and then get to work on the design and tattoo.
well, at 1:30 they called to cancel. so there went my Saturday down the tubes (i was already traveling to the shop).
we rescheduled for Monday at 1:00. I took off a half day from work and was there at 12:50, excited to get going on the tat. The receptionist told me that he was going to only be able to see me for a little while as he had something else going on in the evening.
At this point I was getting frustrated with my treatment, particularly b/​c the tattoo was to be of considerable size (and expense).
so at 1:30 he still wasn’t there. I threw in the towel and explained to his manager/​receptionist that i was feeling some bad vibes after basically being blown off twice in 3 days.
this isn’t the sort of relationship I want with my tat artist. my time is valuable too. most other shops i’ve seen say that if you’re more than 15 minutes late you forfeit the session. so what if the artist blows you off to work on his car and then is a no show at the second appointment?
really quite a let down, and extremely unprofessional.

Seymour did mine a while back. Professional, clean and full of great stories from Hawaii. He takes his time, talking and chatting in his zone, always carefully concentrated. The result is surety that whatever you get is done with skill and passion for the craft.

I recently had a piece done here by Seymour Kaniho that I absolutely love and is what I have had in mind for the longest time.
I knew my next tattoo would be a polynesian tattoo and that there were particular features represented: family, strength, significant persons that have passed … a hula sister of mine had her’s done here and also the husband of another hula sister. I viewed their website and was impressed by the bio of the current owner Su’a Suluape Freewind.
When I was there, Seymour discussed with me what I wanted in the tattoo and started drawing a design freehand on my lower back. Although I didn’t have a specific sketch, his drawing nailed what I had wanted to accomplish and to finish the overall look of my tattoos (it blends with two that I already had).
I’m already contemplating my next one and I know I will be coming back.

Five years ago I wanted a pair of arm bands on each of my forearms. These were simple bands, but complicated in that I wanted them straight and symmetrical. A number of friends had recommended I check out Black Wave tattoo since they specialized in tribal tattoo work. I went with a skeptical eye, since tribal to me is overblown on every frat boy and dumb jock’s upper arm. In fact, you know something is past its prime when Microsoft uses it on their box cover.
Black Wave Tattoo is owned and operated by Su’a Suluape Freewind. His bio can be found on Black Wave’s web site, so I won’t go into those details. At the time, the shop had three artists working full time. Pai Tama had apprenticed under Suluape and was in charge of the walk-​ins like myself and we scheduled an appointment. What he thought would take two hours turned into eight hours for each arm. As the low man in the shop he also had to answer the phone and talk to walk-​ins, so that added to the time. But he also had to smoke a bowl every half hour, and the pieces I wanted were way more challenging than he expected. Six hours to draw, two hours to ink — each arm. 16 hours over two days. The cost was reasonable, given that he underestimated completely. My total cost was $ 300, and I love the work.
While I was at the shop — for hours — I got to watch Suluape work. The piece he was doing at the time was a landscape of Yosemite on a man’s back. Suluape had taped a 4×6 color photo to the guy’s shoulder and was freehanding the entire thing, just painting the image on the guy’s back. It was clear that Suluape was beyond just a talented tattoo artist, he was an amazing artist period. We got to talking about the work in his book, especially the tatao — the traditional form of tattoo done with two sticks and sharpened combs, bone, and stone instead of needles. Suluape had devoted himself to the study and art of tatao, learning Maori, Samoan, and Indonesian techniques. It put the seed in my head that I would like a body stripe one day, a plum line of design running from ankle to armpit. The body stripe is beautiful (when done properly), and it directly appealed to my personal theme of imposing straight lines on forms that resist structure. My photo collage work is joined by the straight lines of the subject while fighting the innate curvature of the camera lens. And personally, I rely heavily upon reason and linear thinking to solve hard emotional problems. I decided that I wanted a body stripe, that Su’a Freewind was the only one who could do it properly, and I would wait several years to make sure I was confident in my decision.
In March of 2006 I approached Su’a Freewind to do my tattoo. What followed was approximately 9 months of phone calls gently reminding the shop I was still interested. Su’a is both in high demand and also lives life on island time. Due to injury, demand and, his, well, being an artist, I got my consultation in January of 2007. In May I got the call to come in for my first session.
Suluape did the lower part of my leg with a machine in order to lay down the basic geometry of the stripe. Subsequent work was done in tatao, the traditional method of tattoo. Instead of scratching the skin into a pulp, which agitates the skin in order to absorb the ink pigment, tatao is a razor sharp comb, needle, or spike at the end of a stick which is guided and struck by the artist using a petrified rod. The teeth of the comb puncture and impregnate the skin with ink. There are a wide variety of these combs, all made by hand, that Suluape can use depending on the kind of line and pattern he wants to achieve. The result, for me anyway, was a much more pleasant feeling. Like being pricked over and over by a rose bush. I will take tatao over machine work any day.
The line quality is very different from the machine to the tatao. Not only is it thicker, but some of the hairpin-​turn detail is lost. On a mechanical level, the invention of the tattoo gun replaced the need for stretchers — one hand inks while the other hand stretches. But the removal of people from the process also removed the social aspect of the ritual. If getting inked requires several people to lay hands on the person for hours, there is the creation of a community, however brief, focused on a single task. You just can’t be as impulsive with tatao. Tattoo shops are always full of people hanging out and spitballing. In a sense, the social aspect of a modern tattoo parlor remains an echo of the community that builds around a tatao where everyone is involved in the creation of the art.
We’re still not done, and that is perhaps my only issue with Black Wave. The shop is run on Island Time. You must be completely flexible with your time and availability. The end result will be a work of art created by a master of his craft — on you for life.
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