The Return of Saturday Links

It has been a while since we posted about the tattoo-related items we browsed on the web over the last week, so here's a few to whet your weekend appetite.

One of those not-so-often-discussed benefits for getting tattooed?

It's easier for the authorities to identify your body, like this John Doe whose ink helped the powers-that-be identify him. Full story here.

The Department of the Medical Examiner (Hawaii) released a photo of an eagle or phoenix tattoo found on the body of a man recovered from the ocean off Sand Island Thursday morning. (Courtesy Department of the Medical Examiner)

~ ~ ~

On the flip side, if you get a unicorn tattooed on your butt, you might still be regretting it thirty+ years later, as this writer recounts in the New York Times here. Thanks to Marisa at Needles and Sins for pointing that gem out to me. There's no photo, but if you're jonesing for one, it might look like this:

Or perhaps not, but you can see more like that one on Holy Taco's gallery of 30 Awesomely Bad Unicorn Tattoos.

Then again, Buzzfeed always rocks out with their awesome lists, like this one I saw late Friday: "47 Cringeworthy Tattoos Being Regretted As We Speak" here.

~ ~ ~

The big news this week in New York was Rapid Realty's promise to give significant raises to any employee who got their logo tattooed on them. 

via CBS

Read about the deal here (among others).

~ ~ ~

And my favorite link of the week came from those mammoth sources of all thing tattoo, Inked Magazine.

Among other goodies, they feature "The Best Tattoos in Movies Ever" in three parts. One of my favorites:

Gotta love those Blues Brothers!

That should whet your appetites for the weekend!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

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

Lakota and the Evolution of Man: A Tattoo Odyssey

This colorful tattoo belongs to Lakota, who I met in Penn Station back in March.

He credited his work to Mike Drexler at Fly Rite Tattoo in Brooklyn.

Lakota explained the origins of this piece:

"It's actually inspired by the opening scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey ... this is the specific moment when  man is elevated from primitive simian ...I really, really liked that concept and that idea. I brought in a couple of pictures. I told [Mike Drexler] what I had in mind and he did the final design."

Lakota estimates that the piece was done in three sessions over an eleven hour span and that the fist at the top of the monolith was part of an original first tattoo that was blended into this new design.

Thanks to Lakota for sharing this cool and interesting tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 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://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Nicky Shares a Famous Mermaid

With mermaids on the mind, how about this tattoo from Nicky?

I spotted Ariel, aka The Little Mermaid, on Nicky's arm while walking through Penn Station last month.

When I asked him why he got this tattoo, he replied that she was "my favorite since I was little - she's awesome." He credited an artist named Dan at Cliff's Tattoo in Long Island.

Thanks to Nicky for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

A Duel on Christian's Arms

Christian is one of the rare Tattoosday subjects with whom I got greedy.

My normal modus operandi is to ask people for an offering of one of their multiple tattoos. I let them choose and I am happy to capture one piece and move on.

But in the course of photographing Christian's choice, I saw his other two tattoos, and requested to include them in the post, as well.

Christian is a filmmaker and the two tattoos he offered as a set were drawings from the storyboard of his film, "The Duel":


Positioned as such, Calico Joe Jackson (on the right) and Remington Turk Dakota (on the left) occupy different arms. In their natural state, the two creations of Christian's imagination, they have their backs to one another, pistols drawn, in classic duel-readiness positions. Below is a still from "The Duel," produced by Elwood Gentry Productions.


As his creations, he proudly wears them on his sleeves to commemorate his first major creative undertaking. See the trailer from the film here.

Above Calico Joe Jackson, on his right bicep, there is a familiar sight, an image from one of the first commercial films made, Georges Méliès' 1902 classic A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune):




It's a famous shot, with a bullet lodged in the eye socket of an anthropomorphically-surprised moon.

This film as inspired generations of film-makers and Christian loves the fact that such an early cinematic effort was steeped in science fiction and special effects.


Finally, I had to take a photo of the third tattoo:


That is the logo of Hunter S. Thompson, who invented the concept of Gonzo Journalism. As a huge fan of the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (see my BillyBlog post here), as well as Dr. Thompson's other writings, I greatly appreciated Christian's nod to the late great Hunter S.


All of these pieces were tattooed by the amazing Bert Krak at Top Shelf Tattooing.

A hearty thanks to Christian for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday!

Tattoosday Boxcars: A Leonine Tattoo and Wearing One's Heart on One's Sleeve

I met Jeff and Jeanie in Penn Station as they were about to board an Amtrak train out of the city.

I've been trying to come up with clever terms for different inkspotting phenomenon, basically creating my own lexicon.

I'll call Jeff and Jeanie "boxcars". Meaning, I approached the two of them and gambled, asking them both to participate, and they came through. Like rolling two sixes on the dice (also known as boxcars). I would even venture to call them "blind boxcars", because I could only make out fragments of their ink, but they still shared.

Jeff went first, displaying this leonine figure on his left bicep:


It's a nod to his astrological sign, Leo, and was also selected for its nod to Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast).

Jeanie shared her tattoo below:


This piece literally has her wearing her heart on her sleeve and is inspired by Mexican art. The tattoo was completed by a friend of Jeanine's named John Flack.

I would have obtained more detail, but the couple had to board their train.

Thank you to Jeanine and Jeff for sharing their tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

New York City Tattoo Convention, Part 2: Amazing Tattoos from North of the Border

Lost in the post-euphoric haze of the tattoo orgy known as a tattoo convention, was an encounter I had with several Canadians, one of which is a talented artist.

This was, of course, the New York City Tattoo Convention, which I attended a couple weeks ago (see the brief recap here).

Having decided not to collect many posts and photos for the blog (I had settled on this one), I found myself chatting with Phil, a co-worker of mine, after he spotted me among the masses.

It was while we were chatting, adjacent to the snack area, that I noticed we were being watched. Just to our right, this image greeted us:


This is Janet Leigh, in her iconic role in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Not only is this a masterful portrait, but it was framed beautifully by the cut-out portion of the dress worn by the woman who had this tattoo. It was as if the artist had positioned the tattoo with this dress in mind.


So I introduced myself to the woman who owns this piece. Her name is Marie and she is from Montreal. She got this tattoo because she liked the picture. And that's all that I got from her.
I would have learned more, but the room was loud and I had trouble understanding her. Her English was certainly better than my rudimentary high school French, but the environment made it difficult to pick up what she was saying.

However, shortly after our conversation began, a couple of gentleman rejoined her and one happened to be the artist of the tattoo in question.

His name is Stéphane Bérubé and he is an artist out of a shop called Tatouages Libre Expression, in Saint-Eustache, a northern suburb of Montreal, Quebec.

He was very friendly and introduced me to the other person he was with, who was one of his clients as well.

With little prompting, this guy rolled up his left pant leg to reveal a sleeve Stéphane had done, comprised of bright, multi-colored cartoon panels:





The owner of the tattoos explained that he had brought a graphic novel to Stéphane, telling him it was one of his favorite books growing up. They extracted different panels to make a cohesive combination of segments that make up the whole of the sleeve.

It is phenomenal work and I thank Stéphane and his friends for allowing me to photograph their tattoos!

The Return of Eryn's Ink: Frankenstein's Monster and the Little Girl

At lunch, I ran into Eryn, whose yarn skull, was one of my favorite posts of 2008.

We've been exchanging messages for a while, and I have been anticipating another sample of her work (she has a lot of tattoos).

She has added to her yarn skull, and her whole right arm is a sleeve-in-progress. We decided to wait and showcase the whole limb when it's complete.

Her January offering was this brilliant portrait from the 1931 classic Frankenstein:


The picture above is the one I took, the one below is from the artist's portfolio:


This tattoo is based on this famous scene from the movie:

That's Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and Marilyn Harris playing the little girl. The scene is simultaneously poignant and horrifying. It is a commentary on the innocence of childhood and society's destruction of that innocence through its creations. The little girl does not see a monster, but someone with whom to share a beautiful experience.


But the end result is tragic. The monster is even more innocent than the child, until his unintentional curiosity drowns the little girl.

The scene can represent many different concepts. One of which is the way society judges people based on the way they look. Adults see the creation as a monster, whereas the little girl sees him for what he is inside: a child with a curious innocence (soon to be lost).

Eryn has a lot of tributes in ink, commemorating "the darker things [she] loved as a child". This scene is her favorite one in the film, for all the meaning she finds in the brief couple of minutes therein.

The tattoo is inked on the back of her right calf. The detail in the portrait of Karloff as the monster is phenomenal:


The piece was inked by Randy Hall at Hero Tattoo in Conway, South Carolina.


Jeff Cribb, who founded the shop, is credited by Eryn as being the leading force behind the legalization of tattooing in South Carolina.

I also photographed Eryn's knuckle tattoos, which will be appearing in the future on KnuckleTattoos.com.

Thanks again to Eryn for sharing her awesome body art here with us on Tattoosday!

Pursuit Until Capture

An unplanned trip to the Penn Station K-Mart yielded this awesome tattoo.

Sometimes, even if you can't initially see the whole piece, you can recognize high quality work. This was one of those times.

Chris, who works in independent film, more specifically the horror genre, wanted to pay homage to the film, John Carpenter's Halloween, that inspired him to follow the career path he chose.


The phrase "Pursuit Until Capture" was not from the film, but is a motto that guides him through life. Although applicable to the horror genre (that seems to drive every villain - the relentless pursuit of the victim), it holds a larger meaning for a life philosophy. Translation: follow one's dreams until they are attained. Chris recalls first seeing the "Pursuit Until Capture" phrase in old Sailor Jerry flash art.

This amazing piece was inked by Darren Rosa at Rising Dragon Tattoos in Chelsea. It really is superb work - click the photo to enlarge, and one can almost feel the texture of the pumpkin, the sharpness of the blade. Tattoos from Rising Dragon have previously appeared here.

Darren also inked Chris' first tattoo, a back piece, in January 2006:


Chris always imagined a tattoo with blue wings, and the phrase "Live Life Stronger then Death" exemplifies the ongoing struggle for good over evil.

Certainly words to live by.

Thanks to Chris for sharing his awesome tattoos with us here at Tattoosday!