In the early 90’s, my brother and I lived out of a trailer park in Southeast San Diego…
My neighbors were into rap music, and my brother was a graffiti writer. I started seeing them go on adventures (getting into trouble), and then we’d drive around the next morning and see their tags everywhere. As I learned more about underground rap, I tried to decipher what everything I was reading around town meant.
There’s an anonymous quality about graffiti. Nowadays, everything is documented – something interests you, you want your friends to know, so you post about it. I’m not against people posting more or less; I like social media. I think it brings more people together. But there’s still a level of mystery as to who some of these people are, and I think that’s really special for the time we’re living in.
I think initially, my taste in painting was different than my taste in tattooing. In graffiti or street art, whenever you’re doing figurative imagery, the trend is to stylize things to the max. It’s a beautiful expression and way of seeing the world, stemming from low-income communities that grew up with less.
I entered tattooing wanting to work on traditional tattoos, which revolves around referencing classic imagery. We try to improve on the subject matter while honoring the past.
When I first started my apprenticeship, I didn’t even have any tattoos. I was painting a mural & someone came to me saying, “Hey, I’m familiar with your art, I’m opening up a tattoo shop, and wanted to know if you’d like to work there? I’ll teach you how to tattoo.”
I began my tattoo journey around 2003-2004. Working out of other shops, I always had to get co-signed by my peers. And after opening Pop’s over a decade later, people started looking at me for guidance.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve learned to be more confident in what I’m doing. It made a very personal, daily, inner conversation: I’d better own the decisions I’m about to make with this design right now, you know? Just working a little bit harder.
San Diego, being so close to Tijuana, makes it very natural and easy to maintain a relationship with Mexico. I think sometimes when people live further away from the border, they have to develop their own idea of what the culture’s like, without actually visiting. Brown families here usually have close relatives on each side and travel back and forth on the weekends; it’s almost an ideal of what it means to be related to your home country.
It’s a very direct relationship that makes us a little bit unique in a sense. But the further away you get from Mexico, it doesn’t make you any less Mexican, and it doesn’t make your love for your home country any better or worse.
I’m making a movie right now called Cactus Baby. A significant part is about the connection between Catholicism and Mexico. I feel a deep connection to the imagery and how it means so much to so many people. I never want to make less of it or be blasphemous in any way, but the fact is that it came from chaos, from destruction. It came from deep-seated wounds & loss of life in Native populations.
My father was pretty atheist, and my mother was a Jehovah’s Witness. There was always conflict around the sacred in our house. At some point, I had to gain my spiritual independence.
I was an atheist for a while, and when my brother Gaston got into Rastafarian culture, I started to identify with that type of iconography – His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie… Even listening to Bad Brains, they talk about Jah Rastafari, and, being short for Jehovah, it bridged those two things for me, music and spirituality. In a sense, I was able to create my own spiritual beliefs because I identified with the idea of Jehovah from my upbringing, and Jah from cultural references and looking up to my brother. From there, I started choosing the symbolism that I felt best expressed my worldviews.
I feel like everyone has to pick their iconography.
I consider myself a Christian, but don’t go to church or practice any particular form of Christianity. Religion or science, you’re still talking about the unknown. No matter how deep you get into the mathematics of why we’re here, you still end up at the point of mystery and the unknown…
So what are you going to worship?
Ones & zeros, or a beautiful picture of Christ with the crown of thorns? I’m into the Christ with the crown of thorns, dude. I want that tattoo. I wouldn’t want a bunch of barcodes on me <haha>.
At the age of 13, I was hanging from bridges, catching tags in National City (which is horrible, I don’t think anybody should do that, by the way). I got into MDR around 1995 while still in high school. I started painting more often, & more illegal spots.
I would never say that I went so hard that I was the “king” of any style or city; it was always medium pace, you know. But I’m still here, 30 years later. I still catch a spot once in a while if I travel & get the chance to paint something.
I think my first goal was to be a fine artist, a gallery artist. But as soon as I started learning about the business side of how galleries operate, I couldn’t unsee the facade around the whole thing, or at least something a little inauthentic as far as how or why things are promoted.
You’re connected to certain people, and get famous off of that, or the curators in charge are too gimmicky… Whatever the reason. Some spaces can be cool.
But I feel like in tattooing, it’s just you and the customer. I might tattoo someone very popular or famous one day, and tattoo a plumber or fast food worker the next. And everybody gets charged & treated the same.
I want everyone to feel at home at Pop’s, and I think that’s why people will always come back.
This neighborhood used to be called East San Diego. At some point, they decided it was a little bit nicer to call it City Heights – my brother has E A S T S I D E tattooed across his back, you know what I mean? So this piece was a way of paying homage to the neighborhood I knew & grew up with.
Around 8 years ago, the shop next door asked me to do a mural and called the owner of that wall to ask if we could paint it; he said no, but he had an accent, like, maybe he didn’t understand. The guy who asked me to paint the mural told me if I still wanted to, he’d pay for it. So I went down the street, paid cash for a scissor lift, and drove it a couple of blocks up to this wall that was illegal for me to paint because we had no permission. And then we painted it.
I had the homie watch out for me, and we put up cones to pretend that it was a legal wall. The next day I returned the scissor lift and to my surprise, they never buffed it. About a year or two later, it was time to renovate the wall… And the owner just painted green around it <haha>. I feel so lucky that it’s still there.
When I get to paint a wall, my initial instinct is to paint my name on it. But painting your name is a lot more fun when you do it illegally. So when I have a legal wall, especially within a neighborhood, I want to paint figurative imagery that resonates with the community – I want to add to the visual landscape of the area that I’m painting.
My friends Negro & Noelia own the piñata store around the corner. For the side of their building, I referenced a Diego Rivera mural he painted in a children’s hospital in Mexico. Every time I pass by, I’m reminded of tattooing; how we reference imagery sometimes over 100 years old, how you can still put your spin on it without changing it too much. The line weight, the amount of black, the small details of a face, that’s all you need to make it your own.
I’m a father of three, but they’re all a little older now. I get along good with all my kids. My daughter’s 23, she tattoos here with me, and my 20-year-old’s an electrician. I have a 15-year-old as well. I think it’s important to let Mexican kids know that you don’t have to go to college to be a success. I feel like a lot of older immigrant generations in the US try to teach their kids that if you don’t go to college, you didn’t use the opportunities given to you. But I feel like that sentiment comes from a colonial perspective, in the sense that the upper class will think you’re a good parent because your kids went to college…
I think I was just always concerned that my kids wouldn’t find something that they’re passionate about.
I didn’t want to be too overbearing in leading by example. I’m a college graduate and was going to be a teacher, only because my dad wanted me to be one. I studied painting and printmaking. But I didn’t need to pay 30 grand to learn how to paint, you know? <Haha>. I’m just happy that they learned how to find their own passions, without too much of my will being imposed on them.
I think my main approach over the years has been to never get to the point where I think I’ve got it all figured out. I used to get into a lot of fights and started carrying around a big knife, thinking to myself, One day someone’s gonna offend me, and I’m gonna end up stabbing them – and not necessarily because my life is in danger. So I started learning Jiu Jitsu to be able to protect myself while doing the least amount of harm. I feel like it makes the community safer, and fewer accidents happen in the streets. Part of my success, in every aspect of life, is always making room for improvement.
I’m 47 now, so to have young people come here and support the shop… I feel so honored that they cosign what I do, because I could be the grumpy old head that’s all, “Who the f*ck are you? How long have you been writing, tattooing? Well, don’t forget I’m the f*cking top dog here…” Dude, they’re the top dogs. I’m just lucky enough to be the old head the young fools still rock with.
-Sergio Hernandez.
