LANCASTER — Local entrepreneur Rudy Baltier wasn’t fooling around when he made the move to open the first tattoo art shop on Lancaster Boulevard on April 1 more than a dozen years ago.
“There are a lot of businesses that have come and gone in that time, but we are still here, and I am just grateful for everybody’s support.”
Baltier opened the Chimera Body Art tattoo and piercing shop on the newly invigorated shopping space in 2011 and just observed the business’ 14th anniversary. He’s offering some discounts to mark the occasion, but mostly, he’s just glad to be around.
“I was the first person to open this kind of business on the BLVD,” he said.
Baltier recalled that he was told there were “no churches, no bail bonds and no tattoo businesses” on Lancaster Boulevard. He said he made every effort to demonstrate that his shop would be a business that could bring people together.
Then he said he noticed “fresh ink” on the arm of someone on the licensing commission, and the door nudged open a bit.
“Now, we have been here 14 years, and I am just so grateful.”
Baltier had been selling cars for a couple of the Antelope Valley’s larger automobile dealers, but his wife, Kristina Hong, noticed that when he arrived home he would start putting paint on canvas until the late hours of the night, and that he appeared stressed even though he was making good money.
She paid his way to attend a Michigan school for tattoo art.
“She told me I needed to be doing something that I really enjoyed,” he said, and that she had paid for his training in Michigan at “The World’s Only Tattoo School.”
One of the Valley’s most prominent car dealers, then general manager of Palmdale-Robertson Honda, encouraged him, he said.
“He said, ‘You’re going to regret not doing something you want to do.’ ”
At the time, Hong had just finished her training as a registered nurse and used the funds from her salary boost to send him to school. And off he went.
“We have five kids, and she got my mother to come out and take care of them while I went to school.”
Chimera Body Art opened at 751 West Lancaster Blvd. and has been there ever since. He said he took the name from Greek mythology, a creature that fought its way out of Hades, the underworld, and prevailed.
Noting that he had a rough start in life and that his wife made him a “better man,” he said, “It means just because you start bad does not mean you have to stay bad.”
His art won “Best Tattoo of the Expo” at the Tattoo and Body Art Expo hosted at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds.
For details, go to www.Chimerabodyart.shop or call 661-940-1737
