Keith Alexander Audio Tape Archival (Patreon)

I just got the first round of digitized audio files from our recent donation of original audio cassettes from the estate of influential piercer/scarification artist Keith Alexander - generously donated by Kathleen McGiveny - which are being prepped for a December release here on SD.

Keith was a regular at the NYC Gauntlet, getting worked on himself as well as bringing in friends to get pierced by the staff that included Mark Seitchik and Dan Kopka. 

Sensing a diamond in the rough, Mark and Dan asked to speak to Keith privately, offering him a year long apprenticeship at the NY location in 1992. On August 2nd 1994 (my twentieth birthday, for the sake of posterity) Jim Ward awarded Keith the title of “Senior Piercer.”

In April of 1996 Keith opened his own studio- Modern American Bodyarts- in the heart of Bay Ridge Brooklyn, where he offered piercing and scarification to a devoted client-base that included locals and folks who traveled across the country (or globe) to have Keith work on them. 

In time, he was piercing less frequently. He interned for Fox’s digital publishing department. He occasionally taught classes at New School University in New York City on Digital Project management and WWW Page design and site constructing. He continued to try harder, never content to do his best. When I invited him to attend the first Scarwars event he politely declined. “The things they’re doing, thats not for me”. He had done what he set out to do with body modification and knew that the time and place that he was part of was no more. 

Keith Alexander passed away on July 11th, 2005. Out for a bicycle ride on the Shore Road Path in Brooklyn a child cyclist riding ahead of him swerved, causing Keith to swerve quickly to compensate, his front tire hitting a pothole in the path causing him to ride full-speed into the guard rail.. The accident cost him his life.

Despite being an early adopter of social networking, Keith's larger than life presence in the body modification world is woefully under documented; we're pleased to be able to add these long lost tapes to you folks- if all goes well in mid December - to keep his legacy alive.