FLINT, MI -- Tim Legendary has been drawing and painting as long as he can remember. But being an artist doesn't always pay -- especially in Flint. May as well put cars together -- after all, thousands of other Flint natives had been providing for their families that way for years. When his Chrysler coworkers recommended that he get into tattooing, he resisted.

But once he got experience under his belt and the clients started rolling in, he began to see that tattoos were a staple in Genesee County.

"When I got to a point where I was making more in one day tattooing than I did at Chrysler for a whole week, I knew it was time to go," said Legendary, 43, while sitting in his Legendary Tattoos shop in Flint and reminiscing about his earlier tattooing days.

He admits that his experience is unlikely for most people, but he isn't alone in his quest to capitalize on tattoos in Flint. Genesee County has the highest number of licensed tattoo shops per capita in the state, according to documentation from the Michigan Board of Health. Genesee County has 35 licensed tattoo shops, with an estimated population of 418,408.

That's approximately one shop per 11,954 people. More than even Wayne County, with 48 shops, with about one for every 37,333 people, according to state and U.S. Census records.

Unofficial online lists with sites such as Today.com and Buzzfeed.com list Flint as the fourth-most tattooed city in the U.S. based on the number of shops in town.

Joel Rash, director of Red Ink Flint, said that there is a strong historical connection between Flint's tattoo culture and music scenes. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when bands used to perform at the Capital Theatre, members of several rock bands started their own tattoo shops downtown. Corey Robinson, who was in a band called Ninja High School, founded Consolidated Ink & Steel, while Matt Rinks and Brady Duncan co-founded Almighty Tattoo. Rinks was in a band called Junbug Spade, and Duncan was in several bands, including one called Krosseyed Mary. Rash said that Ron Lash, the original founder of Electric Chair tattoo, played in a metal band.

"I think it's probably fair to say that part of the reason downtown was a hotbed for the tattoo scene was also because that's where the concerts were," Rash explained. Suburban commercial strips likely "wouldn't have been excited" to rent to a tattoo parlor, he said.

"But the downtown building owners had sort of seen it all at that point," Rash said. "'Eh, whatever you want to do. We've seen it all. Three hundred bucks a month -- knock yourself out.'"

"Years ago, when tattoos weren't as common as they are now, I think the same sort of desire to seek out and explore nontraditional music, the kind of thing you couldn't just listen to on the radio, also led people to want to express themselves by getting ink on their skin," Rash said.

Consolidated Ink is still downtown, and is known for its specialty of "traditional tattoos" -- tattoos that have heavy line strokes, solid colors and intentionally simple designs. Chris Hornus, who was in a ska band named Army of Juan, apprenticed under Robinson and took over that shop, before later moving into his own Durand shop, Royalty Tattoo. Jay Dowd, who began apprenticing under Hornus around 2005, now runs the shop with fellow artist John Hill.

Electric Chair has locations in Clio, Flint and Bay City, and is known for neo-traditional tattoos — tattoos that also use bold lines and heavy colors, but with more diverse imagery and designs.

Almighty Tattoo has closed, but the two founders have moved on to tattoo on the East Coast: Rinks moved to the Washington, D.C., area and Duncan now tattoos at Orange Tattoo, a shop owned by Frankie Orange, who tattoos stars such as Britney Spears and Rob Zombie. Flint tattoo artist Kyle Dunbar, who was on the two most recent seasons of Spike TV reality show "Ink Master," started his own shop called Almighty Tattoo in 2003.

Before Legendary got into tattooing, he had been an artist all his life -- the walls of Legendary Tattoo are lined with detailed paintings that portray famous figures. Coworkers became fans of his work and recommended that he get into tattooing, but he had never been in a tattoo shop before, much less known about the culture.

But then, he said, "the explosion happened." Reality TV shows like "Miami Ink" began to pop up on cable TV, and actors, musicians and athletes began to proudly show off their tattoos in public. Tattoo shops began popping up more regularly, and he decided to cash in. It was a chance to enjoy his passion as an artist instead of, as he describes, "just putting parts on a rack" at Chrysler.

He found an apprenticeship with Sebastian Murphy, a Detroit tattoo artist who would later become a finalist on Season 2 of "Ink Master," and he drove to Detroit every weekend to ask Murphy for advice and to learn the craft.

He then began to tattoo clients from his home, and as he built a reputation and improved his skills, the clients started to flood in. Three years later, he was making enough money from tattooing to be comfortable with leaving his job at Chrysler and open up his own shop in September 2008. These days, he has customers come in from out of town -- he cites one example where a customer from Afghanistan saw his work online, and made the flight to Flint for a nine-hour session with him.

About ten minutes into his interview, a repeat customer walks into Legendary Tattoo. Days earlier, the customer had enlisted Legendary to get a spider web tattooed around his elbow; today, he has arrived to get extra webbing drawn onto the design to make it wider.

He shaves hair from the customer's arm, and washes his arm in "green soap," a soft soap tattoo artists use to disinfect their canvases' skin before tattooing them. Legendary pulled out a bench from the back room for the customer to lay on, got his equipment ready, and got to work.

The procedure is routine for him now, but it beats his old job at General Motors.

"I even went to my neighbors and told them what I was doing, because I didn't want them to think that I was selling drugs," Legendary remembers from his early days tattooing. "They were real cool, but every day, I was like, 'Is the board of health going to knock on my door and shut me down?' But I was making so much money, the money felt like (I was selling) drugs."

Regulation

Mark Valacak, health officer and director of the Genesee County Health Department, said the county was one of the first in Michigan to adopt an ordinance for tattoo shops. It later became the model for statewide rules.

After that, he said, Genesee County rescinded its ordinance to avoid charging local fees on top of state fees. Now, county health departments do the inspections and the state issues licenses.

The process of getting a license includes paying an annual fee and getting the business inspected to show floor plans, the types of equipment, methods for cleaning, disinfection and sterilization, means of medical waste disposal, and more.

Legendary said that one reason behind the large amount of tattoo shops in Genesee County per capita is that Michigan has more lenient tattoo laws. He cites Georgia as an example for contrast: There, he said, people under age 18 can't get a tattoo at all. But in Michigan, he said, minors can get tattoos as long as a parent with proper identification comes in and signs a consent form.

He said that Genesee County has a lot of others in the tattoo community referred to as "scratchers" -- beginner artists who have simply purchased tattooing equipment online and knock out tattoos in their basements.

"They don't crack down on all these underground guys," Legendary said. "It's a good and a bad thing; 99 percent of tattoo artists start out in the house. It's almost like tradition."

After all, that's how Legendary got his start. Same for two-time "Ink Master" contestant Kyle Dunbar: Before opening his own Almighty Tattoo shop on Dort Highway (different from the original Almighty Tattoo), he said he was getting his construction coworkers drunk to convince them to let him hone his skills on their bodies.

Valacak said while he knows the specifics of only Michigan laws, he believes Michigan's tattooing laws are similar to those in the rest of the country. He also said that illegal tattooing isn't a big problem in Flint.

"The tattoo artists do a very good job of policing and letting us know if there are illegal operations," he said. "I have worked with the sheriff's department on facilities that have not been properly licensed. I'm aware of two (illegal operations) where we've had to involve the sheriff's office in the past year."

But the number of amateur artists in Genesee County leads to a big portion of Legendary's work.

"I always know when they have tattoo parties. After that, I have a lot of fixings and cover-ups," he said.

Flint tattoos become mainstream

Jay Dowd, co-owner of Consolidated Ink, believes that a large part of Flint's tattoo culture is just based on the types of people in Flint. Some of his customers show off their hometown pride, he said, with tattoos that depict Flint's "810" area code, the old Citizens Bank weather ball, and even Flint-style coney dogs.

"Maybe it's just a different attitude that people have around here. They're a little bit more open-minded than they are in a lot of other cities. They just have a different outlook on life," Dowd said.

"...(People who live here) are watching different types of cultures, and people living together in a small area. All those different cultures bring in different inspirations for tattooing. Each culture has their own symbols and idealism that they put into the tattoos."

There is a historical stigma between prison culture and tattoos, but Dowd shrugs off the association when asked if that has any place in Flint's tattoo scene. He said that a bad, careless tattoo is referred to as a "prison tattoo" because of its crudeness, but that's as far as it goes. Legendary said he refuses to apply tattoos that refer to gang culture.

"Tattoos are becoming a more and more accepted part of the culture that we live in. It's a sign of changing times more than anything. Everywhere you're looking, people are getting a little edgier and a little more wild," Dowd said. He said his clientele has included teachers, politicians and attorneys.

"The people that are dedicated to it see it as art, but there are still people who don't think of it as art -- they think of it as defiling your body. I think that's mostly the older people who grew up in a different time when tattooing was only something that sailors and prisoners got."

Chris Everson, manager for the Flint Downtown Development Authority, said he has also seen a lot more professionals who have tattoos. He's one of them: He has more than 20 tattoos, dating back to the late '80s and early '90s. He has work from Duncan, Rinks and Hornus, along with work from other artists he met while on the road as a tour manager for different bands. One of his tattoos is by current "Ink Master" judge Oliver Peck.

"There are way more (professionals with tattoos), especially within the last five to seven years. Before that, it was more of a counterculture for musicians, artists or someone who wasn't worried about the corporate world," he said. But now, he knows police officers, firefighters and businesspeople in downtown Flint who have tattoos that are easily concealed with clothing.

Everson said that he hides his tattoos with clothing in work meetings, but that his boss understands when he wears short sleeves and shows off his tattoos during certain summer work days.

"People get tattoos for personal reasons. It's not just about trying to show them off; they get them for themselves," he said. "...I think most people like myself don't have hand or face tattoos -- we can dress in the business world, and still be ourselves."

The mainstreaming of tattoos is bittersweet, he said. The rebellious nature that attracted many people to tattoos before they were popular is fading away, and that irks traditionalists. But it's definitely good for business -- on good days during tax season when people may have money from tax refunds, Dowd said he can sometimes do as many as 10 tattoos in a day.

Once tattooed, Legendary says, his customers are part of what he refers to as a "brotherhood" of people with ink.

"I've tattooed little Chinese girls, and 80-year-old black women. We all have the same thing in common," he said. "No matter where you're from, if we both have ink, it's something we can talk about."