It was past midnight in a dark bar in Bushwick last summer, and the man at the counter was furious. Short and covered in ominous tattoos — including one across his forehead that read “I WANT TO KILL YOU” — the man accused the bartender of using the wrong liquor in his drink. Incensed, he slammed his glass down, grinding the bar to a halt.
The crowd inside Post No Bills, a nondescript haunt frequented by Brooklyn creative types, identified the source of the disturbance immediately. The man, Isaiah Camacho, was a roving tattoo artist known as “Toothtaker,” and accusations against him had circulated in whisper networks for years. On the night that he surfaced in Brooklyn, he was wanted in Arizona on charges that included sexually assaulting women he had tattooed.
Asked to leave the bar, Mr. Camacho refused, breaking glasses and lunging at the crowd with a corkscrew. When the bartender pulled out a baseball bat, Mr. Camacho finally left, swearing to return and “spray” the place with bullets, according to someone who heard him.
Rattled, the bartender locked the door, keeping the crowd huddled inside. Finally, an hour later, they slowly trickled out. No one filed a police report; this was not the kind of crowd that called the cops.