How One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Whole Crew
Edd Word1 didn’t plan on becoming a tattoo artist. The owner of Bad Apple Tattoo in Las Vegas, Nevada did love to draw and by all accounts, was pretty damn good at it, but he was initially more interested in just hanging out at a tattoo shop than actually learning the trade.
“I was always nervous about tattooing,” he readily admits. “I mean, I didn’t want to fuck up someone’s skin. It’s permanent, you know?” Life, however, has a peculiar habit of being unpredictable.
Let’s bring it back to the beginning, circa 1998. Edd was just another SoCal kid stumbling his way into a semblance of adulthood.
“I just started hanging out a tattoo shops because I thought they were cool,” he offers with a shrug. “I was going to this old biker shop in Mission Beach, getting tattooed, getting pierced, whatever. And then one day, the owner’s wife had to step out. She was like, ‘You want to watch the front desk for me?’ and I was like, ‘Sure, I’m down.’ So I worked the front for a few hours and she came back and asked me if I wanted to start doing it more often. That’s how I got my foot in the door. I worked the front, I managed the shop, I even started piercing just to keep my foothold.”
Still, the actual tattoo portion of his career wouldn’t come into play for another six years, and when it did, it kind of happened by accident. Well, not accident exactly. Happenstance, maybe. Basically, it happened because Edd was running his mouth off.
“I was just talking shit to one of the guys cause he had just done a tattoo that wasn’t so great,” Edd recalls. “And he was like, ‘So you think you could do better? Let’s see it.’ So, I set up my station and tattooed myself. It was a purple, Sailor Jerry style rose. The color is actually still holding up.” The boss was impressed. Within a couple weeks, he was on the schedule, taking clients.
Don’t call him a scratcher, though. He had an apprenticeship. He just didn’t realize it was an apprenticeship at the time he was going through it.
“I was scrubbing brushes and making needles for the guys for years just as part of my job running the front. I just didn’t have to wear a fucking dress or wash people’s cars or any of that shit.”
It was only four years later that he found himself at the helm of Bad Apple Tattoo in Las Vegas. The shop was first opened by the original owner in 2002, but by 2008, he was ready for a break from Sin City and thus, sold the business to Edd.
“I only have two rules for my artists,” he says. “Do rad tattoos and treat your customers with respect. That’s it.” He pauses and takes a breath. “Actually, I have three rules. Number three: you have to be a better tattooer than me.”
If there’s any aspect of him that oozes through the entire conversation, it’s his humility. It’s clear that he actively shirks the typical ego that often comes with owning a shop. He doesn’t want to be top dog. Hell, he doesn’t even like telling people he owns the place.
“When people ask me what I do, I always just tell them I work at Bad Apple,” he says with a shrug. “And then someone always has to be like, ‘No, he OWNS it!’” You can hear his eyes roll as the words come out. The position doesn’t matter to him. What does matter is building his shop’s clientele and taking care of his artists, whom he swears by.
“We’ve got some killer artists here,” he says proudly. “Like, everyone that works here. They’re all at the top of their game—just amazing.”
For the 12 years, the hybrid custom/street shop has run under Ed’s guidance, they’ve consistently remained a formidable force in the Las Vegas tattoo scene. That’s saying a lot, considering the city has somewhere in the ballpark of 150 shops and he’s never advertised. In fact, they’ve done so well, that not even the pandemic could keep them down. After two months of being shut down completely, they’re back with barely a hiccup, books as full as they’ve ever been. For some reason, though, he doesn’t take the credit.
“I don’t consider myself a good businessman at all,” he says candidly. “Like, I could honestly make way more money on the shop if I just made better decisions. I just focus on spoiling my guys. They’re all at 70% at least and I still supply a lot of the stuff, which is unheard of . . . I’ve got a great crew. My guys really don’t leave. DJ’s been here 12 years, Willy’s been here 10 and I have another guy who’s been here eight. My guy’s stick around, probably because I treat them well . . . I’m a big believer in karma and I’ve always tried to be a good person. I think it just worked out for me.”
Maybe, though, that’s really all you need.
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1We can neither confirm, nor deny that “Edd Word” is truly his given name. We can only tell you that this is how he prefers to be identified and we respected his wishes.
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