If you want to get a tattoo in Haverhill, there's only one place you can go. Michael Rivera's Extreme Tattoo N Tanning is the city's lone tattoo parlor.
Rivera, 36, also provides tanning services at his 101 River St. shop.
A resident of Lawrence, where he lives with his four children and girlfriend, Rivera said that Haverhill in general and the River Street neighborhood in particular have been receptive to his business.
"Haverhill saw potential in me when nobody else had given me the chance," he said. "People (here) are out to help you rather than downsize you."
Still, he said that opening his studio was among one of the more trying experiences of his life.
He first opened his business as Sunrise to Sunset Tanning on Dudley Street, which failed after only a few months. He then applied to the city as a body art establishment and practitioner in order to reopen as a tattoo studio. He said he poured most of his savings into creating the business.
What followed was months of attending board meetings and training sessions, as well as having to provide character references and proof of accredited coursework in anatomy and physiology.
"It was very hard, but I did everything they asked me to," he said. "You have to understand the city, they don't want just anybody hacking into people."
The last tattoo studio in the city, Haverhill Tattooing on Locke Street, closed after a fire in March 2007. Mayor James Fiorentini had argued that a tattoo parlor would not intermingle well with his downtown restoration plans. The business was in the shadow of the 300-plus unit Hamel Mill Lofts complex, touted by Fiorenitni as a centerpiece of his downtown Renaissance.
According to Bill Pillsbury, the city's director of Economic Development and Planning, the 2007 controversy didn't color the decision-making process of the city's Board of Appeals.
"We have to view each of these applications on a case by case basis," Pillsbury said. "We have pretty stringent measures."
Currently, the city requires body artists to have two years of experience as an artist and to complete a training program about preventing transmission of disease and blood borne pathogens.
Rivera said neighbors' approval was required before he could receive permits from the city.
He is licensed by the city as a master tattoo artist, meaning that he is capable of taking on apprentices.
Rivera said despite the difficulty, he is pleased to be doing something he loves.
Each tattoo is an individual work of art, he said, not a tracing done from a pattern.
Art, Rivera said, has been a constant source of inspiration in his life.
Born in Puerto Rico, Rivera came from what he described as a broken home. Abused and abandoned by his mother and father, he spend much of his childhood drifting between the United States and Puerto Rico among family members. He settled in Lawrence when he was a teenager, but lived off the couches and good intentions of others.
His one saving grace, however, was art and drawing.
"Art was my escape," he said. "I'd sit in the corner and all I did was draw."
He said trips to what he called "a dark place" gave him inspiration, and through his creations he finally had a positive outlet.
"The Lord had this plan for me," he said.
The plan did not come to fruition quickly, however.
It was 27 years from the time of Rivera's first exposure to tattooing — at age 7 he watched his older brother get a tattoo — to the time he put events in motion to open his own shop.
In the meantime he studied drawing at Greater Lawrence Technical School, enlisted in the Army and then left with a disabling injury. For a decade he worked as certified nursing assistant in area nursing homes.
Around 2000, Rivera began moonlighting part-time as a tattoo apprentice in both New York and Florida. The studio, based out of the Bronx in New York City, Milly's Hairstyle, took him on as a full apprentice.
He quickly grew famous among servicemen and women for his skills and would be called to different bases for tattoos. He said that word of his work would spread among soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, who would then contact him for their own pieces when they were on leave.
He said that such military demand was due to the fact service members preferred to get tattoos from someone who understood the emotions of being in the service. He added that at one point he tattooed a whole platoon.
"The bond is so great," Rivera said.
Rivera switched careers to work with Comcast as a technician in 2003, but continued tattooing.
It wasn't until 2009 that he decided to become self-employed and opened Sunrise to Sunset Tanning and Hair Salon on Dudley Street in Haverhill. He openly admitted that his attempts at operating a salon were a disaster, but that operating the business on his own triggered the idea of opening a tattoo studio.
He originally had his doubts about opening the studio, due to the strict requirements facing Massachusetts studios, but he said that it was time to finally chase after his dream.
"They say if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life," he said.
He's hoping to expand his business by taking on four apprenticeships, another first for Haverhill. He said potential apprentices are local underground tattoo artists who want to become professionals.
"I'm trying to keep it to people from town," he said. "I want people to know what Haverhill is. This is a new generation, a new era."
