Third-generation tattoo artist, Marvin Moskowitz in conversation with novelist June Gervais, author of Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair.
Tattooing has played a sacred role in some indigenous cultures for centuries--like the Māori tattooing that inspired Queequeg's body art in Moby Dick--but in American popular culture, it was long seen as the purview of sailors, unsavory characters, and "scab merchants." After a sea change in the late 20th century, however, tattoos are now a celebrated art form, visible in almost every corner of our society. Marvin Moskowitz, a third-generation tattoo artist, has witnessed this transformation firsthand. In 1928, his grandfather Willy Moskowitz, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, opened a barbershop on the Bowery, later adding tattooing to his roster of services. Willy passed down the trade to his sons Walter and Stanley (who opened the first tattoo shop on Long Island) and then to Marvin, Walter's son, who is now the keeper of nearly a century of tattoo lore and colorful family stories.
Marvin will be interviewed by June Gervais, author of the new novel Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair (Viking Penguin/Pamela Dorman Books). Jobs for Girls is set in a Long Island tattoo shop and has been called, among other things, "immersive and wholly alive" (Kirkus Reviews), "thoughtful and tender" (Booklist), and "a colorful coming-of-age story brimming with gorgeous prose and vibrant misfits" (bestselling author Margarita Montimore).
Third-generation tattoo artist Marvin Moskowitz describes himself as "the last man standing" in the century-old lineage of his storied tattoo family, which began with Russian Jewish immigrant Willy Moskowitz learning to tattoo while working as a barber on the Bowery. Marvin's father and uncle Walter and Stanley Moskowitz carried on the Bowery tradition, and when New York City outlawed tattooing in the early 1960s, they opened S&W Tattoo in Amityville, the first tattoo shop on Long Island. Marvin has continued the family trade for nearly half a century as tattooing underwent a sea change from unregulated, outsider culture to mainstream art form. Now the keeper of decades of lore and oral history, his colorful stories bring the listener into an underground world of tattooing that has largely disappeared.
