Bert Grimm

Life & Work

The Art of Bert Grimm

Bert Grimm began hanging around tattoo parlors in Portland, Oregon while still a child and was tattooing himself before most boys his age had left school. His early career took him through some of the most storied venues in American entertainment, including time with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

By the 1950s, he had settled at the Nu Pike in Long Beach, California, where he operated what he called the oldest continuously operated tattoo parlor on the continent. Sailors bound for the Pacific lined up outside his door. His flash was clean, readable, and built to last: roses with a century of shelf life, anchors drawn with architectural precision, eagles that looked like they meant it.

He worked until the very end of his life, reportedly completing ten tattoos a week from his home studio in Seaside, Oregon. He died in 1985 at eighty five, having never retired from the work he had chosen as a child.

Seventy years behind the needle. Not one of them wasted.