The Waikiki Tattoo Network
A coordinated network of independent Hawaiʻi tattoo shops and artists, documented at length. Long-form features, style guides, and the events calendar that pulls them all together.
Three rooms, one island
Each shop carries its own house style and crew. The network keeps them in conversation.
Ohana Tattoo Company
Veteran-owned street shop. Walk-ins until midnight. The Waikiki street-shop standard, with Forrest, Dustin, Tiki, Julian, and Scripttoria in residence.
Wailana Tattoo
Home to color realism, traditional, and Polynesian work — and to Franky Sharpz's hand-wound coil machines. The technical workshop of the network.
Aloha Tattoo
Tim Goodrich's house. The first tattoo shop ever approved on Hilton property — thirty-plus years of American Traditional, Japanese Wabori, and four-studio sleeve-building.
The artists, in their own perspective
Eight resident artists across the three shops. Each one gets a long-form feature.
Tim Goodrich
Second-generation tattooer. American Traditional, Japanese Wabori, Black & Grey, fine line. The man who put a tattoo shop on Hilton property.
Forrest Goodrich
Second-generation American Traditional & fine line specialist. Bold flash, clean linework, the classics done right.
Dustin Gormley
American Traditional rooted in fundamentals, bent through a trippy perspective all his own.
Tiki (Christian Ramos)
Blackwork specialist — bold negative space, graphic linework, dense saturation. Japanese B&G to dark-art portraits.
Julian (xwildxlovex)
Hawaiʻi's illustrative color specialist. Saturated palettes, watercolor washes, custom compositions.
Scripttoria
Refined script, fine-line black & grey, memorial tattoos. Eight years tattooing, NOLA street-shop roots.
2bit (Chris Curren)
Color Realism, American Traditional, piercing. Apprenticed under JD Gray at Sacred Art. Tattooing since 2010.
Franky Sharpz
Custom coil tattoo machine builder + American Traditional, Polynesian, and color-realism tattoo artist.
The vocabulary of Waikiki tattooing
Long reads explaining the styles you'll see across the network — what makes them work, who carries them, what to ask for.
American Traditional
Bold black outlines, flat planes of color, classic iconography. Why it still reads from across the room a hundred years later — and who in the network draws it best.
Japanese Wabori
Dragons, koi, hannya, chrysanthemums, wind bars, body-flow placement. The classical Japanese style as practiced today in Waikiki shops.
Black & Grey
From wash-soft realism to bold blackwork. The grayscale spectrum and the artists in the network pushing the upper end of it.
Color Realism
Photographic likeness, layered color over color, decade-stable saturation. The patience-intensive style 2bit and Franky build their reputations on.
Polynesian Tribal
Solid blacks, geometric pattern density, Hawaiian iconography drawn to body contour. Hawaiʻi's most local tattoo vocabulary.
Walk-In Flash
The pre-drawn flash wall, sit-down-now culture. What walk-in tattoo really means in Waikiki, why it's the right move for your first piece — or your fortieth.
The blog
Editorial features, shop visits, technical deep-dives, and culture writing — published as the network grows.
The Aloha Tattoo Story
How Tim Goodrich — Marine Corps veteran and second-generation tattooer — built Aloha Tattoo into the first tattoo shop ever approved on Hilton Hotel grounds in Hawaiʻi.
Hand-Wound Coils: Franky Sharpz's Machine Workshop
Inside the Wailana back room where Franky builds the iron tattoo artists actually want to tattoo with.
NOLA-Rooted Lettering in Waikiki
Scripttoria's eight-year journey from New Orleans street shops to Ohana Tattoo, told piece by piece.