In the morning of Saturday at 9:25 am, October 8, local tattooing legend Eddie Funk passed away.

R.I.P. Philadelphia Eddie.

Edward Thomas Funk was an American tattoo artist who brought it under the name Crazy Philadelphia Eddie to regional prominence. He organized the first tattoo conventions in the United States and founded 1976, first US Tätowierervereinigung, the National Tattoo Club of the World.

Edward Funk got his first tattoo at the age of 15 years, it was a skull. In 1952 he began to work for a tattoo artist named Brooklyn Blackie, also known as Electric Rembrandt. After a short time he opened together with Lou Rubino a studio on Rockaway. He later ran his own studio in Coney Iceland. After in 1961 the Food and Drug Administration from New York to some hepatitis cases forbade tattooing and the studios started off, radio moved to Philadelphia, opened a studio and founded a company for Tätowiererausstattungen, the United Tattoo Supply Company. In 1976 was radio co-founder and first president of the National Tattoo Club of the World, which was founded in 1978 renamed the National Tattoo Association. In 2008 he played and Others with Don Ed Hardy and Lyle Tuttle in the documentary Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry: The Life of Norman K. Collins with in 2009, radio in the exhibition skin and Bones: tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor in Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia part.

Crazy Philadelphia Eddie has entered hospice care. We are saddened to hear of the decline of tattoo’s liveliest characters. Edward Funk was known as Crazy Philadelphia Eddie to his friends and the entire tattoo industry. Tattooing since 1952, Funk has not only shaped, influenced, and equipped the tattoo business, he’s also worked with other artists to protect it in New York State’s highest court.

“Crazy Eddie” started tattooing in Coney island, NY, in 1952. When New York City banned tattooing in 1961—he was one of the defendants who took the fight to the New York Supreme Court—he moved to Philadelphia, opening a shop at Ninth and Cherry.

In the 1960s, Mr. Eddie Funk opened several tattoo shops on Race Street in Chinatown, Philadelphia. Deemed as urban blight by city planners, this cityscape was home to bums sleeping on the streets where prostitutes worked, despondent drunks dwelling in flophouses, and industrious grifters and downtrodden–yet honest–characters hustling and gambling for easy fortunes. Amongst the handful of tattooers in this neighborhood, Eddie hung his flash on the wall, unpacked his stencils, mixed his inks, started tattooing, and joined the fray.

If interested in buying Eddie's mixed inks & supplies of his Headquarter Cam Supply California USA at http://www.camtattoo.com/cam/items.asp?Cc=PHILADELPHIAINK&iTpStatus=0&Tp&Bc

He recently drafted his memoirs, and explained what made him decide to write the series of books on his life:

“My fourth wife, while I was in the hospital with a heart attack, cleaned out my safe and took all my retirement money. So I had to do something so I could earn a few dollars, so I could get a drink. So I decided to write the story of my life.”

In later years, Eddie could be seen on 4th Street, walking his toy poodle and sporting his signature hairstyle with blazer and wide-collar shirt. He was a throwback to another time, a hard-living tattooer who refused to compromise.

Crazy Philadelphia Eddie on Vimeo Video: https://vimeo.com/162721074

More information about Eddie had interview with Inked last September 2012 on issue,

Crazy Philadelphia Eddie discusses with INKED about why he wanted to unite tattoo artists, his fight against the New York City Department of Health’s ban on tattooing, writing his books, and his recent experience on the convention circuit.

INKED questioned: You tattooed for more than 50 years, opened numerous shops, and started the National Tattoo Association. What was it about tattooing that made you want to accomplish all these things?

EDDIE answered in his words: Well, I think it really had to do with Chinese food. [Laughs.] What made me want to accomplish these things? When I’d seen how authorities, people with authority, health departments, and city officials wanted to do away with tattooing, my goal was to protect tattooing, to keep tattooing alive and flourishing, and the way to do this was to unite the tattoo artists. In uniting, we had power. It was money that could be collected from everyone, and you could get lawyers and fight opposing people that wanted to do away with something that has been going on since time began. Tattooing, they say, is one of the first two professions. Prostitution and tattooing—we don’t know which came first, but I like them both.

INKED questioned: As you say, tattooing has always been under fire, and it was banned in New York City and throughout much of the East Coast in the 1960s. What was it like fighting the ban in court?

Eddie answered: It was a battle that I felt I could not lose. I didn’t feel that I had all the winning components on my side, but I felt, if I lose this, that’s my life. My life was tattooing, so I had to win this battle.

Inked questioned: You’ve never done anything except tattoo?

Eddie answered: Right.

Inked questioned: And you chose your profession at the age of 15?

Eddie answered: Yes.

Inked questioned: And the guys before you—Brooklyn Blackie, Max Peltz, Jack Redcloud—were they always coming under the same fire from the authorities?

Eddie answered: Brooklyn Blackie used to say—he used to get raided when I worked with him—he’d say, “We get raided three or four times a year. You have to expect to be arrested for some minor shit like tattooing a minor every two or three years.” Every two or three years you had to expect this to happen to you. It is part of the profession, part of the trade, and part of being a pirate.

Inked questioned: What do you remember about the New York State Supreme Court trial?

Eddie answered: I kept saying to myself, “This judge [Justice Jacob Markowitz] is for tattooing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he lifted up his robe and had some tattoos on him” because everything the health department was throwing at us, the judge was saying to our lawyer, “Don’t you object to that?” and the judge appeared to be extremely fair and in favor of saving the tattooing. There was no jury. It was up to the judge. At the very end of the trial, the judge said he has heard enough, he will take everything under advisement, and give us his verdict in a short time. My lawyer said that short time could be months, could be three months, six months, a year. He said, “This is a big case, and he can’t make a decision like that. He’ll have to take that under advisement, and talk it over with other judges and lawyers before he can even make a decision because you can’t make a decision to break the law, and you can’t make a decision that is unfair.” So it would take a lot of advisement before he could make a decision.

Inked questioned: How underground was tattooing in New York during this ordeal?

Eddie answered: At the time, Coney Island Freddie [one of the case’s plaintiffs] lived and worked in this housing development that was a secured community where you had to come through a little gate. A security guard there would ask you who you were coming to see and phone the people. So Freddie was tattooing inside this little fortress, and therefore, he wasn’t going to get arrested. He would tattoo the people, and if somebody was coming who was not welcome, the security guard would alert Fred by saying, “so-and-so is here to see you.” So Freddie was having a great business inside this little security community. I had already been established in Philadelphia, and when the decision came down [in 1963] that tattooing could be practiced safely in the city of New York, and the health department should get officials to supervise it, and that … it was legal to open … Freddie and I were not interested. We were happy with what we were doing. A few people did open in New York, and then the health department came back with an appeal to overrule the verdict [in 1964], and they eventually won [in 1966] because there was nobody there to fight.

Inked questioned: But if you were living there, you would have fought it?

Eddie answered: If I was living in New York, I would have fought it. Yes.

Inked questioned: You traveled a lot. It seems that you were always going somewhere. What effect have your travels had on your tattooing?

Eddie answered: It improved it. It gave me more knowledge. I traveled through this country and Europe. I traveled into Canada, and I always went to see the tattoo artists wherever I went to learn what I could from them, to learn about tattooing itself, about the rules and regulations, and I just strengthened myself to where I was very knowledgeable—there wasn’t anything that went on in tattooing that I didn’t know about. That is because I traveled and got opinions from north, south, east and west. Yeah.

Inked questioned: Through your travels, did you meet a lot of people who later joined the National Tattoo Association?

Eddie answered: Yes! In meeting all of these people in my travels, I had their business cards, which I saved. And when I had the idea to start this association, I just wrote to each one of these people and told them my plan, and being that I met them—and I make friends very easily—all of these people I met were glad to sit down and talk with me, and they agreed with what I was trying to do. It would be something that would benefit all of us, and it was very easy to start this national club.

Inked questioned: Was the main goal to unite the tattooers, and to have some power so the authorities couldn’t harass you?

Eddie answered: Yes, that was the main goal. I’m thinking, if you saved all the cards and wrote everyone, back then there were not many tattoo artists. So there were not a lot of people to contact. It was fairly safe to say, between tattoo shops, it was 300 miles, so there wasn’t that many tattooers—and I got to meet them all. Or if I didn’t meet them, I knew of them, and I got their phone numbers through phone books and other tattooers. I contacted each tattooer and I started this club. I thought I contacted all the tattooers in the world, but I didn’t. I later estimated there were 300 people tattooing on the globe, and if we could have that many in our little association-club, and each one paid their dues, we would have quite a bankroll to fight whatever steamroller came at us.

Inked questioned: That was in the 1970s?

Eddie answered: Yeah.

Inked questioned: And you retired in 1992?

Eddie answered: That’s a tough question. I retired so many times, I don’t know which one was the real one.

Inked questioned: But you don’t tattoo anymore?

Eddie answered: No.

Inked questioned: Now you’ve been working on a series of books about your life. What inspired you to write your books?

Eddie answered: People. People said to me, “Eddie, you know so much about tattooing, and you lived in such times that don’t exist anymore, that if you don’t write it down and tell everybody, when you’re gone, it will be lost forever.” So I said, “Okay, I can write a book.” I decided I’ll do that; I’ll write a book.

Inked questioned: What do you want people to understand or come away with after reading your books?

Eddie answered: How things were, how things are, and how things will be. The future does not look good. The past is gone and lost forever. It cannot be brought back. But some of the ways, it would be neat to see them come to life again. And the now is now, and if you don’t do it now, it will never be done. It will be lost, and the future does not look good. And if we don’t bring some of the past back, we’re all doomed.

Inked questioned: You’ve been to 25 tattoo conventions in the last year. What do you like about them?

Eddie answered: The excitement! Each convention is a little different, each crowd—although there are many people who attend quite a few conventions, conventioneers, I call them—there is always a local group where the convention is held that is different than the last one or the next one. And the excitement of talking to these people, the flair and the enthusiasm that each individual has, spills on to the next and to the next. And it just keeps getting better and better. The excitement of seeing the new styles of tattooing, that will never end because tomorrow is different than yesterday.

Inked questioned: How do people receive you at conventions?

Eddie answered: The response I am getting is overwhelming to me. The kindness, the love, and the respect I get from these conventions is just—it overwhelms me. I didn’t realize that I had such an influence on so many individual people.

Inked questioned: Is there any truth to the rumor that you threw the first tattoo convention in the United States?

Eddie answered: No, Dave Yurkew threw the first tattoo convention in Houston, TX. And two years later I did one, forming the National Tattoo Club.

Inked asked a final question: When you threw the convention for the National Tattoo Club, what was the main goal?

Eddie's final answered: To unite everybody, to get everybody together and be a union. The movie industry had their conventions and gave awards to the good actors and to the supporting actors, for the scenery, for the ideas, and I figured that if we could do that for the tattooing, there would be no end, no-no limits to where we could go.

Sent your thoughts in prayers to Eddie's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/crazy.philadelphia.eddie/

More information on Eddie's Web Links:

www.crazyphiladelphiaeddie.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2937498/
http://tattooartistmagazineblog.com/2011/09/14/jay-brown-the-life-and-times-of-crazy-philadelphia-eddie/
https://tattoosdayuk.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/erics-adventures-with-philadelphia-eddie/