Interview with Ed Hardy
Don Ed Hardy was a working tattoo artist for over forty years. Long before his flash became an international brand, Hardy was an established artist with a respected reputation. He came to San Francisco in the early 1960s—and he came because of the Beat Generation! As a broke student he attended classes at the San Francisco Art Institute by day, and spent his evenings reading in the basement of City Lights Books by night. He actually turned down a scholarship to Yale, and he studied tattooing under Sailor Jerry Collins and Japanese tattoo master Horihide.
We first met Ed Hardy in 2009, when he attended an event we held, celebrating what would’ve been William S. Burroughs’ 95th birthday. Though Hardy’s name and work are legendary, and his tattoo shop, Tattoo City, is only a few blocks away in North Beach, we had no idea who he was when we first met him. He just seemed like guy who enjoyed talking about the Beats. In this interview, Ed discusses what Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs meant to him, and how their aesthetics and philosophies influenced his own artistic endeavors.