While working as an art director for a publishing company, Tattooed Mom founder Robert Perry friends in the restaurant industry told him: “Quit your job and come join us.” Twenty-five years later, when you walk into the sticker-plastered first floor of Tattooed Mom on Philadelphia’s South Street, there’s no doubt that Perry’s decision to leave his job and run with it has paid off. Like all good bars, the inside of Tattooed Mom has the tart scent of hard liquor, mixed in with a distinct adhesive sort of smell from the many stickers on every available surface.
I first encountered Tattooed Mom while traveling in Philly for AWP, a national writing conference. Anyone who knows writers can attest to the fact that they subsist on coffee, chocolate, and alcohol, so it’s no wonder that Tattooed Mom became the unofficial after-hours spot for AWP. Particularly the shrewd, sleep-deprived authors and poets that flock to AWP in hopes of walking away with publishing contracts—no one needs a vodka soda and a dimly lit room like the disillusioned college grads who’ve gotten their fifth polite rejection from a literary agent In a week.
As a native New Yorker turned Pittsburgher, I saw myself as in enemy territory in Philadelphia, but Tattooed Mom was an immediately welcoming pit stop in a long night of debauchery with my colleagues T.K. Mills, sticker artist and poet Stained Napkins, and UP photographer Ana Candelaria. After taking in the surroundings as Napkins searched for available spots for his stickers, of which there were very few, the three of us headed upstairs to play pool (Ana successfully, the rest of us not so much).
The bar’s unique name comes from a founding member who was, in fact, a real tattooed mom. “She wasn’t actually a biological mom,” Perry clarified. “Just like a mom figure to traveling bands who would sleep on her floor and just people from all over the world. She has a very caring, maternal sort of feeling, like if your mom was tattooed and had a foul mouth but was a total sweetheart, too.” The bar retains that feeling of being a little bit rough-around-the-edges but simultaneously warm and fuzzy. That grit and earnestness has attracted creative people from all over Philadelphia.
The bar’s unique name comes from a founding member who was, in fact, a real tattooed mom. “She wasn’t actually a biological mom,” Perry clarified. “Just like a mom figure to traveling bands who would sleep on her floor and just people from all over the world. She has a very caring, maternal sort of feeling, like if your mom was tattooed and had a foul mouth but was a total sweetheart, too.”
“I’ve been able to get to know many, many different street artists and artists of all kinds who have come through and who have connected with the space in many different ways,” Perry said. “It’s been an honor to offer the space to the community to do what they need to do, whether it be a fundraiser or a pop-up or a show.” In recent months, the bar has hosted comedy shows, poetry readings, live painting sessions, and even a one-woman-show tribute to disappearing lesbian bars.
“People really consider this their playground,” Perry said. World-famous street artists The London Police stopped in on their way to Miami for Art Basel and covered as much of Tattooed Mom’s walls as they could cover. But you don’t need to be famous to have work in Tattooed Mom, and in fact, much of the art is simply by locals who wanted to spend some time in the indoor artistic playground that makes up the space.
Beyond being a playground for artists’ imaginations, Tattooed Mom also has a playroom with a pool table on their second floor, and plenty of space to slap some stickers. “We wanted the downstairs to be sort of for everyone,” Perry explained. “This street gets people from all over the world, so we wanted the downstairs to be inviting and not intimidating, but still very us.” The downstairs features the more permanent and curated art pieces, where Tattooed Mom provides a spotlight for works such as Los Angeles’s WRDSMTH and New York’s Steve “ESPO” Powers.
“The pandemic was a moment where the space was frozen in amber. I’d walk through and nothing changed for the longest, longest time. That was really strange and took some getting used to,” Perry remembered. “On the flip side, it allowed us a chance to take a breath and maybe highlight things that are already here and continue to share.”
The phenomenon of the restaurant or bar art space certainly isn’t a new one, but it feels more necessary than ever in a time when so many of us crave communal gathering. Street art in particular is a community-based art form that depends heavily on the passersby who interact with it, and rather than the sterility of a gallery, Tattooed Mom creates an interactive, playful space for people to engage with the art.
Like all small businesses, however, there was a period where nobody was interacting with the space at all. You may be able to guess when that was—say it with me now, March 2020. These days, it feels like we can almost roll our eyes on the mundanities of the pandemic, the idiotic bureaucracy of applying for unemployment payments and loans, the cloth masks that made our faces sweat and our glasses fog up. It all feels a little trite now.
But that’s not to discount the harshness of the difficulty business owners, particularly in the restaurant industry, faced. “The pandemic was a moment where the space was frozen in amber. I’d walk through and nothing changed for the longest, longest time. That was really strange and took some getting used to,” Perry remembered. “On the flip side, it allowed us a chance to take a breath and maybe highlight things that are already here and continue to share.” Like for so many of us, the pandemic was an opportunity for Tattooed Mom to reflect inwards about the kind of business it wanted to be, even with the disappointment of not being able to do Characters Welcome, its signature sticker show.
In a world that constantly expects polished, Instagram-ready perfection from artists, Tattooed Mom celebrates the earnest messiness of imperfection, and how it’s more fun to be messy together than to be perfect alone.
Tattooed Mom has helped spread sticker art and wheatpasting to the wider public in Philadelphia, even to the point where they were responsible for a sticker art show in the Philadelphia airport. “I mean, I’ve never seen a sticker show at an airport anywhere!” Perry exclaimed. In terms of what’s next for Tattooed Mom, it hosts its new Thirsty Walls nights, which invites artists to come in and put up whatever they want, and hopes to continue to build its presence in the local art scene and beyond.
“What you see is the creation of—not hundreds—thousands of different artists who have come through,” Perry said.” And not just established artists. People who are inspired by this space to maybe start and do their first sticker. Maybe start to do their first wheatpaste where they feel comfortable in here to not have to look over their shoulder.” In a world that constantly expects polished, Instagram-ready perfection from artists, Tattooed Mom celebrates the earnest messiness of imperfection, and how it’s more fun to be messy together than to be perfect alone.
