When you walk into Singleton Tattoo, the first thing that will probably draw your eye are the two taxidermied giraffe heads that stand in opposite corners of the room.
Their names are Jeffrey and Sally.
Ejay Bernal’s tattoo studio is bright and airy, and covered in art like most tattoo shops.
Unlike most tattoo shops, his station in the back of the studio is surrounded by glass tanks that house scorpions and tarantulas. Two pythons, named Sprinkles and Owen, live in the back room of the store.
Bernal says the animals are the shop’s “mascots.”
Victoria Bernal, Ejay’s wife, runs operations at the shop and says that, while unconventional, each artist at Singleton Tattoo has contributed to the unique environment.
“We’re an open concept studio. So I mean, there’s a lot of places that have private rooms and kind of just
keep to themselves. But here we are forced to be around each other, so we want to be able to love being here,” Victoria says.
Singleton Tattoo opened in West Dallas in 2018, and the Bernals transformed the former taqueria into the tattoo parlor that has gained a massive following throughout North Texas.
Ejay started his tattooing career in 2007 at Saints and Sinners, a shop located on West Davis Street that is a staple in the Dallas tattoo industry. Ejay says as an apprentice at the Oak Cliff shop, he developed many of the artistic styles he was known for in his early career.
“Growing up in Oak Cliff, I got pushed into realism. Like all I tattooed was just Jesus and St. Judas, like back-to-back,” Ejay says.
When he opened Singleton Tattoo, he decided to hone his style. Now he specializes in geometric stipple, patterns made up of small, shaded dots, and black and gray artwork. Black and gray artwork is a specialty for many of the artists at Singleton, although each artist uses it in different ways.
The open concept at Singleton Tattoo allows for each artist to interact with one another, and Ejay says he regularly finds himself drifting between booths in his free minutes to check out the other artists’ work. He says he has no problem sending a client to another artist if their style better matches the client’s goals.
That kind of culture isn’t the norm in tattooing, Ejay says, but when he and Victoria started Singleton Tattoo, they weren’t looking to recreate the norm.
“I think that’s the big reason why we’re booked; no one here really has that huge ego. We’re not the tattoo artist who thinks they have that huge rockstar thing. Everyone here really tries to work with people’s ideas first,” Ejay says.
The artists at Singleton Tattoo are often booked weeks in advance, but, like most tattoo shops, one of their busiest days is Friday the 13th. On Friday the 13th, the shop offers a limited number of small designs for cheap, and Ejay says the line goes out the door and usually wraps around the building.
“We haven’t missed one yet. And honestly, it’s just making tattooing fun,” Ejay says. “I really do have a blast tattooing.”
Since Singleton Tattoo opened, the shop has faced the usual challenges — like ice storms that shut down business for a few days — and unusual ones — like a COVID-19 pandemic that shut down the tattoo industry for a year.
But, the Bernals say the past few years have changed the industry in positive ways too. Victoria says within the last 10 years, the stigma against tattoos has almost disappeared, and new types of people are getting tattoos and becoming interested in the profession.
“Back then people didn’t think it was a normal career, right? So nowadays, everyone sees it as an opportunity. There were lots of very artistic people that just never pursured it,” Victoria says. “Now there’s tons.”
For Ejay, the biggest change he has seen during his 16 years tattooing is the rise of social media. He says the ability to share art and have your work seen by the entire world led to “the cleansing of the tattoo artists,” where subpar artists either had to fix their craft or leave the scene.
“We’re the only studio in West Dallas and I flex it all the time that we’re the best studio in West Dallas,” Ejay says. “But then I’m not being compared to just Dallas, Texas. It’s like everyone here is being compared to people in France, Europe, Korea. … It’s what’s on your phone.”
Ejay says that while Singleton Tattoo is breaking away from many stereotypes of traditional tattoo studios, there are some industry traditions that are no different at his shop.
For one, Singleton Tattoo has apprentices who study for three years at the shop and help with desk work, maintenance and other chores while also learning the ins and outs of tattooing.
A rite of passage for apprentices at most studios: tattooing themselves.
“That’s a low brow rule that I guess was shown to me,” Ejay says. “There are tattooers that think it’s mostly fair if you tattoo yourself first. Having someone else, like a victim, I feel like it’s almost predatory. Like you’re just trying to find people to mess up.”
For the first few years of Singleton Tattoo, it was just Ejay and Victoria running the show. Over time, they have added apprentices, artists and piercers, and now they have a nearly double-digit staff.
“I still call myself the apprentice because I still catch myself learning just so much from everyone up here,” Ejay says. “Because I thought I had it down really. And then … I catch myself still learning so much.
