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Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Left to right: Danny Ramirez, Caroline Gray, Katie Lee, Matthew Crane, Jasper White, and Kat Greaves at Stay Gold Tattoo Studio in Fultondale on Oct. 24. Crane, founder and owner of the shop, is opening a new location on Lorna Road in Hoover.
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Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
The new location of Stay Gold Tattoo Studio at Lorna Town Square on Lorna Road.
The city of Hoover soon will be getting a tattoo shop on Lorna Road.
Matthew Crane, the owner of the Stay Gold Tattoo Studio shops in Fultondale and Birmingham’s Southside, won approval to relocate his business in Five Points South to the Lorna Town Square shopping center on Lorna Road, near the Golden Corral.
The Hoover City Council gave its approval in September, and Crane said he hopes to have his new shop in Hoover open by no later than February.
Hoover City Planner Mac Martin told the city’s zoning board and City Council that the city administration did not believe a tattoo studio fits with the purpose of the redevelopment plan for the city’s “central business district,” which is an area with a 6-mile-wide area that includes Lorna Road.
Greg Knighton, Hoover’s economic development manager and one of two zoning board members who voted against the tattoo studio, agreed.
But all Hoover council members except Council President John Lyda voted in favor of the tattoo studio.
Councilman Casey Middlebrooks said he’s not thrilled to have a tattoo shop on Lorna Road, but he checked Crane’s credentials and found only positive things about his shops.
“I think you are a positive light in that industry,” Middlebrooks told Crane when the council voted. “Honestly, this isn’t good for my political career, but I have a tattoo. I might have more than one, and it would be very hypocritical of me to deny you a place of business in this thriving city when I myself have one.”
Councilman Derrick Murphy asked police Chief Nick Derzis if he had any concerns about a tattoo shop being in the city. Derzis said he did some research, talked to police departments in Birmingham and Fultondale and didn’t find anything that concerned him.
Murphy confessed that he not only has a tattoo; he has three brands.
Crane said he knows that tattoo shops carry a stigma and people often think they attract gang members, “but we’re not the norm, and we’re really trying to get away from what the norm is.”
The main reason he wants to relocate his shop from Birmingham to Hoover is because he no longer felt his shop was in a safe place, he said.
Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
The new location of Stay Gold Tattoo Studio at Lorna Town Square on Lorna Road.
He looked at locations in Pelham, Hoover and Trussville before settling on Lorna Town Square, he said.
The 1,400-square-foot space is smaller than what he has in Birmingham, but it’s big enough for nine tattoo stations and a body piercing station, the rent is $2,300 a month cheaper, the parking is better and he doesn’t think he’ll have to worry about homeless people flashing his customers and staff, he said.
Crane said his shops are designated as “safe places” for people in trouble.
He has been in the tattoo business about 24 years, has been an owner for more than 8 years and has always run a reputable business, he said. While bikers and gang members are part of the tattoo market, there are people from all walks of life who get tattoos, from blue-collar workers to doctors, lawyers, athletes — even preachers, he said.
Love for tattoos
Crane, 44, grew up in Birmingham’s Ensley community and moved around a lot as his stepdad got different football and wrestling coaching jobs in places like Cullman and Huntsville.
He was 18 when he got his first tattoo — a half-shell heart — in Florida. Two days later, he got two more tattoos. He came home, found Tattoo Jungle in Pelham and got a couple more, then another couple more. The owner of the shop could see he was really into it, offered him a job at the front counter and trained him on how to give tattoos.
Crane said he worked other jobs through the years — carpenter, pipe fitter, welder, underground coal miner — but he always stepped back into doing tattoos. Finally, he worked four jobs for about two years, saved his money and opened his own tattoo studio in Fultondale in June 2015, he said.
In 2017, he bought out another guy’s tattoo studio on Birmingham’s Southside and made it his second shop. In 2019, he opened a new shop in Columbus, Mississippi, but soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. All his shops had to shut down for about six months, and the Mississippi shop wasn’t profitable enough to keep it open, he said.
His shops in Fultondale and Birmingham each average about $200,000 to $300,000 a year in revenue, he said.
He’s not sure how many customers he has in a year, but he estimated his shops probably do about 20 tattoos a day, which would be about 7,300 in a year. His shops do a wide variety of styles, so it’s hard to say what’s most popular, but it might be the “American traditional” tattoos, he said. That style features bold black outlines and a limited color palette, with common motifs influenced by sailor tattoos.
Names, animals, portraits of people and caricatures also are popular, Crane said. Some tattoo artists charge by the hour, which can range from $100 to $250 an hour, and some charge by the tattoo, he said. His shops have a minimum price of $70 for a small tattoo, but other tattoos can cost several thousand dollars, he said. A palm-size tattoo might take 30 to 45 minutes, but a full back or full chest might take several sessions over several days, he said. It could take 20 to 100 hours of work, depending on what’s in it, he said.
Some of the tattoo artists who work in his studios are booked for six months to a year out, but others are able to handle walk-in business, he said. He has both male and female tattoo artists in his studios.
Crane himself rarely gives tattoos anymore, he said. He might do tattoos occasionally, but he mostly handles the business side of things now, he said.
When asked what it is he loves about the tattoo business, Crane said, “It’s as free as you can be to be whoever it is you are but still provide for yourself.
“It’s just about the art and what you can provide — making people happy in their own skin,” he said.
Some people get tattoos for healing, others for empowerment, and for some people, it’s just a matter of putting things they like on their body, he said.
Most of his customers are between the ages of 18 and 40, but he gets some people who get their first tattoos in their 70s or 80s, he said.
While state law allows for people under age 18 to get a tattoo with a parent’s permission, Crane said nobody under the age of 16 gets a tattoo in his shops at any point in time. “I don’t think at 15 you should be choosing what you’re going to be putting on your body permanently,” he said.
Young people are still trying to figure themselves out, and he wants to try to keep them from making a mistake they’ll regret later in life, he said.
Crane said he’s excited to open the new shop in Hoover and thinks the location will be good because — as far as he is aware — there is not another tattoo shop in Hoover or Vestavia Hills. That said, he believes a lot of his customers from the Birmingham store will follow him to Hoover, and some of them even come from out of state, he said.
Amy Creel, who lives in the adjacent Four Seasons Condominiums off Lorna Road, said she has known Crane for 20 years and supports his desire to open a business there. “He’s a really good, upstanding guy. The business is very lucrative,” she said. “Tattoo shops aren’t what they used to be, stipulated as the place where ruffians go and hang out and there’s lot of trouble. It’s not like that anymore.”
The Stay Gold Tattoo Studio will be at 3133 Lorna Road. Other tenants in Lorna Town Square include Boost Mobile, flA.S.H. Movementz Dance Studio, Sky Vape & CBD, Soap Box Laundromat, Templo de los Milagros Hoover, Imperio Tienda Hispana and Taqueria Los Primos.
