Skin City may be the newcomer to Kingston’s tattoo scene. But the shop, which opened in March, has deep roots in the Hudson Valley and a bygone era of art.

Outside the shop there’s a Harley chopper with gleaming chrome handlebars, inside old-school flash art with images of geisha girls and battleships adorns the wall along with photos of the artists who defined the Skin City brand. It all started with George “Lumpy” Larson back in the late 1960s, a time when tattooing was largely an outlaw art form, illegal in some places, disreputable virtually anywhere with a clientele heavy on bikers, sailors and circus folk. Lumpy taught the craft to Jumbo, who in turn trained Tony Becker, who along with partner Chris Chisholm opened the first Skin City in Newburgh back in 1992. Skin City Kingston, meanwhile, is run by three partners — Greg Lodato, Bob Hunt and Jason Van Aken — who all apprenticed at the Newburgh shop before striking out on their own to carry on the Skin City brand.

That brand is focused on craftsmanship that goes beyond steady hands and an artist’s eye. Under the tutelage of their elders, the three partners learned how to make a tattoo machine from an old school bell and keep it finely tuned, as well as how to mix ink and essentially how to build, operate, and maintain everything that goes into a tattoo shop. It’s a body of knowledge, Lodato said, that’s disappearing in an era where tattoo kits come next day delivery courtesy of Amazon.

“We can fix and maintain our equipment, make everything,” said Lodato. “Even though we don’t have to do it anymore, we keep the tradition alive by not forgetting it.”

Despite the focus on tradition and running what Hunt calls a “fun, old-school biker shop,” the Skin City team has adapted to a new era where customers are no longer content to walk in and pick a design off the wall. When he began apprenticing, Hunt recalled, Chisholm wouldn’t let him use a dial-up internet connection to research new designs. Today, customers walk in with designs culled from online forums and very specific ideas about what and how they want to be inked.

“It’s definitely pushed the art,” said Hunt, who began tattooing in 2006, one year before the advent of the iPhone. “It’s pushed people’s expectations beyond what it used to be. You can’t fight it, you have to embrace it, so we just try to become better artists, better craftsmen to keep up with that development.”

Since opening in March, the Skin City partners have built a client base that includes longtime regulars from previous jobs as well as new faces. Keeping with an old tradition, the shop welcomes walk-ins, an increasingly rare thing in the tattoo world. They’ve also come to appreciate their location on a Midtown block that includes classic “Old Kingston” mainstays like Dallas Hot Weiners, the Shamrock tavern and Joe Beez deli. It’s a friendly vibe, one that extends inside the shop where the partners count a good proportion of their customers as personal friends. As for passing on the Skin City tradition to yet another generation of artists, Hunt says that remains to be seen.

“If somebody appears out of the woodwork that really seems like they’re the right person, the possibility is there,” said Hunt. “But it’s a serious thing.”