Meet 'Cherokee Chuck': Tattoo artist and family have been inking rally-goers for 30 years
STURGIS — When you arrive at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, whether it is your 50th trip or your first, be sure to get off Main or Lazelle streets. The stories are even better inside.
You’ll find line dancing inside the Oasis, pizza that arrives in 2 minutes at Gas Monkey Garage, a church-hall-like luncheon at Bare Knuckles, a mean game of pool at Sidehack and a live feed to an Iraqi military base at Broken Spoke so soldiers “can attend Sturgis in spirit.”
But inside Rosini Gypsy Tattooing, on the corner of Junction Avenue and Main Street, “Cherokee Chuck” Shaffer is in the front corner finishing up what is likely his, “oh, who knows, maybe half a million?” tattoo for yet another rally-goer.
The customer has been here many times before and specifically asks for Shaffer.
“I’m just trying to keep Rosini’s dream alive,” Shaffer says.
But he’s a rally legend all his own.
Just as the rally is celebrating its 85th milestone anniversary this year, Shaffer is celebrating his 30th.
The ‘old man’ who started it all
R.J. Rosini was the “tattoo shaman,” Shaffer says, the founder of what was then called R.J. Rosini and Co. Tattooing Gypsy Tour in 1983.
He was a 6-foot-3, “cantankerous” master tattoo artist who was unmistakable at motorcycle rallies and tattoo conventions worldwide. It was there he would find his next prodigy. He discovered Shaffer and his wife, “Mama Chris,” in 1993. Shaffer started working officially for Rosini in 1995.
Like an initiation, not anyone could apply for a spot at Rosini’s tattoo shop in Sturgis. You needed to “be found,” Shaffer said of Rosini cherry-picking his employees to join his tattoo community.
“We’re so proud to be part of his work,” Shaffer said. “He chose us, you know?”
Rosini died at the age of 63 in 2003, “same age as I am now,” Shaffer says. Rosini died of diabetes and fittingly at a tattoo convention in Vancouver, Washington.
“When he died, the entire tattoo community shook,” Shaffer says, while looking up at a dedication wall in the back of his tattoo shop. There, guests can see the history of the tattoo shop for themselves, decades’ worth of group photos from past tattoo artists, some of whom are still there today.
“Every year we take a photo to hang here,” Shaffer says. “So, if someone has died, they are memorialized. This is just a giant brotherhood.”
Rally brings in numbers that could reflect a years’ worth of work
Rosini Gypsy Tattooing is open year-round, but for the rally, the staff triples. Shaffer says no one gets a day off, and collectively, they knock out more than 100 tattoos a day.
The average age of the customer is about 18 or 20 years old, Shaffer says. In South Dakota, you can get your first one as early as 14, with a parent present.
“It’s unreal how many times I’ve put the name of my hometown on someone’s body,” Shaffer says.
Other popular tattoos to “commemorate their trip” include Harley-Davidson logos and quotes or prayers on a shoulder or leg.
Shaffer has “Gypsy tour forever” taking up his entire back (done by has late brother, Mikey), and “Gypsy 2 R” lettered on each knuckle. Inked backward on his belly is the copy of a handwritten “coffee pot love note” from his wife: “Have a great night, love you.”
“Now, I see it in the mirror when I get out of the shower,” he says.
They’re just family
His 34-year-old daughter, Skye McRae, does most of Shaffer’s tattoos. She’s been tattooing since she was 13 years old and is known today for her airbrushing and aurora borealis-like tattoos.
“I had no formal training,” says Shaffer, who did McRae’s first tattoo: a skull and bones with a pink bow atop the skull. “But now I can train her.”
McRae’s booth is the one in the far back, splashed in magenta pink to match her hair. There’s a photo of her as a toddler on the wall and a pink couch where she sits with rally-goer Sherri Williams to dream up Williams’ next tattoo.
It’ll be of a dogwood flower and a cardinal bird.
“When a cardinal is near, an angel appears,” said Williams of North Carolina.
She and her husband visit the rally every milestone anniversary. He was getting a chain around his arm at the same time up front.
“Never break the chain,” Williams said of their seven-year marriage.
What tattoo would you get?
Tattoos can serve as souvenirs from a memory, intimate for the one who wears it and hard to shake.
When you’re sitting there getting one done, you’re already thinking about your next one, says customer DeShawn Lawrence.
She was getting a flamingo on her ankle in honor of her 6-year-old son and “444” near her thumb in honor of her husband.
“For better, for worse, forever,” she said.
He was getting his next.
For Shaffer, his memories come from the work he’s done. He’s tattooed Gregg Allman, of the Allman Brothers; “Superman” Dean Cain; Vanilla Ice; and Johnathon Davis, from Korn. He met celebrity tattooer Lyle Tuttle in 1997 and was mentored by founder of the National Tattoo Club of the World, Edward “Philadelphia Eddie” Funk, who did Rosini’s first tattoo in the early ’60s.
“It’s such an adventure working with Chuck,” says Izzy LaPlante, a California-based veteran artist at Rosini Gypsy. Rosini discovered LaPlante the same year he found Shaffer.
“You just never know what’s going to happen here,” LaPlante says
