Jason's Koi and Flower

While wandering aimlessly at work, I ran into Tom (see his tattoo here) with a couple of contractors. One of them had a cool tattoo and when I mentioned it to Tom, he told me to go get my camera. And so I did.

Tom introduced me and summarized my Tattoosday project.

The guy, Jason, actually had two pieces that formed a quarter-sleeve that covered pretty much the entire upper arm.

The inner arm/bicep has a flower on it which he referred to as a pantisse.




I checked an encyclopedia and found no such name. I could spend a long time trying to figure it out, but am not willing to do so.

He got it at Fly Rite Studio in Brooklyn. The artist is Elio Espana.

The outer arm hosted the koi tattoo, which was the one I first noticed.



Jason is a Pisces, and the koi represents good luck.

This piece was inked by Damien Bart at Bruce Bart Tattooing in Ft. Lauderdale.


Thanks to Jason for contributing to Tattoosday!

New York City Marathon

Ok, so I am late with this post.

I live a half block from an early point in the New York City marathon route. Everyone is fresh and cheery, and the Kenyans are more of a blur than they are at the end of the race.

This year, I endeavored to see how many tattoo candids I could snap of runners as they passed by. I did not have high hopes. The mass of humanity that is 30,000 souls is a blur and by the time your brain registers something interesting, it is already gone in a trail of cells just starting to sweat.

I snagged one partial shot. (Don't forget, one has to factor in the photographer's ineptitude and the several-years-old technology of a Kodak Easyshare camera.

Of course, I'm not counting painted on flags like this one:

That's Pia Larsson from Sweden, by the way.

Anyway, I did catch this guy as he blew by:

I know what you're thinking...."What tattoo?" Take a peek at the guy on the right side of the photo and see what I salvaged:



And then lightened:


And then blew up:


I don't know exactly what it is, but there is definitely a patriotic theme here.

That's the best I could do. Sorry!

Tattoos I Know: Brooke's Courage

Here's another piece from a co-worker:

Brooke Goetz moved to the New York City/New Jersey area a couple years back, transplanting herself from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Earlier this year, in May, she was hanging out with some friends at a bar in Hoboken called Mikie Squared. One of her friends, Christian, was talking about tattoos. Brooke has two koi on her back (subject for a later post, hopefully) and another friend at the bar, Bill, admitted he did not have any tattoos. One thing led to another, and Bill posed the question to Brooke, "If I pay for it, will you go get a tattoo right now?" Brooke was game and agreed, without hesitation.

They called around but couldn't find any shops that were open. So the proposition died. Or so Brooke thought.

The next day, Bill called her and asked her if she was still up for the tattoo. "Sure," she said, and the rest is history.

The funniest part of the story, in my opinion, is that, on occasion, if Brooke's out with Bill and other friends at a bar, Bill will ask people, "You wanna see my tattoo?" When they say okay, Bill grabs Brooke's arm and shows them the tattoo.

The tattoo was inked by Robbie at Hoboken Body Art.
This kanji cost $75 and Brooke actually went back a few months later because she wanted it darkened. They re-inked it for free, an impressive pro-customer move.

Brooke chose the kanji for "courage" to represent the courageous act of leaving the relative "safety" of Utah for the faster-paced and exciting life of the Tri-State area. She likes having it on her inner wrist because she sees it all the time and it is a constant reminder to her to always be courageous in life.

Of course, Tattoosday has had its share of kanji tattoos in our short existence. The problem with kanji tattoos are that they are prone to errors and misinterpretation. It's hard to throw a cyber-rock on the web and not hit a story about an ill-inked kanji tattoo.

This one, however, seems correct, much to my relief. It would suck to have to tell Brooke her tattoo doesn't mean "courage" but "angry goat" or something silly.

Take a closer look:

Which is pretty close to this piece on the web:



Still, I like to get a second validation, which I found here:

Below are some of the characters styles you can choose for your "Courage / Bravery (alternate)" calligraphy when you select this option...

Xing-Kai
Shu

Xing
Shu

Kai
Shu

Li
Shu

Zhuan
Shu

You can see from the above selection the differences in the same character, done in the different kanji styles (each labeled ____ Shu).

Kanji tattoos continue to simultaneously intrigue and befuddle me. Thanks to Brooke for sharing her courage with me.

Memorial for a Father

On a cold morning in the beginning of November, I spied a tattoo on the bare left calf of a guy at the corner of 31st and 7th in Manhattan. He crossed the street, walking the same direction I was headed and, lo and behold, headed into the Starbucks in my office building.

He was ahead of me in line and after he ordered, I expressed admiration for his tattoo:


Obviously, it's a memorial tattoo. The host's name is Jim and, as he explained, his father had passed away 3 years ago. I didn't notice until later when I uploaded the picture, the dates 1961-2005, making his father 43 or 44 when he died. The inscription reads "In Loving Memory James R. Frederickson".

Jim explained the tattoo for me. His father wanted to be cremated, so the tattoo is an ersatz grave site. He also added in the cheap, wooden cross, because his father always had been critical of people who spent a ton of money on grave markers.

Jim explained that the piece took him 2 1/2 years to design and get just right, so it must have been completed in the past year. It was inked at Lake Geneva Tattoo.

Thanks to Jim for sharing his tattoo with me!

Tattoos I Know: Jeff's Lifelong Long Life

Tattoosday is back after a November hiatus. If you want a further explanation, check out BillyBlog. Pickings have been slim, but I still hope to present a tattoo or two through the winter months. I have a few posts stored up to carry us through December......

Today's tattoo is from a co-worker named Jeff.


This piece is on his upper right arm. He got this at a tattoo shop in Rhode Island about a dozen years ago when he was 19. He'd always wanted one and designed this "under the influence of narcotics".

He thought it had meant "life-long" but found out later that it meant "long life". I have neither the time nor the wherewithal to fully research kanji mysteries like this. Here's one example of a stock "long life" kanji:


I don't see the similarities, but at least it doesn't mean "cow," like previous tattoos I have featured.

Either way, thanks to Jeff for sharing his tattoo!

Tattoosday Doldrums

Autumn has come to New York and the tattoos have all but disappeared. Despair not, oh readers of this blog, there is hope.

To the woman I met outside of Rite Aid with the rose tattoo on her ankle that she said din't mean anything, I'm curious to hear about the tattoo on your arm, hidden last Sunday, which you want to get removed. You said there's a good story behind it. Please e-mail me.

To the woman at Duane Reade in Penn Station who sold me the Advil Cold & Sinus, I hope you're reading this and will participate in Tattoosday so I can get the story (and photo) of the ink on your wrist.

Alas, we fired a woman today at work who I had hoped to ask about the tattoo on her leg. My friend at Starbucks with the pine trees on her arm, commemorating her homesickness for Michigan, has transferred to a different location, unknown to me.

There are two co-workers who are prepared to offer me their tattoos for the blog. Patience, dear readers, and tomorrow is Halloween and it's supposed to be warmer.

I also have a New York Marathon post planned for next Sunday. 30,000+ runners will be zipping by me at the corner of 92nd Street and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. How many tattoos will I capture?

I will leave you today with a pre-Halloween shot, a candid I snapped on the streets of Manhattan back in August, when I was a timid Tattoosday blogger.

I don't know the story. I don't know anything, except that it's a pretty cool black tattoo.

A New Awakening

At the beginning of the week, Summer was still clinging to the Northeast, which meant that there were still tattoos to be spotted out in the sunshine.

Monday afternoon, I noticed a woman in the plaza outside of Borders with a cool ring of flames and a lion tattooed around her ankle.

When I approached her about it, she was kind of down on the piece, saying the guy who did it out in Huntington, NY overcharged her and messed it up. It still looked pretty cool to me.

She also showed me her first tattoo, a star in a circle, on her lower back.

However, the third tattoo, which I hadn't seen until she pushed her hair back from her neck, was her favorite. That was the one she liked the best:


She gave her name as "Marla," which she acknowledged wasn't her real name. She slipped later and said what her real name was, but I will honor her desire to be anonymously misidentified.

Marla had her piece inked by Cheryl at Ink Alternative in Ronkonkoma, NY. She spoke nothing but praise about the shop. Marla was thrilled to not only let me photograph her tattoo, but was excited when I showed it back to her on my camera as she hadn't seen it in a while.

Marla said she had the tattoo done after getting through a hard time and that it represented "a new awakening". The symbolism of the sun and the tears represented the moving on from the difficulty she had just gone through.

Thanks to Marla for sharing this cool design with the Tattoosday community! Thanks also to Stacey Sharp, another artist at Ink Alternative, for identifying for me the artist who inked Marla's neck.

Update 7/27/2009: Stacey is now at Inkpulsive Custom Tattoos.

Mike's Quintet of Tattoos

Last week, in front of Madison Square Garden, I met a guy named Mike who had several tattoos.

I have found the most success with people in this area because, generally, people are loitering in the fresh air while waiting to head into Penn Station and catch a train.

That's what Mike was doing and I must give him kudos not only for being open to talking with me, but for proudly showing me all of his tattoos (5 in all) and for being forthcoming about his life, more than others may have been.

This is the tattoo that first drew my attention:

This piece was designed and inked by an artist in Miami at a shop called Art Attack, which is now known as Merlin's Tattoo.

Mike's ex-fiancee's pet name was "Jellybean," because, he said, "she was sweet". The name was merged with the express train logo by the artist.

Mike was a first for Tattoosday, as when I asked him what shop his tattoos came from, he hesitated briefly, but then stated matter-of-factly, "State Penitentiary".

So, four of his tattoos were credited to an incarcerated artist named "Kenny V." I must say, in my opinion, considering that these were not done in a shop, per se, the work is superb.

Below the "Jellybean Express" tattoo on his right arm, there was this dragon (because he likes dragons):

What was particularly cool about this dragon was that its rudimentary spine-like body wrapped around Mike's arm from the biceps down toward the wrist. It's hard to really capture the effect, but I did the best that I could.



On his left arm he had two tattoos. A wolf:


and below the wolf was a row of paw prints, wrapping around his arm. Each paw print, Mike said, was a tribute to a friend in the penitentiary.


Lastly, on his right calf, Mike had this intricate ace of spades with a skull inside of it:


Thanks to Mike for sharing his tattoos and helping display them here for Tattoosday.

Tattoosday Goes to Sweden, or Sweden Comes to Tattoosday

Walking down 7th Avenue on Friday, October 19, I spotted a sleeved arm approaching, Sorry, it was a couple. Man and a woman, young, in their mid to late 20's...(apologies if you are reading this and are younger).

Behold, the guy was game for talking tattoos. In fact, Jörgen Wiklund, visiting from Sweden, was extremely cool and patiently indulged me as I tried to write down names in his native tongue.

Jörgen wasn't sure how many tattoos he had...he guessed around 15 or so. I snapped two. First, since we are in New York City, this seemed apropos:


Jörgen characterized all his tattoos as whimsical, fun, spur of the moment decisions. This is a tattoo representing Dee Dee Ramone, as a duck. He elaborated that his girlfriend had a duck-like haircut and earned the nickname "Ducky," so this piece was a tribute to her.

The Ducky Ramone was inked at Evil Eye Tattoo in Stockholm.

Jörgen also let me take a picture of this interesting piece, which he says is an homage to the musician Roky Erickson:


It took some searching, but this tattoo is based on what I'm guessing is an out-of-print or special edition cover of Roky Erickson and the Aliens CD I Dream of Demons :

When I asked who Roky Erickson was, thinking he was perhaps a Swedish musician, he enlightened me, saying he was from Texas and that he was "the greatest musician that ever lived."

When he asked if I had heard of the 13th Floor Elevators, I said sure (one song on my BilliPod, "You're Gonna Miss Me," from the High Fidelity soundtrack. You can hear the song here, streaming on Erickson's website.

The whole demon motif ties into the storied history of Erickson and his past with drug use, electro-shock therapy, and mental illness.

Jörgen had this tattoo done in his home town of Härnösand, in northern Sweden, at a shop called Paul's Custom Tattooing.

Jörgen was a real treat to meet. He and his girlfriend (who is tattoo-less) are/were in town for a week. I suggested she get her first tattoo in New York to commemorate her trip here. The were both good sports and I want to thank Jörgen and his significant other for their participation in Tattoosday and the contribution of the first international contribution to the blog.

You Must Believe in Spring

I think that what makes Tattoosday successful are all the interesting, unusual, pieces that most people walk by, see, and wonder, "What the heck is that tattoo all about?"

I'm going a little bit out of sequence here, as I still have two sets of tattoos from last week (from Mike and Jörgen) that I am still writing up. This one, however, is a little less work so I am getting it out of the way first. I spotted this on the inner arm of a guy waiting outside of Starbucks at the corner of 92nd and 3rd in Bay Ridge:

It seemed pretty unusual so I stopped and asked him about it. He told me that it was an album cover. "Which one?" I asked. This one:

Clarence, the possessor of the tattoo, had this representational tattoo inked in honor of Bill Evans' 1980 album You Must Believe in Spring.

The piece was tattooed at New York Adorned.

I would have delved further into why this album was so important to him that he had it tattooed onto his arm, but the person he was waiting for came out with his coffee, and his dog started barking at other dogs, so I figured I wouldn't bother him anymore.

Clarence, thank you for your contribution to Tattoosday and, if you'd like, feel free to e-mail me
as to the significance of this record.

Link O' The Day

Remember the Hawaiian Tattoo in Brooklyn (read post here)?

Here's a related article about Hawaiian arm tattoos.

Atom Strange

On the way to work Thursday morning, I was passing through the Manhattan Mall from the subway whe I spotted a guy reading a paper at one of the tables on the bottom floor. This was peeking out from the bottom of his right sleeve of his t-shirt:


I walked up (after dodging a few commuters passing through the mall) and asked him if I could talk to him about his tattoo. He gestured to the empty chair opposite him and started chatting.
His name is Alex.

At this point, I had only really seen the bottom of what was a half-sleeve. The stars and black lightning blots were compelling enough to get me to stop. Then he pulled his sleeve up to his shoulder to reveal the whole of the piece:

The majority of the piece was done by Scott, who used to work at Dare Devil Tattoo on Ludlow Street. The bolts were inked in later at Venus Modern Body Arts on East 4th.

When I asked Alex what inspired this work, he said that he is a big science fiction fan, from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to more modern "hard" sci fi which has a deeper connection to hard scientific fact. I discussed my own appreciation of Philip K. Dick and talked about how, if you read too much of his work, you start to feel the author's reknowned paranoia, and it begins to affect the way one thinks. Here's a closer look at the piece:

I asked him about any other tattoos. He briefly flashed one on his upper left shoulder that he got when he was younger. He indicated that he was thinking of having it removed/covering it up and incorporating it into a themed piece spanning his back and connecting to the other sleeve.

He did have this tattoo on his inner forearm:



I assumed it to fit in with the sci fi theme, but he also indicated it referred to his band. Oh? What band?

He is in a band called Atom Strange.

He's the guy on the far left. I later learned he was the guitarist.

"What kinds of music do you like?" Alex asked.

I told him I liked pretty much everything that I used to say I liked everything but country, but then I discovered Lucinda Williams. He nodded in agreement. "Lucinda Williams is great," he added.

He reached into a bag and handed me Atom Strange's CD. The theme matched his tattoo. You can order the CD here. I''ll be reviewing it in the near future over on BillyBlog.

Here's a shot, not taken by me, in which you can see Alex and his tattoos in action:


I have listened to the CD once through and I like it, but will give it some more attention before writing about it in detail. Alex said that some people compare them to early Stone Temple Pilots. I certainly see (and hear) why.

Anyway, thanks much to Alex for letting me interrupt his breakfast and paper on Thursday morning.

You can hear samples and see the band profile on their MySpace page.

I reviewed the CD over on BillyBlog here.

The Phoenix and the Bulldog

Autumn has come to New York City, making the mission of Tattoosday slightly more difficult. Cold weather sends tattoos scurrying under longer sleeves and lengthening hem lines.

However, this week gave us a slight reprieve, and yesterday I spotted this nice piece in the plaza in front of the Borders at Madison Square Garden:

Actually, I only spotted the tail feathers of the phoenix dropping below the short-sleeved left arm of a New Yorker named Dave Sperandeo.

Dave said that the phoenix, which is a more common tattoo subject, represents his starting over after a divorce. This nice piece was inked by Peter at Peter & Cubo's Tattoing & Body Piercing in Ozone Park, Queens.

Dave offered up a second piece, on his left leg:


As you may have guessed by the bulldog with the fire hose, Dave is a New York City fireman. He had this inked five years ago when he graduated from the academy and became a member of the FDNY. I especially like the nice touch of the three blue water droplets at the end of the hose. This one was tattooed by Cubo at the same shop in Ozone Park mentioned above.

Thanks again to Dave for offering up his ink and keeping Summer alive for Tattoosday for a little bit longer!

Buddhist Regret: A Follow-Up

This is a follow-up to this post regarding Vicki's tattoo:

Vicki was under the impression that this meant "the Path to Enlightenment". She also told me that the tattoo meant nothing to her and that she was considering having it removed.

If she reads this post, her feelings may become even stronger.

I hesitated before posting this, but because she was so down on this piece, I figured, if anything, I'd be doing her a favor.

This Chinese characters do not reflect what she understands the tattoo to mean. From the top down, the first element is the triad of dashes on the upper right. These three strokes represent the number three. The large character at the top of the tattoo caused some consternation among my co-workers who are fluent in Chinese that I showed this to. One couldn't identify it at all and the other said that it most closely resembles the kanji meaning "look" or "see".

The bottom character was easily identified by those I showed the picture to.

The character on the right in the illustration above matches the bottom character in the tattoo. It is the character for "cow". I am now theorizing that the top character is a distortion of the word "year" and that Vicki's tattoo represents the astrological year of the cow, or the ox, denoting people born in 1997, 1985, 1973, 1961, 1949, 1937, 1925, 1913, or 1901. Although she mentioned she was 27, which would have put her birthday in 1980. Hmmm.

The alternative, that it is just gibberish, "three look cow," is also a possibility. She did say that she found the kanji in a cartoon in a philosophy textbook.

Regardless, it certainly makes the tattoo more interesting. Vicki, if you wish me to remove this post, please e-mail me. I did not create this follow-up mean-spiritedly, but merely as a further exploration of your tattoo.

There's a whole site called Hanzi Smatter that analyzes "the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture." They display some tattoo examples that illustrate that bad ink happens quite often, especially when tattooing using foreign words and characters.

My advice, when getting a tattoo of this nature, would be to go to at least two, if not three, opinions from independent, unrelated authorities of the language, before permanently inking a non-English piece. Hell, some people have a hard time with English! Check out this story from earlier this year in Chicago. Or this story from 6 years ago.

Anger Management

It is my practice, when someone is heavily inked, and they've agreed to let me take a picture, to ask them to offer up the piece that means the most to them.

Last week I approached a guy named John in front of Madison Square Garden. He had numerous tattoos on his arms and looked like an excellent Tattoosday candidate. However, when I asked him what tattoo was the most special, he raised his right pant leg to show me this interesting design on his calf:

John described this "biomechanical" design as a shield that keeps his demons locked inside. The tribal symbol is an anchor that keeps him grounded. He was very open and acknowledged that he had anger management issues. The tattoo gives him strength to control those issues.

This tattoo is one of 15 that John has. It was inked by High Roller Tattoo, in Hicksville on Long Island, NY.

After thanking John, I asked the woman standing next to him if she had any tattoos she wanted to share. She did. Donna has two kanji characters on her lower back that I wasn't able to get complete photographs of. I asked her to, at her convenience, send me better pictures, if she was interested in joining these pages. She said the kanji meant a lot to her, so I am interested in finding out why.

Thanks John, again, for your participation. Here's hoping Donna will e-mail me about her tattoos.

Hawaiian in Brooklyn

It's not every day that one sees the Hawaiian language tattooed on a Brookylnite, so I was stunned to see the following tattoo wrapped around the arm of a woman in Foodtown earlier this week:


The tattoo reads, in Hawaiian, "e ola aui ke Akua". I'm not fluent, but I know the Hawaiian language when I see it. I had to speak to this person and find out what possessed this person to inscribe these words on their flesh.

The woman is Danielle Tay, and the tattoo is a tribute to her Hawaiian heritage. Her paternal grandfather is Hawaiian, her father was half-Hawaiian, or one hapa-Haole, as we would say it in the islands. Danielle is therefore a quarter Hawaiian, by birth, and despite being a Brooklynite, feels connected just the same.

"Uh," I asked, "Can you tell me what that means?"

Danielle believes it to loosely mean "May God grant me Life".

This was inked at Funcity Tattoo in the East Village.

Danielle, thanks for letting me take your tattoo's picture. I lost your e-mail address, however. Please shoot me an e-mail if you're reading this....I have some additional questions for you.

UPDATE: My friend Cat in Hawai'i says:

"E ola au i ke Akua" means "I live in the Lord" or "I live because of the Lord". There's some flexibility in translation, but that's the gist, I think. It's OK, although the "aui" should be split into "au i".