Moby put his passionate animal rights activism center stage during a lunch outing on Wednesday.
The 58-year-old electronic music artist was spotted dining out with a group of friends in Los Angeles at a vegan restaurant.
It was a fitting location for him, as the musician – who premiered his documentary Punk Rock Vegan Movie at the Slamdance Film Festival in January – proudly showed off his ‘Vegan For Life’ neck tattoo.
For the lunch outing, he was dressed casually in a blue and white checked button-up shirt with double chest pockets.
He sported his standard shaved head and some closely cropped, mostly white facial hair, along with black-framed Ray-Ban glasses.
He shares his passion: Moby, 58, sported his striking ‘Vegan For Life’ neck tattoo while having lunch in Los Angeles on Wednesday with a group of friends at a vegan restaurant
Although his neck tattoo was the most prominent and visible evidence of his animal rights and pro-vegan activism, he also had several other tattoos that emphasized his views.
Just next to his right eye was a small tattoo of a ‘V’ stacked over an ‘X’.
In 2019, Moby clarified on Instagram to his confused fans that the ‘V’ represented veganism – in which observers cut out all animal by-products, including dairy and eggs – while the ‘X’ stood for ‘straight edge’, referring to his abstinence from drugs and alcohol .
“Straight edge, because I simply cannot be a good activist if I’m in bed sick and hungover until 5 p.m. every day,” he explained at the time.
“And of course vegan because I care about animals, human health, climate change, rainforest deforestation, workers’ rights, water use, famine and all the other horrible things that result from using animals for food.”
At the time, he also debuted two large tattoos, consisting of block letters running down his arms and reading “Animal Rights.”
Years earlier, Moby — born Richard Melville Hall — took his passion for vegan living to a new level when he opened the once-popular plant-based restaurant Little Pine in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood.
However, the venue was plagued by employee conflict after failing to provide health care benefits for its staff when the restaurant temporarily closed at the start of the ongoing 2020 coronavirus pandemic, while also being out of contact, according to Eater Los Angeles.
Inked up: The electronic music artist wore a blue and white checked shirt and black Ray-Ban glasses. In addition to his neck tattoo, he also showed off ‘V’ and ‘X’ tattoos for ‘vegan’ and ‘straight edge’ respectively
Don’t miss: Around the same time he got those tattoos, he also had “Animal Rights” tattooed in block letters on his arms. Moby has been vegan for over thirty years; seen on October 29 in LA
Filmmaker: In January, his documentary Punk Rock Vegan Movie – about the intersection of punk music and animal rights activism – premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah; seen with producer Lindsay Hicks
The restaurant reopened later in 2020 and Moby stepped down as a silent partner while new management ran Little Pine, but it quietly closed last year.
Although the former restaurateur is best known as a musician, earlier this year he premiered a documentary that he wrote and directed – in addition to filming and scoring – titled Punk Rock Vegan Movie.
The non-fiction film maps the surprising connections and overlaps between punk music, veganism and animal rights activism.
When the film premiered at the Utah Film Festival, he said he hoped to give the film away for free after the premiere because he “couldn’t in good conscience try to profit from what is essentially a labor of love and activism ‘. ‘