The Aftercare Club

Welcome back to the clubhouse, pookies! This week, we’re getting into the stuff tattoo clients are really wondering about. From whether tattoos hurt more on your period to the unpredictable world of tattooing over scars and stretch marks, we’re talking pain, healing, numbing cream, body image, and the surprisingly therapeutic parts of getting tattooed. We also get into the importance of speaking u...

Welcome back to the clubhouse, pookies! This week the crew gets deeply personal about the healing power of tattooing, sharing beautiful stories on bodily autonomy, overcoming severe eczema trauma, and breaking through cultural stereotypes. Wrap it all up with the official launch of our new listener-driven segment, "The Vault," and a rapid-fire round of our current obsessions (including a massive T...

Now that you’ve met us, we settle in a bit more and really get into it. We talk about how we all found each other, what it’s like building a space that actually feels safe and creative, and why Empire exists in the first place. There’s a lot about shop culture, the art scene in Atlanta, and what it means to try and do things differently. Of course, it doesn’t stay serious for long. We go through a...

Welcome to the clubhouse, baby! This is our pilot, so you’re catching us in real time, figuring it out, laughing a lot, and getting comfortable on the mic. We get into what “aftercare” means to us beyond just tattoos, but not before going completely off the rails. There are chaotic icebreakers (including what food we would be), an introduction to “gands,” and the very real experience of casting ou...