GET INKED

Mario Barth is not your average tattoo artist. The mastermind talent behind Starlight Tattoo, who recently opened up a parlor inside the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, is also a fi lmmaker, inventor (he created and manufactures Singlez, the fi rst-ever sterile, single dose tattoo inks) and philanthropist. While you might have to wait up to two years to have your chance to get tatted up by Barth, for now you can check out the Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center Oct. 2-4. The show is Barth’s nine-year-old venture that brings major tattoo artists from all over the world together in one place to learn, teach and grow within the tattooing industry. But, whatever you do, don’t call the Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth a convention because this “lifestyle conference,” as Barth bills it, is much more. What’s On: You own tattoo studios all over the world and you’re known as an innovator in the industry, how did you fi rst get started tattooing? Mario Barth: I started tattooing very young; I did my fi rst tattoo when I was 12. I got into the business in about 1987—I was maybe 17 years old—and I opened my fi rst tattoo studio in 1989 in Austria. WO: You were 12? Did someone teach you or did you just sort of pick it up? B: What basically happened is that I was in a socalled street gang in Austria, but gangs are a little bit different there—we were just hanging out on the corner having ice cream, you know? So one of our guys said that he would like to have a tattoo—he was a little older, about three years older than us. My father had a tattoo on his forearm and he told me once how he did it, in the military. Everybody else was afraid to [tattoo him], but I was like, “I know how to do it, let me do it.” I did it and got stuck on it. …[Then], when I was 17, I got into the motorcycle scene, started tattooing and took it from there and got really interested in it, started to travel all around the world and I’m still doing that, today. WO: Despite all of your travel, do you have a home base shop where you do most of your work? B: Most of the time I tattoo out of New Jersey fulltime and then I work out of Las Vegas, too. It seems like Vegas is going to become my second home or maybe my new home, soon. WO: Starlight Tattoo is the fi rst studio to open inside of a music venue (House of Blues). What prompted you to offer hand-tool Japanese and Samoan tattooing as well as Western-style tattooing? B: Well, I travel a lot and I’m always trying to [discover] the roots of tattooing. There’s a huge history behind this art form and the real challenge is that this history is not documented in any formal way. So what I try to do is go out and learn as much about traditional tattooing and where it came from. Two huge players in this industry are Japan and Samoa. They have a rich history in the culture of tattooing. So I said, “Why don’t we bring these techniques to America so that people can really experience the other side of tattooing?” In America, machine tattooing is big, always has been big since the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but there was never a breakthrough on the other styles of tattooing, which American tattooing is infl uenced by. Why not bring it to America and show it off, and what better place to do it than in Las Vegas? WO: What gave you the idea to host the Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth? B: I was traveling for 15 years on the tattoo show circuit. …Over the years, I learned about what I would like to see, and how I would like to be treated as a tattoo artist. I wanted to put on a show that was geared towards the artist and really catered to education. The tattoo industry is a very guarded industry. At that time, 10 to 15 years ago, no tattoo artist really wanted to give any trade secrets out to anybody. So what I wanted to say was, “Look, I don’t need your trade secrets, but I think we should teach the common necessities in tattooing to every artist. Things like health, protection and what the basic set-up and training is.” ...When I started to put that out there, it started to catch on with people and the show became very successful. People were talking to each other on the show fl oor, exchanging information, doing seminars and you didn’t even have to go into a classroom, people were already starting to discuss trade secrets at that time, freely. So I said, “Now it’s time to take this to the next level.” We wanted to legitimize it and bring it to Las Vegas—it’s the best place to have it. Now we don’t call it a convention, we call it a lifestyle conference. The Biggest Tattoo Show On Earth is the biggest tattoo lifestyle conference out there. … What’s really fantastic to see is that the industry is fi nally getting its own life. We’re saying, “Hey, this is our industry. This is our trade. This is what we’re doing. We infl uence so many industries and now we really want to do it right and learn as much as we can.” The Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth | Oct. 2-4 | $45 daily pass; $100 weekend pass | Mandalay Bay Convention Center | 201-342-4446 ext. 210