Red Bird Tattoo

You can get a barbershop haircut and an old school traditional tattoo here! Perhaps even at the same time. A haircut starts at $ 10 for guys and a tattoo seems to start at $ 40.
I passed this place on a bike because I saw their sign, hooray for still going to things because a sign says to. After I parked my bike, I tried opening the door (it was 1:30 p.m.) and their door was locked. The two people inside were silently sitting on opposite ends of the rooms doing separate things. A tattoo artist in his late 20s covered in tattoos who was drawing sketches ran to the front of the door and opened it. I must’ve been the first customer of the day. The guy assured me the place was open and the owner, an older hispanic woman covered in tattoos, sat up after sitting on a plush couch reading a magazine and asked what I wanted. I told her I was interested in a haircut.
I presumed they were new since the place is empty but the owner told me they weren’t. She proceeded to give me a thorough barber-​style haircut. Since it was a tattoo studio, we got into a conversation about tattoos, and then we waxed poetic about tattoo conventions we have been to. The conversation grew awkward after the direction proceeded to turn to talking about birthdays being spent at tattoo conventions. Somehow it was mentioned that the other tattoo artist was born on September 11^th. Once the ball began to roll in that direction, I heard them go through the runs about the lameness of all things they were doing related to September 11^th, including birthdays, as they were facing away from each other on opposite ends of the room. It was pretty grim. I listened to how much having a birthday or event on September 11^th sucked for three minutes. Thus, the conversation died after I didn’t know how to artfully acknowledge the lameness of September 11^th or segue as far from the topic as I possibly could.
Anyway, she was very careful and looked at my head from every angle. Very reasonable, and the atmosphere of getting a haircut at a cool place like a tattoo shop, compensated for its emptiness and peculiar conversation topic between the two people who work here.