More from Houston 1976 (Patreon)

Dave Yurkew's 1976 Houston Tattoo Convention, often cited as the first tattoo convention, quite simply, wasn't. There were organized events before it, though certainly not to the scale of the convention hosted January 24-25th, 1976- but it can certainly be considered the template for the events that tattoo convention evolved into. 

Lyle Tuttle in a March 2016 interview with Craig Hlavaty- "Tattooing blew up like an aortic aneurysm after the convention." Lyle was also quoted as saying that Houston was "the event that changed tattooing forever.”

One attendee of the convention was retired electrician/part time tattoo artist and body piercer Sailor Sid Diller, who showed off his pierced penis and gave interviews with the press about body piercing; an early example of piercing's interaction with the mainstream. 

None of that has anything to do with this photo by Robin Ryan, but hey....