Tattoos

Jumat, 27 Desember 2013

Alfredo's Back Piece Honors Mexican History (from the 4th Annual NYC Urban Tattoo Convention)

One of our lost posts of the summer was from the NYC Urban Tattoo Convention. I met a guy named Alfredo who shared this back piece:

Alfredo explained, “It’s all Mexican history … all about independence about Mexico … from Aztecs … to the independence from Spain.”

He credited Marco Rodriguez from Inked City Tattoo in Trenton, New Jersey with this amazing work.

Thanks to Alfredo for sharing this with us here on Tattoosday!

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Minggu, 15 Desember 2013

Barred For Life: An Encounter and A Tattoosday Book Review

As a Gen-X child, the Black Flag bars are familiar to me. I’ll be honest, I was never a huge fan, but I had friends that were, coming of age in the 1980’s.

I remember first seeing Black Flag on film in the groundbreaking The Decline of Western Civilization, screened at the University of Hawaii Physical Science Auditorium, whose film series had a cult following among teens in Honolulu in the early 80’s. It was there that I saw Rocky Horror (many times), Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards, Russ Meyer's Up!, The Song Remains the Same, and the Black Sabbath/Blue Oyster Cult concert film, Black and Blue.

And, Decline.

The film didn’t shake my core like it did many of my friends, but my middle-aged memory cites it as my first encounter with Black Flag. Their emblematic bars found their way onto my notebooks, sharing the doodling of metal band names and logos. The bars remind me of adolescence and rebellion.

Other people’s rebellion, not mine, mind you.

I won’t claim to be someone I’m not, or someone I wasn’t.

I don’t have any Black Flag tattoos on me, and I never will.

This past summer, on my way to a job interview, I was in lower Manhattan in a suit on a sweltering day when I met Harley, a woman with a lot of ink. I had a few minutes before my interview and asked her about her work. She showed me her back:

Running into Harley and having her share this tattoo seemed fortuitous, as I had just received a copy of Barred for Life in the mail. Subtitled “How Black Flag’s Signature Logo Became Punk Rock’s Secret Handshake,” this book was on my list of titles to review, and there had just been several events in New York celebrating its release.

I envisioned a big post, combining Harley’s tattoo and the review. This is that post (obviously), but just fashionably late to the party.

A word first about Harley’s tattoo, which she credited to Troy Denning at Invisible NYC. Harley told me, when I asked her why she got the "Rise Above" tattoo, simply, “to rise above.” She added later, “And to … let nothing keep you down...”

As for Barred for Life, I can’t think of a more compelling gift for someone who is either a 1) punk/hardcore fan; or 2) a fan of simple tattoos that mean a whole lot. So, if you know someone looking to use a bookstore gift card this holiday season, tell them to special order this book.

Let’s face it, the Bars are fairly rudimentary – four rectangular blocks offset in equidistant parallel orientation. Barred for Life unveils a wide array of variations on the tattoo, which anchors album art and other punk sentiment. The really compelling aspect of each tattoo is that of the interview that accompanies it.

We get an inside view into the minds of people who have been “barred for life,” including the fan’s relationship with the band, the story behind the tattoo (right up our alley!), and the favorite singer/song/album trifecta. We’re also treated to interviews with current and former band members, with Henry Rollins noticeably absent.

The scope of this volume is magnificent. The number of people who are “barred for life” is staggering, just based on this sampling alone. Think of the thousands of others who have been similarly branded – where a tattoo of a band logo goes above and beyond one’s appreciation of the group itself.

That said, this is more than just a tattoo book – it’s a chronicle of a mindset, a visual exploration of a family that united around a symbol that inserted itself as a logo of a punk band, and evolved into a cultural icon.

Thanks to Harley for sharing her Black Flag tattoo with us here on Tattoosday, and to Stewart Dean Ebersole for putting together such a great chronicle of bars tattoos.

More info on the book here.

Kamis, 28 November 2013

Thanksgiving Re-Post: A Holiday Tattoo from 2010

Every year at Thanksgiving, I am thankful for many things, with my lovely wife and two amazing daughters at the top of the list. My new job cracks the top five this year, although it might appear as though my intense love of this blog is suffering as a result. As I've said before, you, the readers out there in the world, are also people for whom I am thankful. Mahalo, as they say in my childhood home, for visiting often.

Posts have been few and far between, I realize, this fall. Nonetheless, I wanted to celebrate the holiday with this post from Thanksgiving 2010, slightly edited, which appeared here.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

In honor of the holiday, I am sharing this, my newest tattoo, located above my knee on my right thigh:

This was done at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn yesterday as part of the shop's $75 Thanksgiving Tattoo Special ...

For those of you just tuning in, check the pre-post here, which includes all the Thanksgiving flash designed for the occasion. I asked readers to vote on which tattoo to get, and this one sneaked out a narrow victory over the traditional Native American profile.

I like this design because it combines a lot of traditional tattoo elements and delivers an image with a sociopolitical subtext. We have the traditional American flag and handshake designs, but the added element of crossed fingers serves as a reminder that, despite apparent good intentions, there was subsequently a historical betrayal of that initial good will.

But that's just one perspective, of course, and the Thanksgiving holiday focuses on the positive in our society. The mere existence of the tattoo reminds me to be thankful, which I alluded to in my original post.

I was fortunate enough to have BJ as my artist again. He had inked my Friday the 13th tattoo last August, and I appreciate that he works quickly and concisely.

BJ at Work

It was nice, also, that this design was one of his contributions to the flash sheet, as he was kind enough to embellish slightly on the original design, and it always seems better when an artist is tattooing his or her own design. As for the idea behind it, he was trying to represent graphically a broken treaty. I'm extremely pleased with the end result.
...

I want to thank all of the readers who voted for designs, and for everyone who reads and supports the site.

And thanks again to ... BJ at Hand of Glory, and to my family, at home in Brooklyn and across the U.S., for their support

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I can contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Minggu, 17 November 2013

Jeff Shares Some Amazing Work by Caesar Tattoo

Last Sunday, I met a guy named Jeff at my local laundromat, where I happen to meet a lot of the contributors to Tattoosday, it seems.

Jeff has a ton of work, including neck tattoos and some amazing black and gray sleeves. Turns out tattoos were created by Caesar, an amazing artist who works out of New York City.

He allowed me to grab a few samples of his work:

And this spine running down the length of his arm:

Unfortunately, these photos really don't do the work justice, but I was able to find some of the work on his Facebook page here.

You can check out more of this amazing artist's portfolio at Caesar Tattoo in Manhattan's East Village. Our friends at Needles & Sins ran a short profile of Caesar here. Jeff even told me that some of his work has ended up in one of Marisa Kakoulas' black and gray tattoo compendia.

You can see an even more extensive collection of Caesar's work on his Facebook page here.

Thanks to Jeff for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday!

Rabu, 06 November 2013

Five Years Gone: I Still Miss You, Tom

When Tattoosday was but a wee little blog, with big hopes and dreams, one of the early champions and supporters was my friend, Tom.

Five years ago today, he died suddenly and tragically. I still miss him.

Although the memories fade, his spirit still lives on in the pages of Tattoosday.

That said, I share this post, from 2007, featuring my friend Tom's tattoo:

"This is the sole tattoo of my friend and co-worker, Tom.

Tom designed and drew the art upon which this tattoo was based.

The Reaper is posed on Tom's biceps/deltoid and has resided there since 1984, when its host was a young lad of eighteen.

This is Tom's only tattoo and he has no plans to get more. He is proud of the fact that, because he designed it and because he then tore up the original design, it is a one-of-a-kind piece. He said that it was very painful because of the amount of black ink that went into it.

The tattoo was inked by Dean at Lola's Tattoos, then in Cliffside Park, but now in Bogota, New Jersey. Tom got this tattoo "because it was cool," although the tattooer tried to convince him not to get it because it was "too mean" for him. Twenty-three years later, Tom says he has no regrets about his ink.

Thanks, Tom!"

Last night, on the eve of this somber anniversary, my Google Play shuffle served up the following song, which I had the pleasure of seeing live with Tom at Jones Beach just a few months before he died:

Thinking of you, Tom, I still miss you, and Tattoosday misses you too.

Minggu, 03 November 2013

Darcy Shares Some Words of Wisdom

This fall, I found myself in a new neighborhood during the days, down on Broad Street. One of the new people in my life, Darcy, is an employee of a local coffee and pastry shop. I noticed she had some ink on her inner wrists, and one day, after her shift, she let me take this photo:

Her wrists state "90% Work - 10% Talent."

Darcy explains:

"I had a teacher ... his recipe for success was that, if you work at anything, you can become good. It's your talent that will make you great. You can't rely on your talent alone - talent's only 10% of that equation."

She got this at a vegan tattoo shop in Portland, Oregon called Scapegoat Tattoo.

Thanks to Darcy for sharing these words of wisdom with us here on Tattoosday!

Minggu, 13 Oktober 2013

Andrea's Dancing Bears Show Her Dead-ication to Her Favorite Band

A couple months back, I met Andrea, on 3rd Avenue in Bay Ridge, and she shared these bears which are one of the many graphic representations of the band, The Grateful Dead:

I recognized the design right off, so I asked Andrea why she chose a Dead tattoo. She responded, "because they were my favorite band ever since I was a little kid." She added, "my dad used to listen to them, so I kinda got into 'em that way."

When I asked how many times she had seen them, she told me, "I've only seen Bob Weir and Phil Lesh. I saw them two summers ago."

She initially credited this tattoo to Jim Palmer at Moon Gravel Arts in Milford, Pennsylvania, but later corrected me, via e-mail:

"i actually did that one it was the first tattoo i ever did as practice... jim did ...all of my other tattoos however ... he has great work ... u should still check him out, jim palmer is his name and moon gravel arts ... is his shop ... have a grateful day:)"

Thanks to Andrea for sharing her self-inked dead-icated tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!