My Dear Friends of Inked You know what we’re floating on a blue ball of dirt no one really knows what’s really going on i’m gonna do what i want within this existence because i am conscious right now my mental awareness and who i am and what i’m doing to make me feel good and what i want to do to feel comfortable.
Because at the end of it i go home and i’m looking in the mirror i’m looking at the words never give up not you you know so it’s it’s i think it’s a combo of everything it’s you know i am the human race so my name is rich grossman or richard.
Grossman i was born in bucks county pennsylvania i’ve always known about good and evil just from when i was a kid and i always chose the latter where i wanted to do bad things and see what would come out of it that would be good i saw a guy at a local shop in trevos and he.
Had misery written across his neck and tattoo when i saw that like i knew that that was where i was gonna go at some point in life now i’m jewish so this is not a thing later on in life i saw gene at another tattoo shop this guy’s name is gene i i saw him at a tattoo shop and i told him.
I said you’re the guy and this is why and that’s how i learned his name and how i learned about him and from that point on it just started with you know yard sale tattoos on my back just horrible decisions and then i started to get into black work and tribal and it’s always been that i’ve.
Always wanted to be camouflaged and um i just knew that that it made a statement that i i was feeling i felt it i felt it was your first century i was 20 i had gotten i got clean in 97 i want to say for the first time for about i had a seven year period where i got clean and then.
I relapsed after seven years but when i was 20 things change when you get clean and um there was a guy named alan who i believe is dead now and he was my neighbor and he got a tattoo and uh and i it was just i was living on my own so it was that door where i just wanted to.
He offered i i took him up on the offer and i went and got my first tattoo so yeah so when i got clean everything sex um perspective accountability which i think those two things are the most important all flipped for me in in a matter of three months you know and and as soon as.
He said it it was just like yeah take the take the opportunity to do it i got um on my back it’s the sun and the moon with family strength heaven and change in kanjis we’ll say that’s what they say because we don’t know what they really say and then sc for straight edge at the top.
And then three x’s at the bottom so it’s supposed to be this i guess symbol of my cycle and my change a lot of things happened to get that too there were dreams that i had when i got clean and these all played into it or placated into to me wanting to get this tattoo how did you go about building tattoos.
From that point i didn’t i just was taking a bag of wet throwing it out of drywall i started thinking about just like anything i could get on my body because i’ve been i had been conditioned to believe that.
Ink is bad and that you know if i could write a book it would be called jews don’t do that at that point in the timeline it was do this don’t do that do as i say don’t do this to you’re on your own now you know from getting high from doing drugs from doing what i already wanted.
To do and fighting and just not being present in that fight because i was getting high to now i’m on my own i’m making these adult decisions and i’m getting i’m doing what i’m supposed to do in life uh that i could do what i wanted and now the ball has started rolling and it’s just put just get it on my body just get it.
On my body so i can get it out of my system i believe that there are three states of consciousness there is the here and now there is the the subconscious and then there is the spiritual conscious and for me when i get tattooed because i am tattooed in some pretty painful spots um.
That pain in general it brings those three together for me that relaxation is those three states of conscious being coming together and then i can just i can just relax and breathe so i guess it became more of an evolution or a spiritual journey at that point was there a tattoo that just.
Changed everything before i did all the black work you know we all have that i’ll never go in my arms i’ll never do my hands and it just started creeping out to where i couldn’t hide it and i could always hide my tattoos and then um i had never give up because of the dalai.
Lama and the poem and that was like the most that you could possibly see other than my arms and my hands because i had tribal here i made the jump to the back of my ear and i had a girl that was living in kensington that said you go to the other side of the kensington tracks with that right there.
And and that was it once i went on the back of my head um behind my ear me and my artist at the time we joked around and we were like that’s that’s not the neck it’s the neck and the ears the nerk you know and and so the nerc became a thing but as soon as i did that i started to jump into my neck and i started to do.
Bio-organics and then i went up to my head and then at that point that was you know i’ll never do my face and then i started i do a lot of graffiti or i used to and i started putting my logos all over the place and that’s i mean once you do that that’s it that’s a wrap i’m guessing that just completely.
Changed like everything um you’d be real surprised i think in the time of gene in the 80s getting misery across your neck and big bold black letters yes i think now my tattoo artist said people are seeing.
Two faces uh before i got the the chin or you know the mass work that’s on my face and he said i’m going to make it so that people are seeing one face and i think that once he did that it changed the dynamic if you get tattoos on your face.
And you act like an you’re just an if you act as if there’s something behind it or you have something that that you have to share or say or that you want to put out into the open air people are going to want to know about it you only get three.
Reactions you get or you get you know and they’re looking around and they can’t look at you or or you get the people that come up to you and they’ll ask you they’ll say are you maori what is behind the tattoos tell me about talk to me like it’s fascinating and they’ll just they want to take it all in.
So hood is my my my blackout artist and when i met a hood i had i had tried to do everything i could with the tribal filling it in doing weird things to it and um and i loved my tattoos it laid out fine on my arms and it wasn’t just things off of the wall it was.
You know artists coming up and we’re drawing it out and some of it didn’t travel correctly but it was who i was and uh and so we hit it off and and he did my face he did my chin he said we should just black your arms out this is a this is.
This is something that when you hear it and being who i am i’m listening to it going this is sacrifice this is ultimate sacrifice i’ve been wearing this shield for x amount of years and now a man is presenting it to me to give these things up that have made me who i am and then it was you’re gonna get.
This kind of black work done we’re just gonna you’re a warrior we’re just gonna do this and as he would go i would we would just bicker no i want there to be a line screw that line blacking it out and then this is three or four years ago and it was well i want to do white work which will never work it will never work i don’t.
Care what you say so he said we’ll do lines you can see the two different colors here we xed out the white he gave me some lines here and then i just gave him he said you keep saying you have to give me control you have to give me control just let me do what i’m gonna do you’re gonna.
Appreciate this is the whole two-faced thing and people seeing and what they’re perceiving me as as like a gang member or as a warrior and i still fight but when i let go that’s when.
When things went correctly blackout is more addictive than any other tattoo on the planet a reverie is an inclination that desolate heart fabricates when all else is lost so a wish is a dream the heart makes when you’ve lost everything there’s no wishes it it.
It literally was me looking in the mirror because we all have bathroom demons that we speak to or bathroom spirits that we let me talk to and and so i looked in the mirror and it was stay or go it was yes or no it was evolve or st remain and.
By hood doing that he he probably knows it um he brought back something in me at a time in my life where things were so chaotic that feeling of when i got clean it’s a.
Transition so it became me sitting in my truck pissing in a gallon of empty water and it was freezing cold out that february i was 300 yards from my family’s house that 100 basically i’m dead to uh alienating everything and.
And i’m crying and i’m on my last quarter tank of gas and i just heard a voice very quietly say have you had enough and without even thinking i said yes and that’s when that was the the exact moment in time that i stopped getting high and doing drugs and when i looked in the mirror and i said.
What are we doing it became stair go and that’s what i felt was that feeling of just let it go let it go like you’re holding on to these things and um and so i let go and that’s why we ripped all over my face and my body.
And yeah like made all the difference all the difference so there’s no there’s no wishes there’s no dreams and there’s no regards this is this is a forward existence that’s it this is a forward motion we are not going back we are moving forward and you know my father would say things.
Like uh uh period the end next sentence and you know moving forward so you
After getting sober, Richie Bones’ entire perspective on life changed. And as his life changed, his body did as well thanks to the many tattoos he added. There are layers upon layers to Richie’s collection, including a great deal of heavy blackwork. In this video Richie shares his journey through life and through being heavily inked.
Welcome to Heavily Inked. In our newest series, we’re going to speak one-on-one with tattoo collectors and artists about what it means to be a heavily inked person. We’ll get deep as we go through the motivations behind their tattoo choices, the way they’ve been treated in society and much more.
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Richie Bones: https://www.instagram.com/keystonecrossbones/
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