Iron Age Tattoo at 6309 Delmar has been open in the Delmar Loop since 1994 (25 years!)
They were featured in Inked Magazine and got to tell their story:
When tattoo veterans Brad Fink and Mark Andrews decided to open Iron Age Tattoo in 1994, they modeled the new shop after a place most people hate—the dentist. “When we opened, there were only nine shops in the St. Louis area, and they were all older and dingier,” Andrews explains over the sound of music and buzzing needles. “We wanted something clean and modern. It seems obvious now, but very few shops were going for that look back then.” Andrews and Fink set up Iron Age on Missouri’s hippest street, the Delmar Loop, and the shop’s approach and crew of skilled artists have helped them stay at the forefront of the St. Louis scene, even as competition has exploded around them over the past decade and a half. “I haven’t even counted this year, but there were more than 30 shops last year,” Andrews syas. “Tattoo imagery is used everywhere now. I’m sure its popularity will wax and wane, but tattoos are embedded in our society now. It’s not quite as fringe.” To keep up with the shop’s popularity, Iron Age, which started with just four artists in a 700-square-foot space, now employs 15 tattooists in a 1,800-foot set-up that’s almost always full, especially on weekends. Fink witnessed this evolution of tattooing firsthand. The veteran tattooer got started when he was in high school, doing work on local kids in the kitchen of his St. Louis home. Over the past two decades he has seen a lot about tattooing change, especially in his home city. “Years ago I used to have to convince people to get shit,” Fink explains. “I would do larger tattoos for next to nothing just to get to do it. Now, people are really educated. I don’t have to convince anyone to get the big, fun stuff.”
