We All Bleed the Same
How Millie built UNDRGRND — a tattoo studio in San Francisco’s Mission Bernal corridor where no one has to earn the right to belong.
Finding Her Way In
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from spending years in rooms where you do not belong, where your presence is tolerated rather than welcomed, where you learn to make yourself small. Millie knows that exhaustion well. She carried it from Singapore to San Francisco and used it to build something better.
Born and raised in Singapore, Millie came up in the tattoo industry at a time and place that wasn’t built for her. She entered the trade in 2013, after a career in graphic design and advertising — creative work, but not yet the kind that felt truly her own. Tattooing was different. It was permanent. It mattered. She completed a three-year apprenticeship, learning her craft in a culture that, by her own account, was dominated by alpha-male energy. She was good at the work. She was also quietly miserable in the environment.
The Right Place
In 2016, she left.
The craft was hers. The environment never was. She had been looking, perhaps without fully naming it, for a place that felt correct, not just professionally, but in every sense. It was her cousin, her only queer family member, who pointed her toward California. Come to San Francisco, he told Millie. The tattoo scene is alive out there. It would turn out to be the most important suggestion anyone ever made to her.
Millie arrived in the city as a guest artist at an established shop, spending the first year finding her footing, building a clientele, and learning the rhythms of a new place. She was good at that, too – the patient work of earning trust, one client at a time. But she was already thinking about something larger. Not just a career. A space.
Building UNDRGRND
UNDRGRND opened in 2018, taking root in San Francisco’s Mission/Bernal neighborhood. What started as a practical need, Millie and her apprentice required a place to work that felt safe, that felt theirs, grew into something neither of them had fully anticipated. Word spread. Artists came. The studio now runs 13 artists across 17 stations, a full community orbiting a shared set of values.
The name says something. So does the spelling. UNDRGRND is not trying to be polished or palatable. It is trying to be real, a place that exists beneath the surface of an industry that has too often rewarded bravado over skill, attitude over empathy.
The Work Itself
At UNDRGRND, the process begins long before anyone sits in a chair. Millie is known for extensive consultations and collaborative design sessions with her clients, building each tattoo from a genuine conversation rather than imposing a vision from above. She asks questions. She listens. She understands that what a person chooses to carry on their skin for the rest of their life is not a casual decision, and she treats it accordingly.
“Tattooing is permanent,” she has said. “That permanence demands respect — for the client’s vision, their body, their story.” The approach is intentional, and it filters through the entire studio. At UNDRGRND, gender is irrelevant. Status is irrelevant. What matters is the work and the person sitting across from you. “We all bleed the same.”
A Home in the Mission
The studio’s commitment to inclusivity is not incidental; it is the point. Millie has spoken openly about the discomfort of working in environments that lacked openness and acceptance, and she built UNDRGRND as a direct answer to that experience. The LGBTQ+ community, in particular, has found in the studio a place where they can show up as themselves without bracing for judgment or mishandling.
Running a business in the Mission Corridor comes with its own set of challenges, economic pressure, and a neighborhood in constant flux, but Millie has expressed an unwavering affection for the area’s community spirit. The Mission has long been a home for queer life in San Francisco, its streets lined with institutions like El Rio, the beloved dive bar and outdoor venue that has hosted queer nights and community gatherings for decades. It is a neighborhood that understands, in its bones, what it means to carve out space for people who have been told there isn’t one. For Millie, it was never just a location. It was the right place.
What Comes Next
Millie is currently involved in Queercation, a queer and ally tattoo convention being organized by a crew of Bay Area tattooers for 2027 in San Francisco. The effort is collective — artists from across the region pooling their energy to build something the community has long deserved: a gathering space, a counterspace, a room where the people who spent too long not belonging finally get to be exactly who they are.
It is, in other words, the same thing she has always been doing. Just bigger.
UNDRGRND SF
Exploring the Mission Bernal Corridor
Mike Doherty serves as Chief Experience Officer at Greening Projects, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming underutilized urban spaces into vibrant green areas
