Regina, a lil' prarie town with a lot of good tattooin'. When Sean Treble of Tattoo Caravan, heard that Tattoos.com was takin a break from doing Northern Ink Xposure for the year 2001 he decided to throw a show in Regina, Sask, Canada. A Prarie city of maybe 300,000 people in south-central Canda, which is pretty well northern everywhere else. The third week of june is a warm dry heat on the plains, especially this year while Canada underwent a major summer drought.

The drought wasn't much of a concern for the citizens and visitors to the Best Western in downtown Regina. As a matter of fact one thing that is clearly abundant and available for all is beer, lots of it, everywhere, pretty well any time. After my arrival on Thursday I quickly discovered you could buy beer from stores up until 3AM. This fast became my newly adopted home. I arrived at Tattoo Caravan  to find Kurt "Hurt" Wiscombe already in action, tattooing a local artist at Sean's shop. Dan Allaston of New Moon in Ottawa, Jamie Izumi of Tora Tattoo in Kitchener Ont. and Danny Gordy of Edmonton had also arrived.

Oddly enough the usual cast of wives, girlfriends and significant others were not present, yes, to reiterate, the beer would flow freely on this weekend. In fact, by my sixth slice of pizza at around 4 in the morning, when I was at my best, Sean asked if I would Emcee the show, and being clearly intoxicated, I happily accepted. (Sean and I in photo, top left).

On the Friday night a pig roast party for artists and special guests was held at Rick Biehler's house (Rick's ribs at left, tattoo work by Sean Treble) and good food was aplenty with entertainment provided by Scott Deshambault (right) who finally "took the plunge" so to speak by happily accepting the dare pool fund of 70.00 metric to grab a Koi out of the garden pond in his teeth. (No real Kois were injured during the stunt.) We will attempt to bring video of this event in the near future.

The show opened on Saturday afternoon and any reservations I had about the attendance due to the size of Regina quickly evaporated. Tattoo artists, collectors and enthusiasts from throughout Canada quickly came through the front doors. Machines started buzzing right away and the sound would not stop again until late Sunday night. By now I had met up with the additional booth holders, including Rising Sun Tattoo Of Regina and Rob Thomas from Ritual Tattoo from Kelowna, BC. Some other artists there for the show from Sask. included RJ Freoschl of Valhalla Tattoos from Regina and Reg Morrell from Eye of the Needle in Saskatoon. Cindy, from Custers Tattoo in Qu'apelle took care of my booth for me which allowed me time to Emcee the show, do some judging, and even a little schmoozing with other artists and the media. By Saturday night as we all wound down from the tattooing to head to the club we already had come to the consensus this was indeed a well run and fun show. It was small, but what it lacked in size it made up for in heart, many spontaneous laughs during the first awards presentations were followed by one ass kickin' time in the bar with John ( lower left )and the boys of the Band "Stitchface" which should be layin down a CD as far as I'm concerned. Also in the great tradition of Regina the bar offered $1.50 drinks to all the convention attendees with a wristband, that's about a buck a drink U.S. ! On the way out of the bar at around 3AM we were able to grab a 12 pack for the hotel room parties that followed.

I should note here that being room mates with "Hurt " Wiscombe poolside seemd like a positive prospect initially, however I quickly discovered that having a room poolside and passing out at 5 AM did not correlate well with the joyous screams of the lil' children on the waterslide at 8 AM. Perhaps it was this lack of sleep, or it may just have been that we were feelin' "Impish" when both Kurt and I abandoned our faculties Sunday morning and made our way into the convention hall and used the podium and P.A. system to do what we thought was our own lil stand up morning show. You know whenever there's a live mike and no one but you and your buddy in the room you have to try and out do each other with spointaneous schtick. It must have been a good two minutes before Sean Treble burst through the doors, bolting from the breakfast table to inform us that our lil' improvisational tirade was being broadcast throughout the hotel dining facilities. So Sunday started.

Awards and tattooing went on until around 10 PM Sunday night where the show wrapped up with yet more merriment among the artists and participants. As I headed back to Toronto on the Monday I almost could here my liver thanking me. Regina is a great place to visit, but my liver sure wouldn't want to. As I look back at the Conventions I put on, this reminded me of my first one in Collingwood in 1998, a lot of artists still tell me the first NIX was their favorite. I am glad to have been at Tattoo Caravan's first show, and if there are future ones I am sure I'll look back on the first one as my favorite. - Please enjoy my snapshots from the show. Damian@tattoos.com