Last May, I spent a few minutes on the N train talking to a woman named Patricia who had a cool tattoo on the back of her neck (see the post here). She disembarked before I was able to get all the facts on the piece, but I still posted the blurry photo.
No, I didn't run into her again. But I did meet Jorge, who had a similar piece on his inner left forearm based on the fertility goddess Atabey, or Attabeira, the goddess of fertility in the Taíno culture of Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean:
The piece runs the length of his inner arm, and took 2 sittings and 6 hours to complete.
He had this tattooed by Byron Velasquez, then at Rising Dragon Tattoos in 2001. Byron now tattoos out of Abstract Black NYC. Jorge chose this image as an icon to represent his Puerto Rican heritage. This is one of his three tattoos.
Check out other work from Rising Dragon previously appearing on Tattoosday here.
Thanks to Jorge for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!
Angelina Jolie has signed up to be a villain in Disney's Maleficent.
She tells Entertainment Weekly, "It's a really great script. I'm having a lot of fun. I've already got my horns fitted," Jolie tells Entertainment Weekly. My kids are very happy."
"It's not anti-princess, but it's the first time they're looking at this epic woman [in a different way]."
"I hope in the end you see a woman who is capable of being many things, and just because she protects herself and is aggressive, it doesn't mean she can't have other [warmer] qualities," Jolie adds. "You have to figure out the puzzle of what she is."
I ran into Anthony after work while passing through the Amtrak section of Penn Station.
He was in town to perform in Brooklyn and was waiting for his ride. He performs under the name "Xrin Arms," which he pronounced as "Your-in-arms". He's a techno punk musician currently on tour. Here's the flier for the gig he was playing that night:
He had an unusual series of tattoos which he allowed me to photograph, after he explained them to me.
The tattoos cover a significant part of his upper right arm, as well as one side of his forearm.
First and foremost, as a writer, he had his pen inked on his arm.
and he produced one to show me, holding it up to the piece to show me that it was tattooed to scale.
The next element of his inked arm is a legion of sperm directed at his elbow. Some of the sperm are traveling from the pen, representing the knowledge that flows from the written word.
At the center of the elbow is a moth in a circle. He said that it represents a "moth in a beehive". When I questioned that image, he acknowledged that that was how he feels a lot of the time.
If you picture a moth in a beehive, you envision many things: solitude and violence. Of beauty and alienation. The sperm heading toward this image reinforce that the creative experience is a birthing process fraught with danger.
Lastly, on the back of the bicep, is an owl with its wings outstretched.
The owl represents to him that he is noctural, and stays up all night.
He has 2 other tattoos but we stuck with these because they played off one another.
This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for many things, especially my lovely wife and two amazing daughters. You, the readers out there in the world, are also people for whom I am thankful. Mahalo, as they say in my childhood home, for visiting often.
I am also thankful for the month of November, which always seems to be a slowdown month for me and Tattoosday. My posting pace slows significantly, despite still carrying a backlog of posts from the summer. Consider them my tattoo acorns that I'm saving for those cold days ahead when a tattoo sighting in New York generally means someone has removed their gloves or scarf!
Stay tuned in the weeks ahead for a flurry of book reviews, just in time for the holiday shopping season and, in the mean time, enjoy this post from last Thanksgiving, slightly edited, which appeared here.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
In honor of the holiday, I am sharing this, my newest tattoo, located above my knee on my right thigh:
For those of you just tuning in, check the pre-post here, which includes all the Thanksgiving flash designed for the occasion. I asked readers to vote on which tattoo to get, and this one sneaked out a narrow victory over the traditional Native American profile.
I like this design because it combines a lot of traditional tattoo elements and delivers an image with a sociopolitical subtext. We have the traditional American flag and handshake designs, but the added element of crossed fingers serves as a reminder that, despite apparent good intentions, there was subsequently a historical betrayal of that initial good will.
But that's just one perspective, of course, and the Thanksgiving holiday focuses on the positive in our society. The mere existence of the tattoo reminds me to be thankful, which I alluded to in my original post.
I was fortunate enough to have BJ as my artist again. He had inked my Friday the 13th tattoo last August, and I appreciate that he works quickly and concisely.
BJ at Work
It was nice, also, that this design was one of his contributions to the flash sheet, as he was kind enough to embellish slightly on the original design, and it always seems better when an artist is tattooing his or her own design. As for the idea behind it, he was trying to represent graphically a broken treaty. I'm extremely pleased with the end result. ...
I want to thank all of the readers who voted for designs, and for everyone who reads and supports the site.
And thanks again to ... BJ at Hand of Glory, and to my family, at home in Brooklyn and across the U.S., for their support
If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattootinular.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I can contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.
Angelina Jolie was spotted flying a small plane from Van Nuys airport in California. She was accompanied by co-pilot and an unknown person in the back of the small aircraft.
Back in August I received an email from Al, one of the thousands of people that commutes in and out of Penn Station on a daily basis.
As a reader of Tattoosday, Al recognized that a lot of my inkspotting occurred in this major transit hub and he had recently thought he saw me there. Of course, this was quite feasible, as I generally pass through Penn during my lunch hour, as well as before and after work.
He also sent me some photos and, as occasionally happens, the e-mail from Al got buried in the deluge known as my inbox.
But we are excavating it here to share some of Al's ink. I'll let him do the heavy lifting....
"... I often read your blog and I especially love the stories you include about how you ran in to each person or convinced them to show you their tattoos or whatever it was. Also the fact that you include the artist info (when you can) is amazing! So thanks, and keep up the good work!
... [Included are] pictures of two of my tattoos that are especially fun for me, and in their own ways, unique. The first at the top of my back, and it's an image of a jaw harp done as if it were an old-school traditional piece.
If you haven't heard of a jaw harp (also called Jew's harp, trump, mouth harp, etc...) check it out! It's a very simple instrument that has a place in indigenous cultures all around the world...and it's one of the most ridiculous and fun instruments I've ever played. I especially love that it's considered something of a "low class" instrument in most cultures. Sort of the underdog of the musical world! This piece was done by Michael Hastings at the Boston Tattoo Company in Somerville, MA.
The second one is less of a serious tattoo and more of a product of "hey, you know what would be funny?" A tattoo artist friend of mine and I were joking around, and I convinced him to tattoo the bottom of my foot, more or less to see what would happen.
Anyone will tell you that getting a tattoo down there is a bad idea, but how exactly would it work out? Well, the first picture you see is on it's second or third day of life -- already blown out in areas and starting to fade. One month later, and you can see it's already nearly half gone.
It was a fun tattoo experiment, and it earns me major badass points everywhere I go :-)"
Thanks to Al for sharing these tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!
If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattootinular.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I can contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.
This is an orphan post - one of those that had a ton of potential, but just didn't come to full fruition.
A little over four months ago, the family and I had just seen my older daughter Jolee perform in a summer theater production in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
It was a hot night, so we wandered up Union Street and stopped at Uncle Louie G's Italian Ices and Ice Cream. Our server, whose name I never got, was totally game for sharing her tattoos with us:
Fortunately, it wasn't too busy, so I was able to get a picture and a close-up of what she called her "guns on her guns":
Alas, out of nowhere, a line formed and it was clear, as we finished our ices, waiting to resume our discussion, that their business was peaking for the evening.
I passed her my card and asked her to e-mail me, but I never heard back. I stopped by a couple of times in the ensuing months, and she was never on duty.
As today is December 1, I'm officially conceding my hope of getting more information on these cool tattoos.
Thanks to our lovely ice dispenser for sharing her guns with us here on Tattoosday!
If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattootinular.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.
