No Surrender Tattoo is a shop dedicated to educating their clientele and producing long-lasting tattoos.

As the only tattoo shop in Airway Heights, No Surrender is celebrating their five year anniversary on Feb 1. Originally the shop owner, Matt Quale, picked this location by taking into consideration the Air Force Base and tattooing military personnel as the driving force, but after opening the shop it was a surprise as to how much more local clientele there was.

With four tattoo artists in the shop they are able to do every kind of style including Japanese, Black and Grey, American Traditional, but really they specialize in bold tattoos. The shop is also known for doing all kinds of coverups, varying from name cover-ups to bad tattoo cover-ups.

“Tattooing has gone a route of a style that we believe will not hold up and something we are really true to is doing tattoos and educating people, rather than just slapping whatever the customer wants on them and sending them out,” said Quale. “A lot of times that’s going to  wind up with the customer having a really bad tattoo. Customers don’t always like to hear that but we try to persuade them to do it the right way, not our way necessarily, just the right way so you get a tattoo that holds up forever.”

Like many tattoo shops, No Surrender is surrounded with flash, a sheet of paper that has multiple designs on it, covering every inch of wall space. Flash can help customers to pick out designs they would want tattooed.

“The cool thing about the flash we have here in the shop is it’s not the national flash that you can get from every supplier,” said Quale. “Everything you see on our walls is all from people we know personally, if it’s not by us it’s from people we know literally on a personal level. You’re seeing stuff that you won’t see in every single tattoo shop you go to. So if you’re getting something here just because it’s flash on the wall, it doesn’t mean you’re ever going to see it on somebody else.”

The shop is set up so they can accommodate to walk-ins and therefore the waitlist for an appointment is usually short. Walk-ins are on a first come, first serve basis.

“We’re an old school street shop, so we will take walk-ins. If we can draw it on the spot, we will if we have time …” Qaule said.

Quale described the other tattoo artists at his shop as trustworthy artists who turn in quality work and are all very friendly. He says they are close and it feels a lot like a family.  Andrew Eldin, one of the tattoo artists, has been with the shop since the beginning and actually learned to tattoo from Quale.

“The thing I like most about tattooing in general is I’ve always had to work hard and I like having something where I can continue to work hard and continue to progress,” said Eldin. “I’ve had a lot of jobs where I work hard and I just do the same thing everyday and then nothing changes. Now it like directly reflects so that’s always been my favorite thing about it … I’ve been to a lot of shops where everything is set up really medical or everyone is separated, but here we’re all in this big open room and I like that, it’s kind of like a family and community.”

The shop is located on 12924 W Sunset Highway. They are open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. They offer 10 percent off for military and students, with ID verification.