Your Mom’s Favorite Tattoo Shop

For the past 20 years, the corner of W. First Street by Celestino’s and Chico State has been a tattoo shop. The shop has been swapped from owner to owner over the years, but over the summer, tattoo artist Noe “Weezy” Alvarado has rebranded the space into his own personalized creation.

Weezy has been tattooing for most of his life, some of his most extensive pieces being a full chest tattoo in one sitting, or alternatively, a 50-hour tattoo that spanned over a client’s whole top torso, side of the head and neck in dot-work. But according to Weezy, his history with tattoo work is more than a career.

Growing up in a rough neighborhood, tattooing was Weezy’s escape and way to avoid getting himself into trouble in his youth. Being involved in the tattoo artist community in his area exposed him to like-minded people and fellow artists.

“My area was Latino and I got to see people of my ethnicity making it in businesses and living in houses provided by those businesses,” said Weezy. “Seeing people from the same place I came from doing this, gave me hope that I could do the same.”

Outside of being involved in the local tattoo shop community, Weezy is also known for tattooing at music festivals.

Weezy also doubles as a DJ, and each show he plays gets bigger with each venue. Recently, he has DJed at rapper Riff Raff’s concert in Chico and is playing at another rapper’s, Bubba Sparxxx, show next week. And now because of the couple’s connections with music, they have been invited to another music festival in Belden, California.

“I got the OK by the guys who run it (the music festival) to open it up as also a tattoo festival,” said Weezy. “The tattoo and music world for us is colliding right now. We’re inviting all the shops here in town to come with us because we’re going to have a line up of tattoo artists.”