Arts & Culture

Bill Stevenson, aka “Bill Waverly,” Has Been Inking Baltimoreans For a Quarter Century

The artist behind Waverly Tattoo Company opened his first shop in 1999 and went on to launch Waverly Color, which sells high-quality tattoo ink and acrylic paints.
—Photography by Christopher Myers

Bill Stevenson got his first tattoo in 1985 on Howard Street next to the old Greyhound bus station at a joint called Tattoo Tux, allegedly because of its owner’s sharp wardrobe.

There were not a lot of other options in Baltimore in those days. There was Tattoo Charlie’s, a parlor above the Midway Bar on The Block, which had been tattooing hula girls on the biceps of sailors since the 1940s. But the original Charlie had died by the time Stevenson was of legal age. There was the Dragon Moon Tattoo Palace in Glen Burnie and a few others, including Gypsy John’s, whose owner drove a tow truck by day and operated an underground Greektown shop at night because, it was suggested, the City Health Department closed at 5.

“Dan Higgs had just started working for Tattoo Tux and he’d tattooed like three people by then—himself, Harry McKenzie, and David Rhodes,” recalls Stevenson, now 60, in the licensed shop he owns, Waverly Tattoo Company, which also functions as a co-working art space, print shop, and indoor skatepark.

“We were all friends,” Stevenson continues, rolling up a sleeve to reveal the decades-old artwork. “I was number four. When it was my turn, Dan said, ‘How about a little demon head?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’”

Stevenson, McKenzie, Rhodes, and Higgs, who would later front the beloved Baltimore band Lungfish, had come of age together. In their late teens and early 20s, punk, skateboarding, graffiti writing—and later, tattooing—emerged from the era’s DIY ethos. Stevenson was into all of it (his 17-year-old son and friends use his mini-skate ramp now), but he didn’t start tattooing for a dozen years after his initial visit to Tattoo Tux.

After graduating from City College, he eventually earned an undergraduate degree in literature and considered teaching. Instead, he did everything from prep cooking to running a print shop to handling security at local raves. He’d remained interested in the history and art of tattooing, however. And after a craft immersion in Minneapolis, where a buddy had launched two businesses, Stevenson opened his first shop in 1999.

He launched Waverly Color in 2002, selling high-quality tattoo ink and acrylic paints, which remains an ongoing enterprise. He co-founded the Baltimore Tattoo Museum as well as the Waverly Brewery Company before selling his interests in both and refashioning his current space, a former Black & Decker building, in 2012.

Funny, big-hearted, and wry, his philosophy is painted on the underside of a skateboard that hangs in his studio: New Plan F*CK IT. If a creative friend needs tools, a screen printer, or commercial-quality printer—those ubiquitous “Baltimore Rat” bumper stickers are made here they come to see Stevenson. Of course, he’s always hatching his own new ideas. The last time cicadas turned up in 2021, for example, he designed a template and inked 334 personal tattoos of the once-every-generation bug.

“I did a few the last time they showed up and I was ready,” explains Stevenson, with a nod and smile. In general, he says, he simply wants to give people whatever tattoo they have in mind because, it goes without saying, it’s their body.

“Whether they feel they’re a Tweety Bird personality or a Tasmanian Devil, or they have an affinity for one thing or another, that’s up to them. People want tattoos for many reasons. Sometimes, it’s psychological body armor. Sometimes, it’s to commemorate something, good or bad. My job is to make them feel a little better when they leave than when they came in.”

After launching his ink-making operation, a fellow tattooer bestowed upon him the alter ego “Bill Waverly” and it’s not a stretch to suggest he’s become a familiar character himself in the Baltimore tattoo world, in the vein of Tattoo Tux and Tattoo Charlie. When he says he owes everything to tattooing, he’s not kidding, either. He met his wife, In Watermelon Sugar boutique owner Leslie Stevenson, when she accompanied a friend having some cover-up work done.

The funny thing after getting his first tattoo was that his mother somehow knew what he’d done as soon as he walked in the front door.

“I’d gone to the City-Poly game, then skateboarding, and I was going to tell her so she wouldn’t be shocked, but before I could, she said, ‘Did you get a tattoo?’ She gave me a tight-lipped, disapproving head shake.”

A decade and a bunch of tattoos later, she asked him not to get any more. Naturally, he went to New York soon afterward and got a “MOM” tattoo with a heart on his forearm and came home and showed it to her.

“She cried. It meant a lot to her.”