A big thing that I have really been trying to incorporate with this blog is actually starting conversations with people about the stickers I find. I find it to be an important function of the blog and really interesting to hear others have to say. As you know I've been doing my best to reach out more to some of the local finds, to let the creative individuals behind them share their stories. Luckily for me a lot of the people I've reached out to have been into it, giving me a brief blurb to share with you. Since tonight's stickers is clearly a local piercing shop, I thought I would reach out to see if they would be interested in speaking with me. I actually had a couple of friends get a piercing here our Freshman year during their early rebellious phase. I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was when Tim Girone, the owner of Hot Rod, responded to my email and asked for my contact information so that we could talk. Because we ended up having more of a phone interview, tonight's post is going to be a little different. I thought it would be far more interesting to present this more like a magazine interview than taking a small blurb out and giving my interpretation of the sticker. I did have to dust off my Journalism skills though, so I apologize if things seem a bit off.
How long have you been in piercing? We've been in business since 1993 and we're still trucking along. What drew you to piercing originally? I've always been interested in body art in general. There might have been a National Geographic article that caught my attention as a kid. The problem was that in the late 80s and early 90s there really wasn't a lot of activity or places to go for body piercing or tattoos. I was interested in getting a piercing during this time and ended up having a rather terrible experience. Like I said there really weren't a lot of options of places to go to for piercings or even to learn. I decided that there had to be a better way and went about to figure something out. Are you originally from the Pittsburgh area? No, I'm not from Pittsburgh. I moved here back in 1991. I'm originally from Philadelphia. Have you always been interested in art? Somewhat, I've always been fairly artistic. I've always loved stickers though. I used to collect them as a kid and still have a shoe box full of them. I used to really be into skateboarding and the other big sticker sports, which meant I was around stickers a lot. Music is also a big industry that uses stickers and I would get them at the concerts that I would go to. My wife is an artist as well, so I'm pretty surrounded by art. You mentioned in your email that you've created a lot of stickers over the years. What are some of the elements that influence your designs? I always leave it up to the artist to choose the designs for themselves. I try to use local artists who are familiar with the shop and know what our style is. I put it into their hands for the most part. Occasionally I may give them some direction but generally the goal is to just go with the feeling of things. Are you familiar with Mad Mex? Yeah I've been there many times. Well Rich Bach was the artist behind all of the metal sculptures that decorate the restaurants. He is actually a friend and did a lot of our original designs. The local artists find their own way to best represent our shop. I never really create paper stickers though. They never seem to last and quickly fall apart on the street or if you try to move them. Longevity is a big aspect to the stickers that I create. We use durable bases like vinyl to make sure that they last. I actually have a guy, who I really only know as Sticker Ken, who will hand screen our stickers for us. He worked for a big sticker place that would make the stickers that the city uses. This generates a lot of waste and he would take the leftover materials to screen our stickers on. So no two stickers are ever the same, some are on reflective surfaces while others are vinyl bases. And since all of our stickers are hand screen, there can be a lot of bleeding of colors from the different screenings he does. I find this makes the stickers to be rather artistic themselves. That is really cool. Yeah, he's been making our stickers for 10 years now. We will give these stickers out to our customers and I do tend to see them everywhere. I will stick them up in places myself sometimes. I usually will add our sticker in places where there are a lot of others. I will usually put them in groups where there are other piercing and tattoo parlors. We've actually had sticker wars in the past, where we would just go around placing our sticker over the others. I was down in Orlando on a business trip and ended up placing one of ours down there. Not that anyone would know who we were. That's actually one thing I really love about this project, seeing not only the local artists but also what has managed to make it's way here. I actually found one that originally started in Toronto Canada and managed to make it's way to Pittsburgh. Yeah, I was hiking the other day near my home when I came across a pile of junk deep in the woods. And on this can there was an Obey sticker. The can was pretty beat up but the Obey sticker was looking pretty good. It was rather cold out though so I didn't end up taking my phone out to take a picture of it. So I know you said that you like to let the artist decide on the design but do you know what the influence was for the Three-eyed Jesus? I told them that I wanted to do a holier place concept. When people ask me what I do I will respond that I am a Holy man, since I make holes in people. I usually get a chuckle out of it. So I gave them that as the overall concept. In the past we've gone with a lot of hot rod cars using the idea that you are customizing your body. It was actually a coworker's roommate that came up with the holier place design. He kept pitching me these ideas of having a pierced Jesus. I told him that I was cool with whatever as long as he could make it round. There's just something I like about round stickers. When he gave us the final design I don't think we made any changes to it. We're still using it today and we want to make it into a shirt, possibly letting the design kind of grow. It definitely makes you do a double take. Especially with the classic keystone designs on the side, giving it that official feeling. It certainly caused me to do a double take when I found it at the Waterfront. Oh you found it at the Waterfront? I may be responsible for that one since I live near there. I always keep a small stash of our stickers though. Especially since they are always so unique, I like to save the really interesting ones. We are in a bit of a sad moment though. The sticker shop that Ken worked in recently shut it's doors, so he is no longer making stickers. I had thought about collecting the equipment that he would need to keep making them for us. Although I could just make them myself at that point. But I'm kind of in a sticker limbo and not sure how to proceed. I could try to go with one of the online stores but they would remain the same since they specialize in doing stickers in bulk. That's unfortunate to hear. You said that you've seen a lot of your stickers and that you've placed a lot as well. I guess my final question would be what is the weirdest place you've found one of your stickers? Hmm... the weirdest place I've seen one. I have to admit I'm a bit stumped by this. I've seen a lot in rather random places and out of reach. As for far away places, I did see one on a car on the turnpike. But that's not very weird. I guess if I had to choose an interesting one I did find one on a lift pole at Seven Springs. You know the ski lift that you ride up, someone actually made the effort to lean out into a danger zone so that they could place it there. I want to send a quick thank you to Tim for taking the time out to speak with me about his stickers. I really enjoyed it and I hope I've managed to capture our conversation to a pretty good extent. Sorry that this ended up being so long but I think that it's worth it. Until next time.
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Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
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