Angry Ink

Out Of Touch With Reality

I've been noodling around with the idea of writing about the reality shows for quite some time. I thought against it because I assume I don't have anything new to contribute to the flotsam of rants already out there. On the other hand, about 80% of people who end up in my chair mention the shows in some form or another, they ask if I watch them, and they ask what I think, so apparently people still give a shit about the industry's opinion. They're treated to one of my foamy-mouthed rants about it and I'd imagine a lot of them end up sorry they asked because I don't shut the hell up about it for a good thirty minutes or so. I finally decided to bite and write because I have had a few of you, my beautiful, patient readers, asking what I think of the shows. Despite my appearance of being a prickly asshole, I do aim to please, so here goes....

 

I hate the Tattoo "reality" shows. Picture Dr. Evil quotes around the word reality, because those shows are as far from real as I ever thought anything could get. There have been several reality shows about what I do for a living, and what I have seen is utter horse shit. It's entertaining, yes. But if reality TV is your lone source of information about any activity, industry or person, you're likely to be disappointed or even harmed when you encounter the actual reality of said activity, industry or person.

The Magic Of Editing

First and foremost, TV shows are constrained by time. The show has a limited amount of time per day to air, and that time is interrupted by commercial breaks. The show must be edited for two things: length, and what I call "hang-onability." The producers of said show want you to stay tuned until after the commercials. So, they edit the program to make it appear as if something dramatic and exciting is about to happen just as they cut to commerical, to keep you hanging on to see what that might be. Even if nothing exciting actually happens, they'll still edit it in a way that makes you think it will, just to keep the ratings up.

I can tell you this...most of tattooing is really, really boring. If you've ever gotten a tattoo that takes longer than an hour, you already know this. I have had a few occasions where the forces aligned so perfectly that the customer and I hit it off like we'd been best buddies forever. We laughed and goofed around and had the best time one could have at work, and we became facebook friends and hung out a few times and all that. However, that is usually not the case. Most of the time, I have little in common with my customers other than tattoos or possibly music. Often there is an age gap, and I'm kind of a weirdo recluse who's into some really lame stuff. So, initial introductions aside, we chat a little bit, and then the rest of the time is just me cranking away, doing my job and they're just sitting there taking it. Getting a tattoo is pretty much like sitting on a Greyhound bus. You're uncomfortable, you have a stranger way too close to you, it seems to take forever and you may or may not make boring small talk with that stranger. Get on a bus, sit next to somebody you don't know, and then ride that bus to the end of the line and back. That's pretty much what it's like to get a tattoo. It's a long, boring, uncomfortable event. The magic of  TV editing chops out all that time where you're sitting there, bored and in pain, perhaps feeling a little awkward, waiting for it to be over. The magic of editing captures the setup, the ten minutes of chit-chat during the work, and the final product. The magic of editing makes getting a tattoo seem action-packed. I can tell you, it is anything but.

The magic of editing not only makes the whole process seem a lot more fun than it is, but it gives the viewer the impression that little to nothing goes into preparing for a tattoo. Reality TV depicts it like this: Cute Girl walks into shop and asks for a full sleeve.  She and the artist have a deep, soulful, ten-second conversation about the sad/happy event in her life that made her want the tattoo. The artist goes in back and emerges three minutes later with a perfect drawing, Cute Girl jumps up and down and claps her hands. Ten minutes later, the outline of the entire sleeve is finished. Thirty minutes later, the sleeve is complete, filled in, and no one notices that Cute Girl is wearing different clothes and her hair is three inches longer. Cute Girl looks at the finished tattoo in the mirror, then jumps up and down and claps her hands again. She hugs the tattoo artist and leaves. The whole thing is like a trip to Kinko's; Walk in, machine prints out art, pay, leave.

Here's how it actually works: Cute Girl walks into shop and asks for a full sleeve. I ask what she'd like and she shows me way too many pictures on her phone. We spend a good twenty minutes trying to narrow the stream a bit and figure out a basic theme and design. I get out some plastic film and a tape measure and spend fifteen minutes trying to get perfect measurements of every part of her arm. We go through my appointment book and try to figure out a date to start. After flailing through nearly a month of calendar pages, we nail down a day and a time three weeks from now where neither of us is doing anything. She gives me a deposit and leaves. I spend the next twenty minutes printing out all the photo references and then scouring the net for more because half of what she emailed to me is blurry, pixelated shit and/or photos of absolutely crap tattoos that you'd see on a convict. Then I sit down to draw. Over the course of three days it slowly develops but I keep having to walk away from it to tattoo my appointments that I have booked for that day. After a few days I finally get something fleshed out and have her come back to look at the drawing. She likes the top part but not the bottom, she likes the lettering but she changed her mind on the actual quote, I totally forgot to put in the feather and the part that wraps around her wrist ended up about two inches too long. So now I'm back to square one and drawing the whole thing again. Two days before she's due to come in, she calls and cancels because she has to work so we reschedule for another week later. When she gets in, it's forty minutes of trying to get the stencil on just right, I have to keep repositioning it because something or other isn't lining up properly. Finally, I get everything where I want it. Six hours later we're done with the outline. During that time, we had to take a 30 minute break because she almost passed out. Shortly after, someone came in and asked if he could talk to me about a tattoo. I made the mistake of saying okay and he tore my ear off for 25 minutes about a single-word tattoo on his ribs, totally disregarding this poor girl in my chair. I had to stop and snap my gloves off to pick up the phone three times and spend five minutes on each call explaining to them why I cannot price their tattoo over the phone. Repeat this entire scenario, minus the stenciling part, five more times on five different days over the course of three or more months, and that is how one gets a sleeve. When we started, she was wearing shorts and flip-flops, when we finished she was wearing Ugg boots and mittens.

Now, flash forward to a busy Saturday afternoon. Every artist is tattooing, there are three more walk-ins waiting in line, and in walks Cute Girl who loves the tattoo shows. When Cute Girl is told that she cannot possibly start a sleeve right this minute, Cute Girl fumes that we are incompetent, rude assholes. TV told her that yes, she can in fact just show up and get a sleeve. TV, just by the magic of editing, makes tattooing as simple as a blink of an eye, and makes me look like an incompetent, rude asshole. I am actually a very competent, sort of polite assHAT, thanks. There is a lot of time and planning in big work, and TV editing just sweeps all that away and gets to the juicy reward of getting tattooed. People now expect this, they demand it, and when we cannot possibly deliver, they throw a hissy fit in front of everyone in attendance. Later, we are given an angry, keyboard-mashing rant on Yelp about what a shit shop we are and how we're stupid jerks and they're NEVR EVR RECAMENDING THIS SHOP TO ANY1 !!!!!!!!!!

Rise Of The Know-It-Alls

I've worked very hard to get where I am today. I'm in the last half of my second decade in this industry. Despite all my bitching and complaining, I don't want to do anything else, except perhaps win the lottery. Even then, I'd be sitting in my penthouse suite somewhere, swirling an overpriced drink when a tear would roll down my overfed face. I'd feel the void in my life from not tattooing and I know this for a fact. I can't not do this and when they day comes where I'm forced to stop, I might just blow my head off because I won't know what else to do. So I take it extremely personally that tattoo artists are willingly complicit in screwing up the industry for their own personal gain. It's not like some greasy Hollywood documentarists are chasing unwilling tattoo artists around with a camera, there are actual artists who host these crap shows and have declared themselves the voices of the industry, despite the fact that the shows are totally misrepresenting what it is we actually do.  The misinformation in these shows is making the entire process more difficult and more frustrating for all parties involved in real-life tattooing. The customers are frustrated that we're not living up to the expectations they formed based on the shows. Our job, which is stressful and tiring even when things are going smoothly, is now far more stressful and tiring because we have to argue with 70% of people who walk in the door when we cannot meet those bullshit-based expectations.

A word about Oliver Peck: Oliver Peck is Kat Von D's ex-husband, and from what I understand, he taught her how to tattoo. I very much understand his conundrum. My ex opened up a restaurant just as we were heading for splitsville. Since then, the restaurant has become internationally famous, my ex has made many television appearances and is insanely wealthy. I get not one dime from the place, despite us being married at its inception and my having made considerable financial contributions to its operations while we were still wed. But such was the nature of our divorce and there is nothing now that will change it. While my ex is a minor celebrity, wearing watches that cost more than my car and purchasing homes all over the country, I am toiling away over here in relative obscurity. Not a week goes by that someone doesn't say, "Hey, have you ever eaten at _______?" I feel a knot in my gut and I have to grit my teeth and politely tell them that yes, I am indeed familiar with the place. So I absolutely understand that awful burn every time one of Oliver's customers asked him, "Hey, have you ever heard of Kat Von D? She's really amazing, huh?"I undertsand that rage at having helped someone get their foot in the door, only to watch them kick the door off the hinges and take the entire place by storm while you're still standing in the hallway holding the key, and nobody's noticing. 

However, I take umbrage with Oliver's attempt to show her up and become a name himself. He's having a TV pissing contest with his ex-wife, and all of us in the industry are the collateral damage. Our customers are more impatient and demanding than ever before. They're not better informed as a result of the shows, they're becoming hypercritical know-it-alls. Fantastic tattoo work is being ripped apart on the internet and in real life by housewives and bartenders and children. They're watching those asshole judges nitpick and criticize beautiful tattoos and they think this is the way they're supposed to act. Not only does everyone fancy himself an expert on what a proper tattoo should look like, they're unbelievable dicks about it. My blood boiled when I read the comments on the Inkmasters' Facebook page last season. There was a whole bunch of prepubescent brats weighing in with nonsensical, cobbled-together art jargon that made no sense to either writer or reader, and a bunch of armchair quarterbacks saying what utter shit all this work was, when I would trade an eyeball to have stuff like that on my body.

I did a small name on a girl once and she came back two weeks later to add to it. She had her little sister with her, who couldn't have been a day over twelve. As I was setting up, Little Sister asked me in her best icy teen-queen voice, "Are you gonna touch up that name? It's rilly faded."

I said to her, "It is not faded, it's perfect, and it's two weeks old. How do you figure it's faded?"

She looked a little uncomfortable. "It just....looks faded," she said, her haughtiness faltering.

"You like Inkmasters?" I asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Stop watching that crap, okay?"

She didn't know what to say. Sorry, kid. You, like Dave Navarro, do not know your asshole from your elbow. Somebody explain to me how that flippy-haired gristlewad is a judge on a tattoo show. "I've been getting tattooed for 25 years..." Congratulations, Dave. I have been driving cars for 25 years, doesn't make me a master mechanic. All your tattoos are shit, you get piddly little crap that frat boys and sorority girls get on their ankles during spring break on South Padre Island. Stick your opinion in your ass, light it, and blast yourself to the moon. You've never done a tattoo in your life and your choices in tattoos are terrible, so you have no business going on television and shitting on magnificent work by some of the best in the business.

Worse yet, the shows have set the precident that tattoo artists will tolerate being screamed at and berated because that's how it is on TV. I have busted my ass for many long hours, I want to do my best and I want my customers to be happy. However, I want to be treated with a little decency. And I am getting shrieked at by people who are young enough to be my children because they see Oliver Peck and Joe Capobianco on TV, cussing out a room full of tattoo artists. The worst part is that those cunt-testants suck it up and snivel and cry and apologize. Yeah, that's right, I said cunt-testant! The women on the shows are the worst.  Believe me when I tell you, most of the female tattoo artists I have worked with would sooner cut your dick off and stuff it up your ass than to hear one cross word out of your mouth, so I have no idea where they found these simpering crybabies to get on these shows. So now, thanks to these shit shows and the assholes who helm them, I have to deal with legions of smart-mouth jackasses who think they can come in, puff up their chests and say things like, "I TOLD you, I wanted "faith" in cursive right next to the GODDAMN BIRD!" because that's what they see on TV. It burns my ass that the expectation is that I'll cringe and apologize and beg a nineteen year old kid for forgiveness after he raises his voice at me because I can't read his mind. I'm not trying to win a contest, I'm doing my job, and sucking some kid's ass was never supposed to be part of my job description.

 

Fame...What You Get Is No Tomorrow

 I wish I had a fraction of the talent of some of the artists who get kicked off the shows in the first round. Those who get to the later rounds are so damn good that they don't need to stoop to performing like a circus animal in that silly-ass contest. Some of them are long-time legends in the industry, it confuses me as to why they'd be willing to be treated like crap for a little money and bragging rights. What good does that do? Does it really matter if some housewife in Boise knows their name? Think she's gonna ditch the kids and fly out to wherever they are and get a tattoo? Nope. Most people can't afford that. I'm doing a big project on  someone who gushed that she saw one of the TV judges in a store once.  I am a relative nobody, but this person was in my chair. She was giving me her money because I'm local, she saw my work online and thought it was good, and I don't have a three-year wait. Despite fawning over how awesome this artist is, I was still the one doing the tattoo. At the end of the day, being famous and getting paid are not always simultaneous events, ask any YouTube sensation. Besides, most people don't have the patience to get on a three-year waiting list, they're throwing a fit over having to wait three hours.

I won't lie, I like to have my ass kissed on Facebook and to be told I'm great. I said it before and I'll say it again, I have the bloated ego of an artist and praise is what I live for. However, I don't think it's worth the the heavily-taxed prize money from those shows to have just as many strangers on Facebook screaming for your head on a plate and telling you how bad you suck and that you're an asshole and you should die in a fire because they think ___________ should have won instead. I've been on the Inkmasters  Facebook page, I know for a fact that someone posted photos of the last winner's wife and a few people threatened her with violence. People are that frickin' crazy about their television. From where I sit, if you're willing to subject your family to death threats so you can win a TV contest, you're insane. By the time they take out the taxes on the prize money, you're lucky if you get half of it. And for what? You get treated like a little bitch by some pompous, fame-hungry asshole "judges", you get humiliated on TV, you have people threaten your family and you get your life's work shit-talked by 15-year olds online who think they know what's what because they saw it on TV?

I suppose this is where people are going to say HURR DURR UR JUST JEALOUSE CUZ THEIR ON TV AND UR A NOBODY. Well, thanks to one of my posts, this blog has readership in the millions. I could get those numbers higher if I posted more than three times a year. I have quite a readership over here and I've had plenty of chances to get my name out there. You'll notice it's nowhere on this blog. People have asked in the threads for links to the shop I'm at and I don't want to do it. One, I don't think it's great for business that I write a cranky blog about my job. Two, I'm really not interested in being famous. The older I get, the less I care. I want to go to a restaurant and be left alone when I eat. I don't want to go online and see photos of the love of my life posted with death threats under it because people are so angry that I dared to say that tattoos on the sides of fingers don't always heal properly. I moderate the comments on this blog because I actually do get plenty of death threats that I don't think should ever see the light of day. I get off on robbing those little pricks of their chance to feel powerful. Being known is not an event that is possible to control, and there are too many people out there that cannot separate their emotions from what happens on TV or the internet. People seriously took the time to write me and say they wish I would die in a fire because I don't like big blocks of text as tattoos. If everyone is so unable to control their emotions, I'll just continue to lay low.

 I keep busy doing tattoos, and most of what I get to do is stuff I really enjoy. I'm not rich, but I don't struggle, I have everything I need and almost everything I want. I can't see how getting on one of those reality shows would make my life better and I don't see how getting interviewed on some news show about this shitty blog would make my life better, either. A lot of people don't understand that, and I can't fault them.  By nature, human beings love adulation. People keep telling me 'You should go on Inkmasters!" I know they mean it as a compliment, and I appreciate it. But I couldn't do it. I'm such a cynic that I'm looking right through that adulation and seeing the scorn and derision that comes with it. I don't even feel that I'm good enough to win, so I'd just rather save myself the possible embarrassment of getting kicked off in the first round. Even if I was good enough to win, the whole thing is a giant heap of bullshit with a small payoff. I really feel that my life would be far worse for having participated. For those of you who read this crappy blog and like it, I thank you. I like to make people laugh and it makes me happy when people tell me that I did. But overall, I'm fine with toiling away in relative obscurity.

What should really matter in life is how we treat people and what we contribute. What's important is having joy in what you do, and spreading that joy to others. How many likes we get on Facebook or winning some stupid game show is utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, especially considering all the headaches it causes.

Did I just get philosophical there? Man, I'm such a douchenozzle.

 

 

 

How Not To Get An Appointment

So, you've decided to take the plunge and get a tattoo. Hooray! As I always say, and as a lot of the commentors here cannot seem to comprehend, the decision to get tattooed is always the right one from where I sit.  Your best bet is to stop in at the shop to see your artist. Bring any photos or references you have so we can get an idea of where you're at. We can get an idea of how much time we need to block out so we can take our time and do a nice job on you. You can check out the shop, see if the place is clean and comfortable, if the people are cool and if you get a good vibe. From our end, we can check out the surface area we'll be working on and make sure we're clear on what your ideas and concerns are. Then, when the big day comes and it's time to put needle to skin, everyone is on the same page and it will be a pleasant experience all around.

I have noticed, though, in the excitement to get in the chair, people sometimes do some goofy stuff. If I may, I'd like to give you some suggestions of what you might want to avoid when trying to make an appointment.

Email: Friend Or Foe?

I know a lot of artists who refuse to do business by email. I will, to a point, but there are limits to what can be conveyed in an email. If I'm not clear on what's being asked of me, or if I need to take your measurements, I'll ask you to come in. As long as what I'm getting from you is clear and concise, I'm okay with talking things over by email first. But for crying in a bucket, do not send us stuff like this:

"hey u did my tribal tatt last year plz can u put me down for fri at 5 txs"

For starters, I'm getting old. I can't understand stuff like this. This is an actual email I just got and I had to reread it three times before I understood it. If I were twenty years old, I might be adept at reading this stuff, but as I am a graying middle-ager, this might as well be hieroglyphics. Once I deciphered the message, I replied. If this had been a phone message we'd both be shit outta luck. I had no idea who this person was, I didn't know their name, I had no phone number to call. I did not recall the 'tribal tatt' I did last year, in fact, I do not recall the tattoo I did before lunch today. I had no idea how much time I would need to book because I had no idea what I'd even be tattooing, and this person presumed I would free Friday at five, which I was not. I got back to him and we straightened it out. But you can't just send us a vague message telling us you'll be arriving at said date and time. We need some information from you, and we may not have that time slot available. And please try to  be as clear as possible about what you want. Write in full sentences and use full words.  A lot of people my age don't get that texty-abbreviated stuff. Pretend you're sending an email to your grandma, because a lot of us are on that level.

No Bullshit, Please

I've had more people than I can count dash into the shop or call all in a huff and say, "Can I come in Friday at 5? That is the ONLY time I can do it. I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT do it any other time." More often than not, I'm booked for the time they want. And, oddly enough, after they've asked me more than once if there is ANY WAY WHATSOEVER that I can get them in at that time, and I have told them 'no' more than once, magically they decide they can, in fact, come in Wednesday at 3. Or Sunday at noon. Or Thursday at 7:30. Holy shit, all of a sudden they have all kinds of free time!

It's like this: If someone has the foresight and planning to contact me on the First of the month and make an appointment for the 30th, I'm not going to bump them off because someone came screaming in here on the 27th demanding that spot. The early bird gets the worm, first come-first serve, and a hundred other old saws about timeliness apply here. It's really bad for business for me to call people up and tell them they can't come in when they wanted to because some Johnny-come-lately wants that spot. Unless I have been in a fiery car wreck or there's been a death in the family, I'm not cancelling appointments made in good faith. I've had my best regulars ask for a spot that was taken by someone I had never laid eyes on, and I didn't budge on that position. Fair is fair, and that's just the way it works. On top of that, expressing urgency about a certain time frame is not going to magically clear my schedule. Nobody is 'more important'. There are no stick-on flags that say "EXPEDITE" like this is an office. Feeding me a line of shit that there is exactly one hour on one day in your entire life that you can be here is not going to work. I'm not booting anyone off the schedule for you, and I can usually tell you're lying. I understand you would PREFER Friday at 5, but you don't always get first pick of another person's time.  I have a customer who has nine children. NINE. She and her husband both work full time. They manage to wriggle their obligations around and get in at various days and times. Anyone else's  argument about being insanely, impossibly pressed for time is invalid.

 

I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday For A Tattoo Today

The worst way to go about getting an appointment for a tattoo is to tell me right up front that you don't have any money. I don't expect that everyone who walks in the door is in search of a sleeve or a backpiece. Frankly, I'm glad they don't. I get just as much satisfaction out of a small, well-done tattoo as I do a large one. I don't mind at all that someone walks in with a set budget. What kills me is this: "Can you draw this tattoo for me, and when I have the money, I'll get it?"

Here's the deal: At any given point, I have several drawings that need to be done for people who are slated to get tattooed within the next week or so. In between doing those drawings, I am doing actual tattoos, both appointments and walk-ins. Between those tattoos, I have emails to answer, once I have deciphered what the hell it is the email says, I have phone calls to return and hopefully I can steal five minutes to shove a sandwich into my face-hole. I do not have time to draw stuff for peoples' hypothetical, someday, fantasy tattoos. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm not trying to turn people away or shit on their dreams or act like an elitist asshat. It's simply a matter of only having so many hours in the day to do my job. I often take work home in the form of drawings and responding to emails just to keep on top of things. I really would love to tattoo every single person who walks in the door asking for me, and to have them all singing my praises because I am a depraved, warped, self-loathing artist who needs affirmation. However, I have come to realize by way of my body breaking down, that there is only so much I can do. And what I do must be done for the people who are actually committed to paying me to do it.

Yes, I know, take a deposit for the drawing. However, said individual announced right off the bat that they cannot pay for an actual tattoo any time soon. So, should I spend an hour drawing for a twenty dollar deposit, or should I spend an hour drawing for a twenty dollar deposit and the $300 tattoo that follows? It's not just a question of an economy of time and effort, but of dollars and cents (sense?). On top of that, what do I do with said drawing while I wait for said dreamer to come up with the money? I don't have endless filing cabinets to store this suff. I pretty much have four drawers for my personal use, and most of it is taken up with the actual implements of tattooing. I can barely keep track of three weeks' worth of drawings and references for my actual booked appointments. I would lose my mind if I had to create some kind of system for storing artwork for a year, or two, or forever. Again, I'm not trying to be a dick. But does it make sense to walk into a restaurant, ask the chef to prepare and season a steak, then hold onto it because someday you'll have the money to come in and eat?

A Slap In The Face

Once I had a visitor who sang the praises of my work after seeing it on the web and she said she just knew I was her dream artist. She presented me with a few images and I assented with her choices most vigorously. She then asked if she could send me some images of "what she was afraid would happen". I asked her what she meant, and she explained that she had some images of shitty tattoos, and wanted me to see them so I wasn't going to do the same thing to her. I took a second to think about how to phrase my reply in a mostly diplomatic manner. I asked her if she liked my work, and she said yes. I pointed out that she had come all the way across town to talk to me based on what she had seen. She acknowledged that. I then asked her why she thought I would suddenly do shitty work on her, and why she felt she had to warn me that I was not to do shitty work on her. She didn't really have a good answer for that.

You should always become familiar with your artist's work. Look online or go in and see their book. Most of my tattoos are from co-workers past and present, so I was already familiar with what they do. But when travelling, I always do homework on who I'd like to see for my touristy tattoo adventures. If the artist works in a reputable shop, has an expansive, consistent portfolio and you like what you see, you can rest assured that you'll be getting the same quality when it's your turn. I don't forget everything I ever learned in my career on account of one customer. It's hugely insulting to insinuate that I have no idea what I'm doing, AFTER you just told me that you loved my work. I understand, people get nervous and nervous people say goofy things. But there is a fine line between being a nervous goof, and being a condescending prick. I know the difference because it's part of my job to be kind and reassuring to the former, and to put the latter in their place. She didn't follow up on our visit that day, and I'm glad. I have no interest in spending time trying to please someone who, within five minutes of meeting me expressed absolute mistrust, doubt of my abilities and had the notion that she somehow needed to coach me, despite her being only two years old when I got my first job at a tattoo shop.

 Dickering For Dollars

 I understand fully that not everyone is walking around with wads of cash falling out of every pocket. The entire world economy is in the shitter right now. I am slobberingly grateful that people still have the money to pay for frivolous things like tattoos. I have no real marketable skills at this point, so I'm damn lucky that I can still do what I do and make a good living while other people are out of work and being forced from their homes. I reiterate that not eveyrone comes in with money for sleeves and I'm fine with that. To tell you the truth, I just looked at my online portfolio, and tried to pick out what I think are my ten best pieces. All of them except one were completed in five hours or less. I don't pooh-pooh at work because it's small. Sometimes people come in, and they have dreams of getting huge work, but they find out that it's just financially out of their reach. Some of them settle for something smaller, and I'm happy to help people get something within their reach that they will enjoy forever.

 If you want a full sleeve but you only plan on spening 200 bucks, you're out of luck. But, if the sleeve is focused around a tiger motif, I can help you find a tiger that's going to be around $200, and I will do the best I am able to trick that shit right out. Remember, I'm an egomaniac artist and I want that photo online and I want to be told by strangers that I'm awesome. We're both going to get satisfaction if we're both willing to collaborate within the set parameters. I'm not going to boot you out the door if the tattoo you want is $250 and you only have $200. I can make it a little smaller, or take out some of the background, make a little tweak to get it in your price range and still give you a piece of art that you're going to love forever. That is part of my job, and I don't at all mind doing that little dance. I don't get paid to sit in the shop, twiddling my thumbs and turning business away. If I can figure out something that's fair for both of us and that will get you a tattoo, I'm going to do it.

However, I keep drawing out these people who treat the shop like a Turkish street bazaar. "Come on, do it for 50 bucks, be a good guy, come on, hook me up, you can do it, come on, I'll bring all my friends...." There is a difference between trying to get within your budget and aggressively, wildly haggling with me. Actually, more often than not, it's the person telling me that they want a certain tattoo at a certain price, and they're going to repeat that fact over and over until I relent. Guess what: That works on a car lot, it doesnt work here. See above about an economy of time. I have neither the time nor the inclination to haggle for my pay. I know what my work is worth and I have a full appointment book to substantiate that. I don't mind cutting people a little slack on the price if it means I get the work. But if you think I will give shit away just because I cannot help but be intimdated by a demanding prick, or because you think you're going to aggravate me so much that I will cave in just to shut you up, you are sorely mistaken. And the caveat always is, "Come on, I'll send all my friends here, I'll bring you lots of business." Oh, hooray! You're going to flood the shop with people that are as cheap and as big a pain in the ass as you are! Don't do me any favors. Be realistic about what you can spend on a tattoo. Be realistic that we put a lot into what we do, and the price you pay today breaks down into fractions of pennies a day over the course of your lifetime. Be willing to be flexible on what you're getting if you're of limited means. But to barrel in and demand twice the work for half the money, well, expect nothing but a not-so-fond farewell. I don't mind setting the precident that I'll be flexible and helpful with the budget of potential clients. I refuse to set the precident that anyone can come in, run roughshod over me and get top work for bottom dollar.

 

Throw A Hissy Fit

I could write a hundred entries about people coming in and throwing tantrums. In fact, when I have the time, I will. But for now, let me be clear that throwing a fit is not going to get you much of anything. Getting a new tattoo is exciting, it's fun and I understand that people have a lot of emotional buildup to the big day. However, most people who are getting tattooed feel the same way, so you're not unique. Everyone wants the soonest available time slot. I do the best I can, but realize that at any time you go into a shop to make an appointment, chances are really good that there are thirty other people who had the same idea you did, and they got out of bed a lot earlier than you. So when the artist of your choice tells you they don't have anything available for two weeks or a month, or a year, having a nuclear meltdown is not going to help you. I see it all the time, and I'm not some big hotshot with a year-long waiting list, believe me. The most I'm ever booked out is three weeks or so. I'm pretty good about loading up, I'll get as many in in one day as is feasible without rushing it. I like to keep busy, but I'm done with cranking out tattoos like I'm in a sweatshop. I want everything that I do to be beautiful, partly because I want you to be happy, but the ego boost of a job well done is very important to me, and I am my own worst critic.

When you come in and request a specific artist, it's because you like their work, you trust them and you may have heard good things about the artist from your friends or online reviews. When you decide that this person is the one you want to put something on your body forever, you're going to have to hold out for whenever they're available. People come in and ask for me, I'll flip through the book and say, "Well, I can get you in two weeks from today." Then they make this face and screech "TWO WEEKS? THAT IS RIDICULOUS!" You know what is ridiculous? An adult not being capable of waiting two weeks for something as frivolous as a tattoo. I'm not your employer witholding your pay, I'm not a doctor witholding a life-saving blood transfusion. I'm a wingnut tattoo artist who's going to give you something that's not essential for your survival, now put on your big kid pants and wait your turn. If you simply cannot wait that long, well, there are many other artists out there who have no appointments at all and they can get you in whenever the hell you want. They're possibly desperate for work and possibly not very good. Even if that's not the case and they're awesome, mind-blowing artistic geniuses, they're still not your first choice. You're just going to settle for whoever will do it now. In the end, if you're happy with what you get, that's good news. But if you like someone so much that you ask them to tattoo you, is it not worth the time you have to wait for it? The tattoo is going to be on you in the year 2025 and 2050 and maybe 2075. Two weeks is very small in the frame of fifty years.

I've stood at the counter looking rather amused, watching someone foam at the mouth about having to wait a week, going on and on about the insanity of it all, and how dare I inconvenience people like that, and what a shit way to do business, and on and on. Sometimes they cool down and wipe all the spittle flecks off their chin, and I put them in the book. Sometimes they keep going and going and then I invite them to go to one of the chop shops nearby, where they can get it right now. Sometimes they do leave in a huff, sometimes they cool down and wipe all the spittle flecks off their chin, and I put them in the book. I used to feel really guilty about not getting people in whenever they want. But I shouldn't. I do the best I can, and if anyone wants to shit their Pull-Ups about it, I'm probably better off not even dealing with them. I'd imagine these are the same kind of people who bust a blood vessel over the time it takes to foam the milk for their lattes and they get a hard-on over making the kid at the coffee shop cry. I hate to reward those fuckers.

Don't Have A Clue

This is one that blows my mind and it is happeing with such astonishing frequency, I cannot single out one episode.... Somebody walks in and asks me if they can make an appointment. I ask what they want to get. They say, "I have no idea." So, I'm supposed to block out time for their tattoo when I have no idea what I'll be doing, hopefully when they show up for the appointment they'll have come up with something, and I'll just wave my magic wand and make shit happen. I'm not talking about people who come in and say, "Well, I want a tiger, but I really don't know how to make it look cool...." Have no fear, this is where I step in to help. Ah, yes, a tiger. Now I can show you a zillion tigers and narrow it down to what you like. How about black and gray? Japanese or tribal? A tiger's face or the whole body? I have a very basic concept to work with and we can both collaborate to form that basic concept into the tattoo of your dreams. You can't walk in and say, "I want a tattoo but I don't know what." I have absolutely nothing to work with there.

I ask, "Well, what do you like? Do you like tigers? Do you like dragons? You want a portrait of your mom? How about some stars?" And the answer is always a pained look and a wan, "Nah, no, nah, nope, no...." Let me once more iterate about the economy of time. I don't have all day to play 'Guess My Personal Tastes' with you. It's one thing for someone to say, "I'm gonna let you do whatever you want," In which case I will kiss that person on every exposed part of their body because those are the kind of customers that come along once every hundred years. No, when people come in and ask what I'd suggest, they actually do know what they want. They just want to see if I can guess.

Now, if I posted photos of some of the tattoos I actually have on my body, you all would be utterly convinced that I am batshit insane, if my ranting here has not already done so. I have some of the stupidest tattoos you can even imagine. If I could pick out any kind of tattoos that I would like to do on people, I would do stuff like this and like this and like this*. Why? I'm out of my fucking mind. I've done hundreds of tribals and tigers and butterflies. I like doing those kind of things things and they certainly pay my bills. But, in the interest of excitement and variety, I'd like to do something I've never done before, something crazy, something that's going to go viral and have everybody going, "WHY?!?!" I'm just that way. So, trust me, asking me "What do you suggest" is going to get you a list of stuff you are very, very unlikely to want. Come in with an idea. I can help you shape that idea, refine it, pull it from your brain, put it on paper, and then onto your skin. You don't want the raw ideas that are forming in my brain. I promise you, unless you're as wacko as I am, you'll like your ideas better.

 

 

*Very special thanks to Jeff Ensminger, the man behind the fantastic toilet tattoo. I was unable to find who did the Unicorn and the Chark Week tattoos. if anyone knows, please leave it in the comments. Such hilarity and awesomeness needs to be recognized. I will also add that I am insanely jealous that I didn't get to do any of those tattoos...

 

 

 

Assume The Position

I hate getting tattooed.  I like having them,  I hate getting them, especially as I get older. My back is crapping out  (definitely job related), my legs get this weird thing where they intermittently go numb (also job related) and in general I'm always tired. Sitting in a chair in a certain position for hours on end while somebody drills on you is not a good time. I don't think it tickles, I don't think it's fun and I'd really rather lay on the couch, farting and watching reruns. However, when it's over and I have a cool new tattoo, I'm really glad I went through with it. But I definitely get that it's unpleasant and uncomfortable while it's happening.

However, it drives me absolutely bats when I have someone all set up to tattoo, they're in my chair, and just as I'm about to start, it's "Hey, can I lean this chair back/forward? I can't sit like this." And when I reply that I need the chair at that angle so their to-be-tattooed part is sitting right where I'm at the best angle to do a killer job, it's, "Well, I have a bad back and I can't sit like that." Or else it's "I don't wanna sit up/lay back/lay down/flip over, I can't see my friends/my phone/the TV." I just finished a small tattoo on a girl's right wrist and that's when I decided it was time to come in here for a crab-off. I wasn't working right in the center of her wrist, it was more to the side, so when her arm was out and her wrist was facing up, the tattoo would be down towards the inside of her arm. I leaned the chair back so I could comfortably turn her arm up and create a nice, flat surface for me to work on and I wouldn't be twisting her arm out of the socket.

As I was about to start, she sat up in the chair and said, "I want it the other way."

"The stencil?" I asked, and reached for the bottle of alcohol to remove the stencil.

"No, the chair," she said. "I want the chair the other way. Up. I want to sit up."

"Well, no. See, I need to get in here," I explained, pointing at her arm. "If you lay back like this, I can turn your arm up so it's nice and easy for me to get at the tattoo, and then I can do a really nice job."

"I can't go like this?" She asked and sat even  more upright, which turned her arm down so the tattoo was almost face-down on the armrest.

"Now I can't even see it, how am I supposed to tattoo you like that? You gotta lean back."

She sighed and made a face, as if I were being a complete asshole for wanting to optimize the outcome of her tattoo by arranging all the elements to my advantage. She did lean back and the tattoo came out great, but I didn't understand the fuss. Perhaps I'm a little more mellow than the average bear, but when my dentist tells me to open wider, I do it. When I get a haircut, if they tell me to put my head down, I do it. I've gone to someone who is working on my body and I'm going to arrange myself so they can do their job. I assume that's not unreasonable.

Like I said before, getting tattooed is really uncomfortable and unpleasant. I hate it. And regardless of how the chair is angled, you're gonna be in a world of hurt because I'm going to be drilling you on the body part of your choice. Laying on a pile of silk pillows will not make up for that fact. But when you're telling me you have some sort of condition that is going to prevent me from being able to access the spot where you want a tattoo, or that you don't want to let me at it, I'm not quite sure you understand how little I rely on magic to do my job. I cannot tell you how many times I have had someone in who wanted a tattoo on the side of their thigh, but they couldn't lay on the opposite hip because of a surgery or an injury or an injurious surgery. I've had people wanting back tattoos but they can't lay on their belly because of a hernia or respiratory problem or cracked sternum. I've had people wanting tattoos on their innner bicep but they couldn't lay on their back and extend their arm out on an armrest because of a shoulder thing. I've had people wanting chest tattoos but they can't lay on their backs becaue they got injured in a major mosh pit at the James Blunt show or whatever [EDIT: I know who James Blunt is, I know he's soft rock and he sucks ass, you can stop with the posts pointing that out]. Now, I understand that not everyone understands the mechanics of tattooing,  and  when you come to me, I will explain to you whatever you want to know so you are informed as possible. A lot of people think it's perfectly feasible to get their ribs tattooed while they are sitting straight up in the chair. When they get here, I explain to them why that will make it more difficult, and how proper positioning makes everything go faster and more smoothly. For the most part, people understand. But for some reason, the rest have to argue and complain and resist, as if I am somehow trying to punish them or humiliate them by having them sit in a certain position. I'm not, I'm really trying to give you the best tattoo possible, but you gotta meet me halfway by sitting still and letting me get at the spot on which I will be working.

Before you start your keyboard-mashing rant about how much I hate people with injuries, let me tell you a story. There was a guy who used to frequent a shop where I worked. Pretty much everyone there worked on him at one point or another. I'm not completely certain, but I'm pretty sure he had cystic fibrosis. He could barely speak, he was in a motorized wheelchair and he required an oxygen tank. His wife would come with him, she was a great sport and when he had trouble communicating what he was looking for, she would help out. He ended up getting really heavily tattooed all over his arms, and it wasn't too hard to work on him. He had great difficulty getting out of his wheelchair, so we'd just push the customer chair out of the way and he'd roll his wheelchair right up where we needed him. When he started getting work on his legs, he had his young adult kids come along as well. The whole family would help lift him into the working chair. Then we could raise him up enough to work on his legs. At one point, he expressed a desire to get some work on his chest, but acknowledged that it was not possible, because he could not fully recline. If he did, fluid would enter his lungs and he would be in serious peril. He was happy to stick with what could be done given his condition, and he was a pleasure to work on.

I tell this story because he was willing to accept that he had a limitation that would prevent him from getting certain tattoos. You might be thinking, "So what? Tattoo his chest with him sitting up in the chair." Well, no. It doesn't quite work that way. It can be done, but it's way, way harder than if they're leaning back or lying flat. Cue angry posts from tattoo artists who TATTOO CHESTS SITTING UP ALWAYS U AMATURE!!!!!111!!! Yeah, fine. Not everyone works the same way, and more than a few of us like to tattoo as if we're writing at a desk instead of writing on the wall. For the rest of you non-tattooers, I suppose I could explain the difference in somewhat relative terms. Take a piece of ruled paper, hold it up on the wall at eye level and print out the word "tattoo" repeatedly across every single  line, down the entire sheet of paper. Now, let me add in that when you're tattooing, it's not a flat, hard surface. It's soft and squishy and it shifts around. You have to use your hands to pull the skin tight or the needle just bounces off the surface, so press your writing hand into the wall as hard as you can. The other hand has to do the same, really mash those fingertips into the wall and do not release that pressure for more than a couple of seconds. Now, as you're about halfway down the page, think to yourself that you only have three more hours of this. I forgot to add that a tattoo machine weighs far more than a pen. Depending on what kind of setup you have, a machine can weigh almost as much as a can of soda, so think about balancing that between your fingertips at a 45 degree angle to the wall for those three hours.

If you did actually try it and you think it sucks balls, you're right. Add in the fact that if the customer is sitting up, they're not always going to be as still as they would if they're on their back. When we're working on you, we want the best advantage possible to give you a nice tattoo. That mans we want you to be still, but we also need the tattoo at the best angle possible so that we have a nice stable place to rest our hands when we're stretching your skin. We want the best leverage so that every line is crisp and clean, the color is all solid and the shading is smooth. We want to concentrate on giving you a nice tattoo, not about how bad our back or neck is hurting because we're all hunched over trying to get at a spot that you're trying to hide from us. Another kicker is that a tattoo machine relies on gravity for the ink to flow down into your skin. If you tip the machine backwards or upside down, nothing comes out. There is a far more consistent flow when the machine is upright like a pen on a piece of paper on the table. A nice, steady flow of ink results in nice, steady lines.

Now that I've told you entirely too much about the mechanics of tattooing, do a Google image search for people getting tattooed. Some of them are sitting up, some are leaning back and some are lying down. But if you'll notice one thing the images have in common is that you don't see any of those artists positioned like they're working under a car. We can't roll under you on a creeper because you want to sit up and look at your phone while we're tattooing you. We're not trying to be dicks, we're trying to give you something that will make you happy forever and ever.

I developed some kind of weird arthritic thing in my shoulders as of late, so if I lift my arms up higher than a 45 degree angle, I get this deep, burning pain in the sockets. I can't hold it up like that for more than a few seconds or I feel like I'm going to pass right out. It's brutal. I have to work at a downward angle these days and there is really nothing I can do about that. I do my best to get you as comfortable as possible, but I can't cause myself agony. Such is the way the cookie crumbles, gang.

So when you're going in for work next time, don't get mad about being all stretched out all weird or hunched over or something. You might not get why your artist is asking you to do that, but there is a method to our madness. Being uncomfortable or feeling weird for a little while is a small price to pay for having a really kick-ass tattoo for a very long while.

Customers Say The Darndest Things--The Gritty Reboot

POSH MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN: (Paging through the flash racks) Ummm.....Question....

BOSS: Yes?

PMAW: What's with all the skulls?

BOSS: This ain't Neiman-Marcus, lady.

*****************************************************

(I'm drawing a little name for a customer)

HE: (Leaning over the counter) I have some advice for you...Do it nice....do it neat...take your time....and DON'T FUCK IT UP.

ME: Let me tell you something. I've been doing this for fifteen years. I'm not some dumb fuck off the turnip truck. I've tattooed in [city], [city not on this continent] and [other city not on this continent]. I'm 39 years old. I do shit like this in my sleep. You're in good hands and I can manage just fine without being talked to like that.

HE: Oh! 39! You have a baby face!

(I take his ID. I'm ten years older than he is. Later I recount the story to my boss. He said,"You shoulda told him to get fucked." To this day, I really wish I had.)

*****************************************************

SHE: Is this gonna hurt?

ME: A little bit.

SHE: Can you do it so it doesn't hurt?

*****************************************************

YOUNG MAN ON THE PHONE: How much for a tattoo?

ME: Well, it depends on the design, come on in and show us what you have.

YMOTP: Well, can I describe it to you?

ME: I'm going to end up with a mental picture that may be very different than what you're actually interested in. I don't want to quote you too high or too low. If I'm selling you a piece of art, it's only fair that I see the art before I tell you what it's going to cost.

YMOTP: Well, it's a small cross, about--

ME: Hey, hey, I just told you, you need to come in. What you think a small tattoo is may be very different than what I think a small tattoo is. It's not like drinks where they come in small, medium and large.

YMOTP: They're not?

*******************************************************************

YOUNG GIRL ON THE PHONE: Do you guys do piercings?

ME: No, I'm sorry, we only do tattoos.

YGOTP: Do you know any place that does?

ME: Sure, there's a place not far from here. Here's their number, xxx-xxx-xxxx.

YGOTP: Do they do nose piercings?

ME: I'm sure they do. Just give them a call and they can give you all the information.

YGOTP: What do they charge?

ME: I have no idea, give them a call.

YGOTP: What are their hours?

ME: You know what? I don't work there. I work here. Call them.

YGOTP: Okay. I think I'll just call them. Thanks!

************************************************************************

GANGSTA KID: Youse guys sell ink and needles?

ME: Nope.

GK: Why not?

ME: Why do I wanna sell you stuff so you can fuck up your friends at your house? I don't ask my dentist for tools so I can practice dentistry in my kitchen.

GK: You know anywhere else that would?

ME: Nobody worth their salt.

GK: I don't want salt, I want needles.

 ******************************************************

Today is really cold. REALLY, REALLY COLD. Two guys have come in at two separate times and asked about fixing a tattoo that they already have. When I asked to see their tattoo, both of them looked a little distressed and said that it was too cold to remove any clothing.

I said with a laugh to the second guy, "Well, I can't tattoo you through your clothes, you're gonna have to get it out of there at some point. "

He replied, "I guess I didn't think about that. I'll come back when it's not so cold."

Oh, Baby!

Let me get this right out in the open: I really hate it when people bring their children to the tattoo shop. I don't hate kids, I rather like them. I'm not a parent myself, but my friends who are often note how swimmingly I get along with their children, and the natural rapport I seem to have with them. I assume it's because, like most children, I hate being told what to do and I think farts are absolutely the funniest thing on Earth, period. I like it when I see kids in kid-appropriate venues. I like to see kids in Target and at the grocery store and at birthday parties and in various outside locales. I do not like to see kids in kid-inappropriate venues. I don't like it when I see kids at rated-R horror movies and at bar-restaurants with loud music and scantily clad servers and a bunch of goony guys in the corner who are swearing and being assholes. I don't like to see kids in tattoo shops. I will tell you why I don't like to see kids in those places. It's not because I hate kids. It's not because those kids are 'screwing up my good time'. Deep breath here folks, this is why I don't like it: I feel sorry for those kids who get taken to places like that.

There, I said it. I feel sorry for kids whose parents think it is appropriate to take their child to such places. Parents assume that their kids will like what they like. Kids will go along with it for the sake of parental approval. I'm not so sure these kids want to be in the tattoo shop. They don't have a choice, for starters. If I picked out ten kids and asked them, "Would you rather go to Chuck E. Cheese, or sit in a tattoo shop while your mom or dad gets tattooed?", I'm pretty sure all ten of them would want to go to Chuck E. Cheese. If there were any who would want to go to the tattoo shop, I promise you, they'd be really sorry later that they did not pick Chuck E. Cheese. Going to a tattoo shop is exciting, but only if you're the one getting the tattoo. I can personally attest to this. I have been that friend who is all excited to tag along, thrilling at the prospect of the taboo environs of the tattoo shop, only to end up on the waiting room sofa three hours later, sighing and wishing I'd stayed home. For a child, it's ten times worse.

Even as a non-parent, I have logged a lot of hours around kids. Therefore, I have been quite able to make the observation that children are really bad at three things: Not touching stuff, sitting still, and being quiet. You're pretty much expected to do all of those when you're waiting three hours for someone to get a tattoo, and kids really fall flat in all of those areas. I don't blame them, I still have a hard time doing any of those, and I'm middle-aged. I have to work really hard at not touching stuff, sitting still and being quiet just about everywhere I go, I can totally relate to the struggle experienced by a six-year-old. I have no idea why any parent would do that to their kid, why they would expect them to sit on a chair for hours on end in a place that plays really weird music, where there's either no TV, or if there is, it's definitely not playing Nick Jr., and there's not a damn thing to do but stare at the walls. I'm totally baffled that parents see no problem with dragging their children to a place that is so damn boring for a kid, and then fully expecting them to sit there and twiddle their thumbs while mommy or daddy does something totally unnecessary. Of course, I feel a lot differently about such boring, waiting-around things as a trip to the emergency clinic, or at the mechanic's with a flat tire, some place that wasn't really on the to-do list for the day. Shit happens and it often happens when your kid is with you. But going to the tattoo shop is completely voluntary,  it's a luxury and a non-necessity.  I think it is unfair and selfish to insist the kid goes along and sits there like a lump, being bored while mommy or daddy gets their jollies.

I also think it's unfair to the kid because of the environment at the shop. In spite of the crusty asshole I am in this blog, I'm rather old-fashioned. I believe kids should call adults 'ma'am' and 'sir' and crap like that. I don't believe it is appropriate for children to use foul language, and I don't believe it's appropriate for adults to use it in front of children. However, old habits die hard. I'm at work, I'm in my element, and every third word out of my mouth is 'fuck'. It's become so ingrained that I am completely unaware of it until I am totally out of my element, say at a relative's house, or in my rare trips to church, or in a fine dining establishment. When someone's kid is in the shop, I'm still all 'fuckety fuck fuck fuck' and I get a little uncomfortable when I hear a kid giggling about it. However, let me say yet again that tattoos are for people 18 and over. They are for adults, a kid has no reason to be there. It's like a bar or a strip club in that aspect; there are things going on there that cannot legally be done to a child, and for good reason. In my mind, that negates any argument that kids should even be there in the first place. If they can't participate because it's illegal and it's seen as harmful, then they shouldn't be observing, either. Kids are going to hear all sorts of awful things in a tattoo shop; foul language, rude humor and  music that you definitely won't hear on Kidz Bopz.

Once the little scamps have heard some evil, they're gonna see some evil. We get asked again and again by adults, "What's with all the skulls? What's with all the dark stuff?" It's not Pottery Barn, you nitwits, it's a tattoo shop. That's why it's full of skulls and dark stuff, that's what we like. For the most part, that's what our customers like. When I was a kid, skulls scared the shit out of me. Granted, this was in the '70s and skulls weren't all over baby onesies and wine glasses and crap like that. They were on the jewelry of freaky bikers and in scary movies, and I used to have nightmares about skulls quite often. Now skulls are for kids and they're not as freaked out about it as I was. However, I don't really think a kid should shrug off seeing images like this or like this or like this.* All those images and more like them can be found in our flash racks. And parents stand around, blithely thumbing through the boards while their kids reach up and begin flipping a few boards of their own. Without looking, I can tell when the little guy or gal gets to something really juicy, because the soft plastic clack of the frames being turned over stops. We caution the parents that they should get their kids out of the racks and that the images are not appropriate for children. They usually just scoff at us and ignore their child, who is standing frozen in front of something that just completely blew their minds. I'm sure any one of those parents would shit a brick if a strange man at the park handed their child a book of drawings of naked women fingering each other on piles of maggot-ridden skulls. But for reasons unknown, they get really uppity when we try to prevent their kids from seeing that kind of stuff in our shop. I don't get it. Kids have their whole adult lives to be exposed to stuff like that. Why do I have to be an accessory to starting them on it when they're five?

I know what you're thinking, "What do YOU know? You don't even have a kid!" Who cares if I don't? There is a thing called decency, there are things called limitations, and there is also good old common sense. If I work in the place, and I am trying to sell you on the idea that this is a bad place for small children, you really should believe me, whether I'm a parent or not. Early in my career, when people walked into a shop with kids, they were told that they would have to come back later without their kids. A few parents got really pissy about it. "It's my kid, I can do what I want, what's it to you," all that. Eventually everyone just let it go and then every other person who walked in the door was pushing a stroller or carrying a toddler or had three grade-schoolers tagging along. But here is what started to happen--Parents began to complain about the language that their child was hearing from us. Parents began to complain about the music; it was too loud, it was offensive, et cetera. Parents began to complain that they couldn't bring their kids into the area where they were getting tattooed. I understand that not everyone realizes just how tattoos work, but let me tell you that you cannot have your two-year old crawling around on the floor under my feet and then violently tugging at your leg while trying to clamber into your lap as I'm putting on your outline. You just can't. See my observation that kids are bad about sitting still and not touching stuff. I have sharps containers full of bloody needles and bottles of chemicals and razors and loose wires hanging off of devices that conduct electricity in my station. There are few things in there that are not harmful to curious little hands and eyes, yet parents were incensed that their child could not enter. Parents began to complain when one of us would not agree to watch their child while they got tattooed or pierced. Parents began to complain that the appearances of some of us 'scared' their kids, that the stuff on our t-shirts was offensive, that there was no changing station in the bathroom. Parents began to complain that our utterly adult-oriented establishments were solely adult-oriented establishments. Sure, I get it, it's your kid and you'll raise them any way you see fit. However, we take issue with parents' attempts to raise us as they see fit. We're already raised, you're too late.

I'll assume I'm going to get a lot of comments to the effect of "I took my kid to the tattoo shop and they guy was totally cool! Why are you such a dick?" Well, clearly reading comprehension isn't your thing. You might want to read the preceding paragraph two or three more times, then skip down to the last one and do the same.  Like a lot of people, when one encounters something which contradicts their life's narrative, particularly when parenting is in question, the response is a keyboard-mashing frenzy, peppered with expletives. And then there will be the inevitable  rambling, non sequitur tale of how all your kids were present for all your tattoos  and you had a picnic lunch on the floor of the shop the last time and how one time you gave birth right in the guy's chair while getting your tribal anklet. Let me advise you that I'm a big fan of STFU Parents, and any and all mommyjackers and daddyjackers will be reported.  Reread that part about why I feel sorry for kids that get dragged along for your tattoo. I'll feel even more sorry for them after I read your rantings, especially the part about  how you hope one day I have kids and that they all get chopped up by an angry alien lawnmower, and how I'm a fucktarded fucktardian who could never understand what it's like to be a single parent and to be too broke to get tattoos AND pay for a sitter. I'll only infer that your kids are not eating well, so include your address and I'll send some Flinstones vitamins or something.

Again, I don't hate your kids. I hate that you expect your kids to act like adults. They're not. I hate that you expect us to act like Kinder-Care. We're not. Tattoos are for adults, they're a luxury, and if you can pay me, you can pay a sitter for a few hours. If you can't do both, then wait until you can. I feel really bad for those kids who hear me say 'fuck' twenty times in fifteen minutes. I feel bad for the kid who's going to have  a nightmare because of the stuff they saw in our flash racks. But I don't feel like that means we need to do something different, because we don't. We need to do what we do, and that's putting on great tattoos, being nice to our customers (18 and over, please), keeping a clean and safe environment and having fun with you. And on my days off, I want to go to Target and see you with your kid, playing in the toy aisle or putting on one of those hats with the animal ears and having a good laugh together. But it's best if you come see me without your kids because you're going to be more relaxed if you're not yelling at them to stop climbing on stuff and they're not complaining about how bored they are. You're going to have a much better experience if you're not bristling every time one of us says 'fuck', or cringing that we're listening to Slayer really loud. It's just going to be better for you, and this is what we want. And it's going to be better for your kid who got to stay home and have pizza and watch cartoons. Or if your sitter really has the patience of a saint, they get to go to Chuck E. Cheese. And when you and your kid meet up at the end, you'll both have a really cool story to tell each other.

*I would like to add that Coop, Bob Tyrrell and Boog are three of my favorite artists in the universe and I would pee my pants over meeting any of them and even if I still would not wallpaper a nursery with their work, I have the utmost respect and admiration.

The Blow Job, Or, I'm Nazi-ing Your Vision, Bro

Oh, hey, look at this, only five months between posts, that's pretty good for me. I take that as a sign I have nothing to complain about. But then again, I'm always complaining. I'm just not taking the time to weave it into a hilarious anecdote for the interwebs to enjoy. I use the term 'enjoy' loosely. Anyway, things are going well, I'm keeping busy and I've been doing a lot of cool stuff lately. When I started apprenticing, the idea I had in my mind about my future career matches very, very closely to my current reality, and that makes me happy. Of course, as it is with any of the slimy tentacles of the service industry, close contact with humanity is part of the job, and that's the one spot from whence my rancor is spawned.

 I was dicking around on the shop computer at the front desk when a dude walked in holding a to-go cup from some swillholle coffee chain. I asked if he needed help and he said he needed a couple of tattoos covered up. I asked him to show me what he had and he said, "Well, I got this swastika right here," and pulled down the neck of his shirt to show it to me.

Before I go any further, I want to clarify a few things. To begin, there are two kinds of white people who get swastika tattoos. The first kind is a white supremacist. That's pretty cut-and-dried. They walk in and ask for a swastika, and they look a little uncertain about it. They don't know if they're going to get high-fived, or if they're going to get their asses whipped. I actually don't hate this first kind nearly as much as I hate the second kind, because this first kind is at least up-front about hating people. The second kind of white person who gets a swastika tattoo is the dude who is trying to impress people by showing them how worldy and down with the Buddha he is. And when you gasp at his swastika tattoo, he can roll his eyes and cluck his tongue and say how IGNORANT you are, and how you don't know ANYTHING about Eastern religions, and that the swastika is an ancient symbol of peace and divine love and blahbitty blah blah. And once he feels he has thoroughly trounced your ignorant ass, he congratulates himself on being far above such narrow-minded, puny-worldview imbecilles like yourself. Simultaneously, he feels the warm glow of a twelve-year-old who has gotten a rise out of his parents by saying the F-word in front of them. And this is why I actually hate this second one more than the first one. This one is trying to show you how worldly and tolerant and loving he is by getting a tattoo, but then he's an uppity, rude, immature douche about it, and he gets off on getting a rise out of strangers. He totally hates people and does so by masquerading as someone who loves people. I'm pretty sure Buddha frowns on that.

The problem that your average white Buddha-man doesn't bother to ponder when he gets his "Eastern" swastika tattoo is that a lot of people don't care to hear his explanation. Yes, he is correct, the swastika has been around for a long-ass time, it's used in many of the world's religions and all that jazz. I know, I know, feel free not to forward me a thousand links about the roots of the swastika. I'm well aware of it, I admire the huge brass balls of Manwoman and his tireless quest to restore the true meaning of the swastika. However, for about 95% of the western world, swastika equals nazi, and nobody gives a flying fuck about your explanations of what the Hopi were doing with it five hundred years ago. That's just the way it is, sorry, kids, I think  it sucks too, but good luck with that whole 'shattering the public's perception' thing. So I'm pretty sure that this white Buddha-man standing before me thought he was gonna wow some dreadlocked art-school chick with his stellar knowledge of Eastern religion. In reality, he got his shirt off, she got a load of that tattoo, she threw on her batik broomstick skirt and ran her unshaven self right the fuck out of his apartment. I'm pretty sure he realized very early on what a major cock-block a swastika tattoo is. It only works if  you are Ed Norton in American History X and you are bouncing Fairuza Balk's head off the wall every night.

No, I'm not posting a link, look it up yourself.

So back to the shop. This guy pulls down the neck of his shirt and shows me this swastika tucked right in where his neck meets his shoulder, just above his collarbone. It's definitely the more Eastern-style swastika, so I imagine him sobbing in his bed alone with a boner after Dreadlilocks got scared and ran off. I take a breath, sweep that ridiculous image from my mind and get down to business. Before I can even start to discuss what I can do for him,  he immediately launches into the longest, fastest, nuttiest rant I've heard in a long, long time. I couldn't repeat it verbatim if I tried because he went on for a good three minutes without taking a breath. My eyes slowly glazed over and my neck started to get all gummy just listening to him go on and on. I realized it would be best to just let him tire himself out, because I clearly wasn't going to get a word in edgewise.

"So, I was thinking, make it a cross, like a black cross, solid black, and make, like, some triangles coming out and have them all pointing in different directions from the cross and then the cross can be, like, on the ends, kind of, like, you know, like not a square but, like, kinda pointed but not like triangles or like you know, kinda like--" Total verbal diarrhea. I can't really tell you much more of what he said than that. When he wound down to the end, he finished up with, "But I would be open to any suggestions you have."

I waited a beat to make sure he was actually done talking, then I asked, "Are you sure?"

He scowled, and started to explain his cross idea again. I said, "Listen, you have a few things working against you here with this, a cross isn't going to be your best bet. Here's the problem you're gonna have with that..." I grabbed a sheet of paper and started to sketch. "So you have this swastika," I roughly hatched the shape of his tattoo on the paper, then quickly sketched a cross over it. "So, you see, it's gonna stick out here, here, and here--"

"Just make the middle bigger."

"Well, then you don't have a cross," I corrected him, fattening up the center of the cross I had drawn. "Now, you have a ball with four little feet on it, like a cartoon bug or something. And you can't fill in the background with blue or anything. The only thing that covers up black is more black. So if you're--"

"Do it on an angle, like, make the cross on an angle," He said impatiently, making a slashing motion across his tattoo with his finger. His scowl deepened, and I already saw where this was going. People want what they want and they don't care to hear about the reality of the matter. They assume that because they imagined it, it's actually going to work, and the tattoo artist is an incompetent asshole for suggesting otherwise.

"This is right at the base of your neck, see?"  I indicate on the drawing where his chest ends and his neck begins. "If you have this cross sitting on an angle right there, now you have one of the arms of the cross creeping up onto your neck. I assume that's not what you're going for, so you're going to have to use something that's going to tuck up against the base of your neck. Now, what you have on you is basically a circle," I begin to sketch a circle in a new spot on the paper and he leans over to get a look. That scowl of his was etched in deep, like that of an old man who had been sneering at the neighborhood kids for decades. I wondered how someone who was no more than mid thirties could have developed an acid puss like that already. Clearly it was the result of constant practice.

"It's a square," he hisses. "Use it as a square!"

I straighten up and look him dead in the eyes, "How long have you been tattooing for?" I ask, making sure the edge in my voice is as sharp as a razor. He slumps back onto his heels, heaves a deep sigh and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. He stares up for a moment, either counting to ten or trying to whip up a snappy comeback, but he comes up empty.  So I continue. "I've been doing this for fifteen years, all right? I'm not the secretary, I'm not the apprentice, I'm not the janitor. This is what I do all day long. If you want my help, I will help you, but you need to listen to what I'm trying to tell you so we can find something that works."

I return to the paper. "Now, the problem you're going to have here is--"

"You keep talking about problems, I wanna hear solutions!" He barks, in a spittle-flecked tone that let me know this conversation was over. Really? Empowering corporate-speak? I wanted to ask him if he had just come from seeing Tony Robbins, but I assumed that might go right over his head, and I hate to waste a good jab. I'm done at this point. I want to help people, but I'm done trying to wrestle them into submission beforehand. If you come in and ask for help, be ready to accept it. If you can't do that, go pound sand.

"I'll give you a solution if you'll shut up for a minute!" I reply, just as loudly. My retort causes him to physically take a step back. His scowl was replaced by wide-eyed shock.

"I--I've got cash money!" He spat.

"So?"

His mouth worked open and shut like a sock puppet, but no sound came out. Finally he started squeaking, "I--I--," and the scowl rolled over his face like a thunderhead. "You...you blew it!" He bellowed. "I'm ready to spend money and you--I'm out of here!"

Let me address that for a moment, if you will. I "blew it"? No, sir, quite to the contrary, YOU blew it. I was ready to be polite, to be helpful, to be thorough. I'm far from the best tattoo artist on Earth, but I try my damndest to get close. I love coverups. I love the challenge. I love helping someone get rid of something to which is attatched a bad memory, a bad person, embarrasment or peril of an ass-whipping. I love to see people feel comfortable with their skin again, to look at their faces when see what has become of their inky eyesore. I love to hear people say, "I can't believe it....you can't even see it....how did you do that?....that's amazing!" I live for coverups. You, Buddha-man, you blew it. You blew it because your ego wouldn't take a backseat to good advice for just a few minutes. You didn't want to hear from an expert that your amateur idea wan't going to work. You just wanted me to do my job on your terms, terrible outcome and waste of money be damned.

I would also like to add at this point what the rest of my day looked like. Before I even showed up to the shop that day, I was already booked with a portrait to do right at the beginning of the day, and then later in the day I was booked for a big side piece that was going to take me right through until close. Before I had even finished the portrait, I got a phone call from one of my customers asking to come in that afternoon. I tucked him right into the spot between my two appointments, leaving just a little room on either end to grab a sandwich and follow up on some big pieces I was drawing for the following week. As I was finishing up that portrait, someone else came in asking for me, and I booked him for the coming weekend. Right after I finished the portrait, and just before Buddha-man came in and stunk up the place, one of my regulars came in and I booked her for the next day. Let me also point out that this took place on a Tuesday. A TUESDAY. The no-man's land of the calendar. It's not the start of the week, it's not Hump Day, it's not Thirsty Thursday or the start of the weekend or the actual weekend or The Lord's Day or any fucking day. I can't get five minutes to take a pee on a Tuesday because I'm so busy, and the rest of my week is no different.

Therefore, throwing the "I have money" card means absolutely nothing to me. I have as much work as I can handle, and often more than a sane person should, because I will take walk-ins any time my chair is empty, forgoring lunch breaks or coffee breaks just so people don't have to wait around or come back later because I'm too tired. I'm not starving. I'm not desperate. I'm not heating cans of cat food over a candle and praying someone walks in. Like I said before, I'm far from the best tattooer on Earth. I wish I was, but I can name a hundred people who blow my doors off, and there are five hundred more I haven't heard of yet who will, too. But people seem to dig me and they dig my work. I'm really nice to them, despite the impression my crab-ass blog might give you. I work hard and I really, really want people to love what I do for them. I want to love what I do for them. I'm very lucky that I got a toehold on this thing and managed to be good enough at it that I can stay busy, even in this shit economy. However, since I am not sitting in the shop with holes in my shoes, an empty belly and bill collectors calling, I'm not particularly inclined to eat a platter of shit sandwiches simply because a prospective customer wants to put the screws to me. Not all of us will stand for being treated like shit because you're dallying with the idea of spending money in our place. Unless you're the first one in at the grand opening, you're not the first customer we've ever seen. Unless you're the last one in on the day the doors close for good, you're not the last one we'll ever see. Those of us who are in the very cushy spot in which I have found myself will gladly refuse your money if it comes with the caveat that you're going to be a raging cock-demon the whole time you're in our place of business. As my boss said later when I recounted the event, "Well, take your cash money and pound it in your ass." But I digress, back to Buddha-man's meltdown.

"Bye!" I called after him as he shoved the door open, hurling himself out into the parking lot in fantastically dramatic fashion. I thought he looked rather like the Heisman Trophy, with  his coffee cup all clenched to his chest while giving the door the stiff-arm. I turned to look behind me and found that my co-workers were all out back smoking. No one had witnessed this whole debacle, save for a customer, shirtless and laughing as he enjoyed a brief respite from being tattooed.

"Did that just fucking happen?" I asked him incredulously, laughing while simultaneously feeling the anger-blood pounding in my ears.

"He had a swastika tattoo. What do you expect?"

Good question. I suppose were he and I to cross paths again, I might suggest to Buddha-man that he get smaller cups of coffee. Or switch to decaf, perhaps. Or tea, aren't buddhists supposed to drink a lot of tea? Either way, I see that peaceful eastern mysticism doesn't just descend on you because you got the tattoo.

YOUR MOM

I love my mom. And I'm sure you love your mom. And I've tattooed a lot of moms and I love them as well. One of my favorite clients EVER is the textbook definition of a mom. She looks like someone who would be friends with my mom. She comes off like someone who would be on the church council and who makes good meatloaf...and then you notice the tattoos on her hands. I adore her, and I think part of that is because she reminds me a bit of  my mom; gray, softened, grandmotherly. Only she is covered in tattoos,  they're all over her hands, her arms, and she is talking about doing her neck. It's just such a shock and I love people who defy convention. Moms like that are awesome. We've tattooed her, her husband and her son, and they are just an awesome bunch.

Not all moms are like that, of course, and I meet a lot of moms who only have a few little hidden tattoos, or none at all. And they like come to the shop with their kids, and they're curious and they're nice, and we don't mind them one bit. I think it's a little odd, though, bringing your mother along while you get tattooed, but it seems most kids are doing that nowadays. My mother wouldn't be caught dead in a tattoo shop. She's pretty much over her initial horror and embarassment over what I do for a living, and reality TV was what broke her down. Don't get me started on those stupid shows. I hate them more than I hate blisters. But if they made my mother feel it was finally okay to stop lying to people about what I do for a living, then fine. When she first found out I had a tattoo, she lost it. She cried and yelled and didn't even want to look at me. I don't even want to get into what happened when I told her I was apprenticing as a tattoo artist. To this day, I cannot fathom ever having brought my mother along for any of my tattoos. Granted, that was a different time, tattoos were not as socially acceptable as they are now. Parents didn't like that their kids got tattoos, kids got tattoos to piss off their parents. Nowadays, parents get their kids gift certificates for tattoos as birthday and Christmas presents. Then the parents come along  to the shop and watch the whole thing take place, they take pictures and it's some big family bonding experience. Like I said, I don't really get it, but whatever. They like our shop, they like my work, we're keeping busy and that's what I'm after. I still can't help but feel a touch of melancholy that the rebelliousness has been sucked out of tattoos and that the dangerous mystery of it all is long gone.  But, once upon a time, a woman cutting her hair short or a man wearing an earring was extremely shocking, so every rebellious thing gets the edges blunted off over time, I suppose.

The one thing I cannot abide by, boys and girls, is the angry moms. We see a lot of them and I've had it up to the top of my lumpy head with this. Let me remind you of one very important fact: In just about every place on Earth, you must be 18 to get a tattoo. It's the law where I live and it is the law for most of the country, as well as in other countries to which I have traveled. There is no need for parental presence in our shop. A parent's signature is not a requirement for a tattoo in any place I have ever worked, because in every place I have ever worked, you must be 18 to be tattooed. We tattoo adults, not minors, not kids, I belive I have already covered this ground in more than one posting. So if you have brought your mom, and I will say 'mom' because they outnumber dads about two hundred to one in these instances, keep your mom on a leash.

Let me explain myself. Most people who bring mom do so because they want her engaged in the process. They ask what she thinks, they ask where they should get it, and occasionally, she pays for the tattoo.  Like I said, this is my job and I don't get paid to sit and play with my phone. If having your mom with you will get you into my chair, so be it. But recall that I do not need your mom's authorization before I am legally allowed to put my hands on you. You are an adult, doing something that adults do, and I'm not going to abide your mom treating me like I am her child. I am not going to abide your mom shit-talking me, the shop, or my industry. I didn't get into tattooing to make moms happy. My career choice made my own mother cry. While that made me feel bad, I was a big kid and I was getting into something I really was excited and passionate about. So, if I'm willing to upset my own mother and garner her disapproval in order to live my dreams, I can't say I'm terribly concerned about your mother's disapproval, either on your part or on mine.

I had been meaning to write about this for a while, but the last straw came a few weeks back. Believe it or not, I'm actually pretty patient and polite in real life. I know, you wouldn't get that from reading this blog. I come off like a raging dickbag, and I won't deny that for a second. But I can turn it on and off like a lightswitch, and that is part of my success in this industry. I can be polite, calm and professional in the face of people acting like total assholes, abusive pricks and big, whiny babies. I keep my game face on at the shop, then I vent about it in this stupid-ass blog. People seem to like reading it, so I guess I'll keep on going. But I digress.

I no longer felt the need to be polite when my game face got slapped by someone's mom, whose presence was not necessary for me to do my job. I can't say that in the future I will continue to be polite to other moms who feel they have license to crap on me bcause they don't agree with their adult childrens' decisions. Recently, a young girl came in for her first tattoo, nothing elaorate, but it meant a lot to her and she was a really nice kid. I called her back to my chair but she hesitated, saying, "I'm waiting for my mom.....because.....she's.....a controlling mother." Danger, Will Robinson.....I asked her, partly joking but mostly serious, "Uh oh--she's not gonna bust my balls the whole time about this, is she?" The girl gave me a weary look and shrugged. Great. My stomach acids kicked into second gear and I braced myself for what was sure to be a struggle.

My instincts were correct. Mom showed up with a scowl that could peel the paint off the walls and immediately took a verbal swipe at her daughter over getting a tattoo. She turned to me and made a snarling request for the aftercare instructions. I began to explain, and she cut me off at every turn. "What, Vaseline? Or baby oil? Leave the bandage on all week?" I kept calm and continued, more or less ignoring her attempts to browbeat me. The daughter showed her mom the design and mom complained about the size, the content, the lettering and the placement. The daughter asked what she thought about a certain element of it and mom barked, "I'm not happy about any of this!" At the moment, I was more irked on behalf of the kid. She was nice, she was polite, and she was nervous. Mom was berating her as if she was the dog who peed on the carpet, and I couldn't even see why an adult would want to ask someone like that for an opinion.

Mom turned back to me with that scowl and asked, "So, what about removal later? She can laser this off,  right?" I have been asked that question before. I don't particularly like that question, and I'll tell you why. If you're getting tattooed, hopefully you understand that it's forever. There is no escape hatch, you're electing to get this thing on you and you're going to be together every day of your life, 'til death do you part. Yes, there is such a thing as laser removal and it works, more or less. But if you're getting a tattoo with the idea that one day you're going to get rid of it, don't get it. Tattoos are not shirts, you don't retire them to Goodwill or the garbage when you feel they no longer suits you, and lasering off a tattoo is not like removing nail polish.

I wll also say this; I have devoted one-third of my life to tattooing. This is what I do, and I love to do it. This has been one of only two things I have successfully committed to and have managed to engage in for any length of time. Tattooing has been one of very few things that has given me any satisfaction, contentment and sense of purpose in life. I want more than anything to be the best I possibly can at it, it has nudged out my need to draw, paint or even doodle because my art-rocks are gotten off so thoroughly. Tattooing is truly my life's work and my love. What it means to me cannot be adequately put into words, although I'm trying. And that total strangers come to me and trust their bodies to me is no small potatoes from where I sit. That is enormous. I am making something for them, even if it's something small and simple, that to them means a great deal. They shall have it forever and ever, carrying a piece of me on their bodies for an eternity. And to look me in the eye and say, "How do I make it go away?" isn't just a slap in the face, it's a gut punch.

Let me also take it a step further, this was not the potential tattooee asking me this question, it was her mother. The person not getting the tattoo, who has made it very clear that she disapproves, is pretty sure that the adult who IS getting the tattoo will someday hate it and want it removed. Her tone, her expression, all of it, made me see red. This poor girl was near tears at this point, clutching the stencil in her trembling hands and looking as sad as sad could be. I had had enough, and I bluntly informed mom that she was insulting me, insulting our shop and insulting what I do for a living. I told her that I didn't appreciate being talked to that way and that her question was incredibly rude. My boss, who is way better at telling people to shove it than I am, jumped in and informed mom that this girl was an adult, making an adult decision, and that we were interested in pleasing our adult clients, not their irate parents. Mom, of course, did not like that one bit and began shouting back at us that we were being rude and attacking her. I'm no Gordon Ramsay, but I double-dog-dare anyone to go into his place, order dinner, and then ask him how to make yourself vomit up the meal after a while. If you don't get clubbed to death with a frying pan, you will certainly get an earful about insulting his work, his establishment and his art. I feel the same way, only I have no frying pan, and I have yet to call anyone a 'dumb fucking donkey'.

So mom, not content to browbeat her child, thought she could do the same to us and my boss sternly reminded her that "This is still a tattoo shop." As in, we are not the timid salesgirls at the shoe store, or the nerdy baristas at the coffee shop or teenage ice cream jerks at Tastee-Freez. I think the assumption is with the gentrification of the industry has come a gentrification of the artists. I'm no great big tough guy and I really don't like to fight. The younger guys and gals getting into it now are a lot nicer and softer than the old guard. There are a lot of new shops now, and they've not seen he mania and the violence of decades past. I have worked in shops owned by psychopaths who have shot people, stabbed people, and set people on fire right in the shop. I have worked for, alongside, and on gang members, motorcycle club guys, fighters and derelicts. Myself and most tattoo artists my age have arrest records, FBI dossiers and lots of scars. I haven't spent my career in a flower shop. I spent my career behind windows with burglar bars on them, keeping weapons within reach of my station in case I had to defend myself from an unruly drunk, be it client or co-worker. I'm glad things are mellower now. I have no desire to beat the shit out of people. But that doesn't mean I'm a laydown or a doormat. I'm going to be polite and professional, but remember, I come from a place where using someone's head to open the front door before dropping them face-first on the sidewalk was perfectly normal. I'm not going to stand for being talked down to by some tough guy who walks in the door. I'm certainly not going to stand for your mommy talking to me like I'm some asshole because she can't grasp the idea that you're an adult now, and because you made the dumb-ass decision to invite her along. 

So mom left in a howling huff and the girl ended up in tears. I felt awful for her, and I felt awful that we had to fight with her mother in front of her like that. I don't feel awful for defending myself and what I do, because I was perfectly in the right. Especially considering that she was in our shop talking to us like we were shitbags who were defiling her little girl, when we're a legitimate business providing a legitimate service to legitimate adults. If she wanted to sit home and say that about us, fine. She's entitled to her opinion, but that opinion is not welcome in our shop. Sorry, kids. If you feel you have to tattle on yourselves and tell your mommy that you're getting a tattoo, fine. But have the fight about it at home. Don't bring it into our place. We're not interested and we're not going to put up with it. I have a mom already, and she has no problem complaining about what she feels are my bad decisions. I have no interest in hearing it from your mom. Remember, you're an adult now, doing an adult thing. If you already know they're not going to approve and are going to be mad and have a fit, what the hell do you suppose you're going to gain by bringing them along? She's going to belittle and humiliate you in front of the tattoo people, which I think is way worse if you're a dude. On top of it, you're likely going to witness us telling your mom to go pound sand. We don't give a fuck if she doesn't like us, or tattoos, or your decision. If you like it, you're old enough, and you can pay for it, welcome aboard. Naysayers and complainers will not be treated kindly, and we really don't feel we should refrain simply because she's your mother. Grow a pair and go do something without your mommy, for fuck's sake.

I've been on the receiving end of a mommy meltdown  many, many times before, but this was the first time I lost my ability to keep my cool. I'm getting cranky in my advancing age. I've lost interest in being nice to people who are jerkoffs and treat me like I'm their unruly child who needs to be corrected. I was a bartender for a couple years before I started tattooing, and I don't recall anyone bringing in their mom for advice on what they should drink, and how much of it. I've been to a few titty bars, and I don't recall anyone bringing in their mom for advice on which stripper was the hottest, and should they get a lap dace or a private room dance, and how much should they tip for the dance. Most young people don't seem to have a problem going out to do adult things without mommy, but when it comes to tattoos, they're flat on their asses without motherly advice. Like I said earlier, if your mom is cool with the whole thing and wants to come hang out, fine. I'll even tattoo her if she wants something. I'll be real nice to both of you and we'll all have a good time. You guys will have a funny story about what a fun you had and that kooky-ass tattoo artist telling corny jokes and making stupid faces at you every time you tried to take a picture for Facebook. And you'll have nice tattoos that you can keep forever and ever and ever. But for those of you with the Mommie Dearest  types,  please leave her at home. You might love her, but we don't.

Trust Me, I'm A Doctor

Once upon a time I worked at a big, busy shop in a big, busy city. I was there one Saturday night and we had a lull in the action for a bit. A few of my coworkers and I slowly gathered near the front counter, hanging out and shooting the shit while we kept an eye on the front door.

A big group came in after a while, a pack of adults who were most likely a family, all dressed beautifully as if they had come from a wedding party. Leading the pack was a chubby little boy who charged in excitedly, with a great big smile on his round face. A man in the group pointed at the boy and said, "He wants a tattoo." We all laughed that ha-ha laugh, trying to be polite, even though we got sick of that joke after the 5,094th person came in and made that joke about the infant/toddler/kid with them. A woman in the group handed me a piece of paper on which was printed a small, black cross. "This one," she said, as I took the paper. The boy stood before me, looking up at me expectantly, and she ruffled his hair with her hand.

I did the ha-ha laugh again, and looked at her. She looked back at me with a patient expression, and my eyes flashed to the rest of the group, all of who were looking at me with equal expectation. I looked back to the woman who still wasn't saying a word.

"Oh--you're serious?" I stammered.

She nodded and smiled, and said, "It's okay, I'm his mother."

I was flabbergasted. "You're---but---how old is he?"

"Ten," she replied serenely.

"I'm--we---We can't tattoo him!"

"I'm his mother."

"I know, I heard you the first time! But he's a ten-year old boy! You gotta be kidding me! We can't do that!"

"But I'm a doctor in my home country," she replied, her tone moving from cool to chilly.

"I don't give a damn, we're not tattooing a ten-year old kid!"

The men behind her shifted, glancing at each other. "So there is nothing we can do?" one of them asked.

"You can leave," one of my co-workers said from behind me.

They did just that, muttering to each other on their way out. Really, do I even need to enumerate the reasons why tattooing a ten-year-old kid is a bad idea? I probably should have asked where they were from. I like to do a little globetrotting when I'm able. If the medical professionals over that way recommend tattooing little kids, I'd like to stay out of that corner of the world. With my luck I'll have an emergency and I can't imagine what passes for treatment.

No Habla Hebrew! Or, Left Is Right, Right Is....Wait, Start Again

 In the course of my life I've had to figure out a lot of stuff, and I take pride in knowing a little bit about a lot of things. My ex-Mother-In-Law, who was a pretty sharp bird, used to say that I would be her phone-a-friend if she ever got onto Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. It's been a low-level dream of mine to be on Jeopardy!, not that I've made any effort to do so, and I'm not certain I would win, but I'd have a good time. I've surprised people who have come into the shop when I knew who said the quote they wanted to get tattooed on themselves, or I could name the painter of the image they had as a tattoo idea, or that I even could identify the kanji for "strength" or "love" or "family". Not that I can speak Japanese, but you see a symbol about 500 times, you're going to recognize it.

However....I would like to take this opportunity to point out to you, dear readers, that while we're not all total dumbasses who couldn't POSSIBLY be aware of some obscure literary reference, we're also not ultra-masterminds who know every damn thing on the planet. I am particularly addressing the issue that people seem to think we are all ancient language scholars. People like to get tattoos in Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic and whatever other language they can find that was written on papyrus scrolls and hidden in caves because this means they are worldly and wise and deep and all that shit. And while most tattoo artists can recognize Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic and whatever other languages were written on papyrus scrolls and hidden in caves, this certainly does not mean we are fluent, or that we have even a basic proficiency with any of them.

 A woman came into the shop wanting a Hebrew tattoo. A search of the internet for the word she wanted turned up the very excellent blog Bad Hebrew Tattoos, which I intend to continue reading after I finish writing this entry. Anyway, the blog is correct in pointing out how often Hebrew Tattoos go bad, I can attest to that. Three times in my career I have seen a co-worker trying to deal with a hysterical customer who realized, a week or so later, that the letters are actually upside down. Every time I have to do a Hebrew tattoo, I panic. And I keep panicking until about six weeks later. When I reach that point and I haven't gotten a phone call about it, I relax.

So this woman comes in and wants a Hebrew word on her forearm. I find the image and then we go through the dance about putting it on upside down. Listen, people, we know it's "for you" and "you wanna look at it" and all that, I get it. But as my boss says, "They don't print your T-shirt upside down so you can see it, do they?" I rest my case. So we go through the rigamarole of why, why not, why, why not, until she relents and I put the stencil on, the correct way, so that it reads correctly to anyone who sees it.  Now we're going to go through the "is it facing the right way" debacle. If there is one thing that completely puzzles me, it's how adults cannot, no matter how many times I tell them, distinguish their right from their left. And then, they cannot understand that if we are facing each other, their left is my right and my right is their left. I understand that not everyone is fit to grasp Quantum Physics. But if "your right is my left" needs more than a ten second conversation, kill yourself. Seriously. you're just getting in the way of progress.

So, I'm not Jewish and I don't speak or read or write Hebrew. But over the years I've done a lot of Hebrew tattoos. I've picked up a few things, as I have with kanji. I can tell for the most part when the letters are upside down, and I know that Hebrew reads from right to left, unlike English, which you are currently reading from left to right. So I place the stencil on her arm and ask what she thinks, and we begin the right-left confusion.

"It reads from right to left," I say, and point to the symbol at the top right. The lettering was in two lines, so I follow the path, top right to top left, bottom right to bottom left with my finger. She looks baffled.

"Wait....left....so it goes this way...," She stares at her arm, finger frozen over the top-left symbol.

"No," I interject, "this way. Right to left, right to left," I follow the letters agan, and she looks more confused. She returns to the mirror, staring at it, following with her finger the path I'm pointing out. "But, if you're looking at it, it would be the opposite, right?"

"No, If I'm looking at it, I'm reading it from right to left. You're looking at it in the mirror. It's just like it was on the printout, that's exactly what's on your arm."

She agrees and I get down to business. I have tattooed three of the four letters when she makes a remark again about the right-left quandary and then says, "Oh....did I goof?"

I stop tattooing and grab the original printout and hold it up in front of her. "This is correct, yes?" I ask, feeling that familiar hot flush of Hebrew tattoo-panic blooming in my chest, creeping up my neck, tinging my ears red.

"Well...yeah," she points out the letters on the paper, calling them by name, "That's right on the paper, but...."

I cut her off. "What is on the paper is exactly what I put on your arm. They are exactly the same. Same direction." I cover the tattoo with the paper so the letters are positioned exactly over the tattoo, then I pull the paper away, leaving the exact, three-quarter tattooed image on her arm. She stares intently.

"But.....left...." her finger hovers over the top line. "This is my left," she says, waving her left hand.

I set my machine down on the counter a little more forcefully than I should. "Look, I don't speak Hebrew, I don't write Hebrew, you gotta know what this stuff is before...." I trail off, listening to the fear-blood thundering in my ears for a moment. I glance over and see my boss has stopped tattooing and is looking at me. I've gotten loud enough that everyone else in the shop has noticed that there is something going on. And of course, as it goes, the only thing customers will glean from the conversation is that somehow *I* have fucked up a tattoo.

"The tattoo is facing me. If I am looking at it, I am reading it from right to left, like this." I point to the top right letter, then the top left, then the bottom right, then the bottom left. "I'm reading it just like you're supposed to." I'm not actually reading it, of course. I'm just smart enough to know right from left.

"But...," she falters, "this is my right," she wiggles the arm which I have been tattooing.

I wheel around behind her and wrap my arms around so she can see my hands in front of her. "This is my right!" I bark, and wiggle my right hand. "This is my left!" I bark again, and wiggle my left. "This is your right!" I poke her right hand with my right hand. "This is your left!" I poke her left hand with my right hand.I wheel back around to face her. I wave my right hand again. "My right!" I point with it to her left. "Your left!"

Suddenly her face transforms into the beaming expression of ultimate enlightenment! "Ohhhhh!!!!! So, when YOU'RE looking at it, THIS is right, and THIS is left!" She laughs, as if this is all utterly hilarious, and my near coronary is the stuff of sitcoms.  I wonder if my blood pressure will ever return to normal again after such a fright.

Really, people. If this is your religion, your life, something so important to you that you wish to have it on your flesh forever, you better know what it is, what it says, how to read it, if it's correct, all that good stuff. I am merely going to copy what it is that you give me. I do not need to speak Hebrew to do a Hebrew tattoo, I simply have to be handed the lettering and I will dutifully replicate it. I have many friends who speak foreign languages, but they have never picked up a tattoo machine a day in their lives. They are not qualified to tattoo you in their native tongue, despite their mastery of it. I do not speak enough of any language to be considered 'fluent' save for English.  I'm am totally qualified to do a kick-ass Hebrew or Korean or Arabic tattoo despite my total ignorance of the language,  provided you can hand me a picture of it.

Which brings me to another gripe....a young man came into the shop with a quote written in English on paper. He wanted the quote tattooed in Arabic. I told him he would need to get it translated and written out for me. He said, rather disdainfully, "I thought you guys were artists." I told him that yes, we are artists. What we are not is professional translators and dead language scholars. Our job is to tattoo the words on you, comprehension of said words is not at all necessary. We have devoted years and years to the art of designing and executing tattoos, not to learning complex alphabets in ancient languages from the other side of the globe. He left in a huff, disappointed in our 'incompetence', and good riddance. The little asshat did not himself speak the language, so how was he to know that my translation, were I able to provide one, would be correct? I could have put a bunch of squiggly lines on paper and told him that it was some bona fide Arabic, and he would be none the wiser. I've done enough Arabic tattoos that I could draw something on paper that looked enough like Arabic to fool a non-speaker. But I have a conscience, and my conscience will not allow me to knowingly tattoo something that is linguistically incorrect on someone. However, with languages like Arabic, Hebrew or Chinese, which use a completely different alphabet than mine, I wouldn't have a clue what it said, so I myself would have no idea if I was making a mistake. All I know is how to make the tattoo look nice. And I'm not the only one who's vulnerable. Take a look at another fantastic blog devoted to Ol' Roundeye's abuse of Asian culture via tattoos of total gibberish, Hanzismatter. If you're Japanese, and you're in Japan getting a tattoo of a Japanese character from a Japanese artist, chances are extremely good that your tattoo will be correct. But every time you replace 'Japanese' with another ethnicity in the aforementioned scenario, the chance of a mistake increases exponentially. The tattoo can still be quite beautiful, there are some breathtaking examples on the blog, but they are gross grammatical errors that a fluent speaker sees immediately. 

Getting it properly translated is your job, doing a good tattoo is mine. You gotta meet us halfway on this one.

Customers Say The Darndest Things! Q&A

I don't normally need to ask a ton of questions about a tattoo before I do it. The questions I usually have to ask are always the same. They are simple questions that require simple answers. I like being sure we are all on the same page so there are no surprises or disappointments when I say, "Okay, you're done, go take a look." However, more often than not the answers I get to these simple questions are utterly baffling. In this installment, we take one of the most important questions:

 How big do you want the tattoo?

SHE: Not too big, but not too small. I mean, like, a decent size. Not huge or obnoxious or anything. You know, a good size.

ME: So, how big?

SHE: You know, not obnoxious or anything. You know, a good size. Not too big. Nothing obnoxious. [NOTE: Repeatedly referring to an Oreo-sized tattoo as "big and obnoxious" to a person who is tattooed from wrists to shoulders is pretty freakin' rude]

ME: How big will the tattoo be?

SHE: Well, I mean, not too big, I mean--

ME: No. How big, show me with your hands.

*****************************************

ME: How big do you want the tattoo?

TOO MANY PEOPLE TO MENTION: About four inches by four inches. [I present a Xerox blown up/shrunk down to 4 x 4] Ohhh, no, that's way too big/too small. More like this [indicates an area with hands that is about a half inch-- or 36 inches].

******************************************

ME: How big do you want the tattoo?

HE: Big enough to fit my shoulder.

ME: Okay, well, this is a pretty small tattoo (about the size of a postage stamp). So you want it as big as your shoulder?

HE: (Looks confused) You think that size there will fit?

ME: (Also looking confused) Well, yeah, this is really tiny in comparison to your shoulder.

HE: Oh. I was thinking maybe it should be smaller.

*****************************************

ME: How big do you want the tattoo?

SHE: Well, what do you think?

ME: Well...I mean...if I were gonna get this, I'd do it about this big. [I blow it up on the copier to about twice the size]

SHE: Oh! No, that's way too big. I want it the size it is on the paper.

ME: Okay, that's what I asked you.

SHE: Well, I just wanted your opinion. But that's what I want there.

********************************************

ME: How big do you want the tattoo?

HE: Well, big enough to hide it from my boss.

ME: [stunned silence for a moment] You're putting it on your back. What kind of job exactly do you have that requires you to be shirtless?

HE: [breaking into a shit-eating grin] Oh, yeah, I guess it doesn't matter, then, does it?

***************************************

ME: So how big do you want this?

SHE: That size there [on the paper].

ME: Well, this is way too small. The letters are going to mush all together and it's going to look like a blob.

SHE: Oh. Well, can it be smaller, then?