Kamloops Faces: This tattoo artist likes smoking tobacco the old-fashioned way

Falk Rutha with his pipe. (via Dairai Mutandiro)

If your lunch breaks take you around Third Avenue and Victoria Street, you've probably walked right by Falk Rutha.

And he was likely smoking a pipe, filled with tobacco. 

"I just think it's cool because you know, if you smoke cigarettes, you have this little thing and you always throw them out, they’re always gone,” Rutha tells KamloopsMatters. "A pipe... you have a pipe and take care of it and you clean it and it's with you; it’s not this disposable thing that you just throw away and get rid of."

Rutha is an artist at Life.Ink.Tattoo on Third Avenue. He says he loves his craft because he gets to draw all day and interact with different people at the same time.

He says he discovered tattooing after he completed his natural resource science degree at Thompson Rivers University. 

At first, he tattooed his friends at home, for free.

He says it was only when he realized that he could get paid well that he decided to get into the profession.

Kamloops Faces is an occasional feature KamloopsMatters does, featuring people we meet in the community in random ways.