Casey Hosch, Sol Tribe's manager, was as surprised as everyone else by the news. She and the other employees knew the shop would be closing this summer, but back in May, owner Kevin Strawbridge reassured them that it would be open through July.
"I just am so sorry to the people who didn't get the opportunity to go into Sol Tribe one last time," Hosch says. "I tried; we all tried. It is such a hard thing to navigate."
Sol Tribe had been a beacon for the tattoo community since it was opened by Alicia Cardenas in 2008. The shop was a thriving example of how the business could support a safe, welcoming place — until unimaginable tragedy struck on December 27, 2021, when Cardenas and Sol Tribe jewelry manager Alyssa Gunn-Maldonado were murdered; Gunn-Maldonado's husband, Jimmy Maldonado, was injured. The shooter moved on to commit mayhem in several other locations; in total, six people died, including the gunman.
Two weeks before she died, Cardenas had told Westword that she created Sol Tribe to be "a space that was more inclusive and more friendly to different walks of life, the queer community — taking it out of the biker, prisoner sort of realm and getting it into a space where anyone who wanted to could walk in and get a good tattoo and feel comfortable."
And that's exactly what she accomplished. But after she and Gunn-Maldonado were murdered, the peaceful space they'd worked so hard to foster was weighed down by the traumatic event. What remained, however, was a strong connection between those who worked there and their customers, all of whom wanted to keep the vision alive.
Sol Tribe closed for about a month after the shooting before its artists and piercers returned. "It was not long enough. But even during times like this, we had to get back to work," Hosch recalls. "There was only so much that we could do before the shop started to really suffer and before we as individuals really started to suffer. There was access to some victims' assistance...but it's so hard to quantify how long it's going to take to feel better after a situation like that."
Hosch started at Sol Tribe in 2010 as a piercing apprentice under Cardenas, and worked her way up to be part of the management team alongside Cardenas and Gunn-Maldonado. "Basically, Sol Tribe has been my entire life for fourteen years," she says, adding that Cardenas had been training her so that Hosch could take the reins one day. "I knew she wanted me to have the shop."
But there was nothing in writing stating that, and when she told Strawbridge she wanted to buy Cardenas's share, "I never got any answers or anything solid," she recalls. "I made my intentions very clear that I wanted in in some way, shape or form, but ultimately that I want 100 percent of the business because, no offense, but I signed up to work for Alicia Cardenas...not for him." (Strawbridge did not respond to Westword's inquiries.)
Finally, Hosch decided to take matters into her own hands and find a space of her own. "The communication I had with Kevin after I told him that this was my new path was that we had July," she says. "And then we didn't have July. We had a message in our business messaging system on July 1 an hour before we were supposed to be in there that the doors were closed and 'Come get your final check.' It's been a tornado since then."
Although she knew she was already on a path to leaving, "I'm just real upset, because I feel like my people got screwed out of a month of work," she says. "It's just another sign that I was not meant to do this with him. ... I think we have very different ideas of what community means."
Sol Tribe founder Alicia Cardenas.
Jake Cox
Her community extended beyond tattooing, too: She was breaking into murals, having worked first with Crush Walls and then Babe Walls to make installations with designs that reflected her Indigenous roots, which she also honored through her work as a piercer and tattoo artist.
That community-oriented ethos is something Hosch wants to reflect in her own place, Cold Moon Piercing & Tattoo, which she plans to open later this summer on South Broadway. Several artists and piercers will be joining her there, including Paul Shinichi, Emily Zinanti, Chloe Heffernan, J Partylord, Andrea Ferko and Rio Wolf. Zinanti and Heffernan will be part of her management team, which will reflect her experience with Gunn-Maldonado and Cardenas at Sol Tribe. "Alicia was all about educating and giving people opportunities, and I am trying to honor that, so my management team consists of three powerful women — me, Emily and Chloe," Hosch says.
"To this day, I don't know why she [Cardenas] chose me, but I just feel so much gratitude toward those two women for helping me become a better person. The information that those two had — would have, still — within their beings, within their soul, within their makeup of who they are — I can't believe I got to see and be with that and work with that."
Gunn-Maldonado's husband, Jimmy, has opened his own piercing shop, Wolf and Goat Tattoo & Piercing, at 1221 Pecos Street, #160. "I'm so happy for him," Hosch says. "I really think that he's going to thrive being his own boss."
While the prospect of a new space is exciting and lifts a tremendous "weight off my shoulders," Hosch says the grief of leaving what Cardenas created at Sol Tribe can still be overwhelming. "I just have to keep remembering that they're still around, because I do feel like I kind of left them there," Hosch says, holding back tears. "I really know in the depths of my heart that Alicia just wanted me out of there. Not just me — all of us."
But she also says she knows that with the new shop, she is entering "the next phase of healing." And like Sol Tribe, she wants Cold Moon to be an inclusive, welcoming place of healing in itself.
"I really couldn't have done this without my crew; they mean the world to me, and I know they mean the world to Alicia and Alyssa," she says. "The goal is to keep everyone happy and working and have a fresh start. ... We have been really pushing a safe-space environment for the underdog. We want to uplift women and folks of color and queers, and we also just want to survive and be in a space and where we feel comfortable, too. ...
"All my people just want to do good tattoos, to produce good piercings and make people sparkly and make people feel good," she concludes. "Because at the end of the day, that's why I do it: I love, love, love after I finish a session with a client and they're just beaming. And I see it all day, every day. And that helps keep me going."
