A lot has changed since Alex Neron got his first tattoo at the age of 15. “Back then, the only place you could get a tattoo in Ottawa was at a parlour run by biker gangs, with a catalogue of numbered tattoos to choose from,” he recalls. Like many heavily inked individuals, Alex’s penchant for tattooing snowballed until, as he explains, “I was covered in horrible tattoos by the time I was 20 and wanted to learn how to draw better ones, myself.”
Alex met his soon-to-be mentor, Stephane, while covering up a flaming ace of spades tattoo, and from then on, his passion for tattooing became indelible. Today, Alex and his wife, Marta, are key players in the wildly popular and widespread world of custom tattooing as the owners of Railbender,one of the most popular tattoo shops and art galleries in Ottawa.