San Francisco 🇺🇸

With seven tattoo parlors per 100,000 people, it's one of the best cities in America to get some ink. San Francisco has always been a liberal-minded city, and tattoos were accepted as forms of art and individual expression before anywhere else in America. They got popular in 1960, when the hippie movement hit the city and Lyle Tuttle tattooed Janis Joplin.

After Sailor Jerry passed away in 1973, Ed Hardy (one of Jerry's three proteges) opened up America’s first custom-only shop, Tattoo City, in 1974. That's why many consider that tattoo customization and individualization of tattooing was born in the San Francisco Bay Area.