Roughly three-years ago I was exploring the streets of Vancouver â the city I had recently decided to call home. I was skateboarding through downtown alleyways, ollieing manholes and careening towards packs of peckish pigeons as fast as I could in hopes of erupting a flighted cloud of dirty gray plumage. Then I rolled past the then recently revamped Save on Meats restaurant and butcher shop. I was immediately taken with the signage. Inside, hand painted images of coffee pots and steak and eggs lined the wall behind the counter. Classically stylized French fries and even the sign telling me to wait to be seated, were all done in such a way that conveyed to me a sense of lightheartedness and humour that perhaps knew a little more than it was letting on.
It wasnât until a year later, after Iâd gotten my first tattoo from him, that I figured out that it was Dan Climan behind the new Save on Meats aesthetic. Then I saw his work again at the Portside Pub, in Color Magazine and it kept popping up in corners all around the internet. By then I was already a fan. I recently went back to Slow Down Tattoo Studio in Railtown to get another piece from Dan and to talk tattooing, his style, progression, brown eyed panthers and what his next moves are.
  Youâre originally from Montreal.
Is their poutine all itâs cracked up to be? I heard itâs more mystique than anything. Hopefully Iâm wrong.
No, itâs definitely all itâs cracked up to be. Especially if you get into the suburbs and you get the poutine from the arenas.
Arena poutine. I think I said the same thing in an interview when I was twenty-years old and I stick by it.
How did you get into tattooing?
I started getting tattooed and kind of got into it from there.
What drew you to a more classic American approach to your tattoo style?
As a kid I always drew images, especially with skateboarding stuff. I always liked graphics and logos and I never really cared so much for backgrounds. And I think traditional [tattoo style] and the way it works as a stamp or sticker style, it just spoke to me. Itâs classic imagery, itâs about repetition and it just kind of goes with all of the other things I have a taste for in my life â if that makes sense.
You did a piece for me roughly two-years ago and you just gave me another now. In what ways have you evolved or progressed in that two-year span? Tattoo game or otherwise.
I think Iâve become more responsible with my career in the sense that Iâm more in control. When I tattooed you [the first time]Â I was probably working a graphic design gig on the side, now I strictly work as a tattooer. And the graphic design that I do or the creative work that I do outside of tattooing is fully in my control. And definitely technically Iâve gotten much stronger. You learn as you go. Thereâs a lot of tricks to drawing tattoos. You can draw a snake a hundred different ways but Itâll take years and years throughout your career to learn all the different tricks to do it all the different ways.
Does skateboarding and skate culture have an effect on your art or the way you approach it?
Yes. Skateboarding has made me who I am today. Skateboarding is definitely a consumer culture where we consume style, consume aesthetic, we consume everything we can in skateboarding. Same with art and fashion and design. Even in tattooing or graphic design; people are buying a product, you know what I mean? Thereâs a consumer aspect attached to it.
Last year there were a few articles floating around the web about people getting their buttholes tattooed â as in tribal works with the sphincter being a strange, dark focal point and I believe a daisy with some rather brown pollen. Would you ever tattoo someoneâs butthole and what would be your ideal piece for such a precious area?
I guess I would do it if it came into the shop. I watched one of those videos where a girl gets a star tattooed around her ass. Fuck, I donât know. I guess like a panther head where the asshole is one of the eyes would be classic.
What does âStill Noidâ mean? Is it in reference to the Dominoâs Pizza foil who Urban Dictionary describes as âAn evil wizard in a skin-tight red body suit with rabbit-like ears who goes out of his way to wreck pizzas that are to be deliveredâ?
No, Still Noid is a side project thing that Iâve been doing for years. It started off with the notion of smoking dope and being paranoid. I canât really give it away but Itâs definitely connected more to the âparanoidâ than it is to the Noid from Dominoâs. And it definitely doesnât mean âno IDâ. You know what, Iâll give it away so that people know. Youâre getting the secrets right now. Pretty much it got to the point where I used to smoke weed with my friend Frank all the time when we lived together. Our friend Malcolm was involved as well. Everytime Iâd go to the back Iâd ask them if they wanted to smoke and theyâd always be like, youâre going to get ânoidâ. Paranoid. And it got to the point where this became so funny that the word turned into one of these things like âstoopsâ, where you can say it whenever. âOh dude, came home last night, smoked some weed, got soooo noid.â Or âwent to a party, saw my ex-girlfriend, it was super noid.â It has multiple meanings. Still noid. Never not noid. Noid as fuck.
While doing a bit of research for this interview I found that almost every other piece done on you makes reference to your love of R Kelly. Do you still have strong feelings towards him and what draws you to him?
Definitely have strong feelings for R Kelly. The Black Panties album that came out this year was fantastic. I like his mixture of talent, comedy and no holds bar attitude towards making music, social commentary â whatever it is. One of the best things to me about R Kelly was actually, Aziz Ansari the comedian talks about it, but he put out this song called echoes where he talks about how he wants to make a girl echo. And everybody wondered what it meant to make her âechoâ. So what R Kelly does is put a video out online of him literally going through the Websterâs Dictionary and reading the definition of echo. Or at least explaining the definition of echo so clearly where itâs just like, thatâs what it means. Kellâs is the best.
You posted a little while back on Instagram that youâre planning on leaving Vancouver at the end of the month to pursue other projects. Can you give any insight into those plans or projects?
One is to go tattoo in Montreal at a street shop with a bunch of really talented artists who do similar work to myself. I think it would be nice to be around some guys who have similar interests in tattooing. And other projects; I was recently in Hong Kong working on a project called Sundayâs Grocery, which is the same people who own Yard Bird, which is like a fancy liquor store that did take-away sandwiches and whatnot. Thereâs hope of maybe expanding that project into something different. And who knows. I like to talk, I like to meet people. Weâll see where the gift of gab takes me.
Best of luck to you, man.
 Follow Dan on Instagram / Tumblr 1 / Tumblr 2Â
Portrait: SDD
All other photos snagged from Danâs Tumblr/Instagram
I recently went back to Slow Down Tattoo Studio in Railtown to get another piece from Dan and to talk tattooing, his style, progression, brown eyed panthers and what his next moves are. Roughly three-years ago I was exploring the streets of Vancouver â the city I had recently decided to call home.
