Gus Turned Its Office Into a Tattoo Parlor. People Left With Permanent Ink

The Lower East Side creative strategy shop honored its space—a former tattoo parlor—with a Friday the 13th flash night.

Most agencies celebrate milestones with happy hours. Gus turned its Lower East Side office back into a tattoo parlor.

The space at 174 Rivington Street has a past life — it used to be Rivington Tattoo, a neighborhood shop with its own following. When Friday the 13th rolled around, Gus leaned into the building’s history and hosted a flash tattoo night, inviting New York’s creative community to come in, pick a design and leave with something permanent.

The space remembers

Gus brought in a professional tattoo artist and designed custom flash sheets featuring the agency’s logo alongside dozens of original pieces — starburst icons, pigeons, cacti, boomboxes, chain links, a snake with a banner. The designs were scattered across tables for browsing, cut into individual cards for easy selection. A “Tat Our Cork” wall invited guests to leave drawings and signatures on the space itself.

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This wasn’t a temporary tattoo activation dressed up as something edgier. People sat down, got inked and walked out with real tattoos on arms, legs and ankles.

Skin in the game

Co-founder Graham Douglas didn’t just host the event — he rolled up his sleeve and got one himself. That kind of commitment tends to set the tone for the room.

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The turnout reflected it. Dozens of people from New York’s creative community showed up, and the energy was more neighborhood block party than branded experience. People lingered, picked through flash sheets, watched each other get tattooed and drew on the walls.

Clients showed up too

Gus clients Harry’s and Vacation supplied products for the pop-up. Harry’s brought its new Tattoo Frost — aftercare for fresh ink — while Vacation contributed goods of its own. It was a quiet nod to the kind of client relationships that extend past the brief.

Why it works

There’s something worth paying attention to here. Gus didn’t manufacture a culture moment — it found one living inside the walls of its own office and had the sense to bring it back. The Friday the 13th flash tradition is well-established in tattoo culture, and the Rivington Tattoo history gave Gus a legitimate claim to it.

The result was a night that brought the agency’s community, clients and creative sensibility together in a way that — to borrow the obvious line — left a mark.