Tattoo Coomments: 2007-10-07

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".

Devil Angel

I spotted this tattoo on the left arm of a guy hanging out in Starbucks on Monday, October 8.

I was doing some laundry, and saw him smoking a cigarette a little later outside the store. I went up and introduced myself and Tattoosday.

The owner of this tattoo is Steven. He refers to it as "D.A.," which stands for Devil Angel. She was inked around 1998 at Studio Enigma on Avenue U in Brooklyn. The artist was a guy named Michael, who is no longer listed with the shop.

Steven said the tattoo is based on a design that was on the wall of the shop and, like many tattoos, a few adjustments were made, and this was the final product. There was really no inspiration behind this particular design, there's no real life person behind the Devil-Angel persona.

This tattoo is showing some age, but it still is a nice piece that was intriguing to see peeking out from Starbucks.

Thanks to Steven for sharing D.A. with all of us here at Tattoosday.

Vegan Tattoo

I see tattoos in Foodtown, my local grocery store, all the time, but I had yet succeeded in getting someone to contribute from there. Granted, I had only asked once, and was shot down. However, last weekend, I met Jay, a totally cool inked dude with a full sleeve and a couple of nifty leg pieces. Here's the sleeve:

Jay swears by the artists at Brooklyn Ink.

The work of Brooklyn Ink has appeared previously here. He credited the sleeve to the artist Alex Franklin.

Because I interrupted Jay while he was shopping, we didn't have the luxury to chat at length. However, he did discuss two elements.....the word "Vegan" is prominent at the top and the bottom of the sleeve. That's self-explanatory: Jay is a vegan. The "X X X" aspect of the tattoo also refers to the fact that Jay is also drug and alcohol-free. There may be more to that, but the triple X referred to a straight-edged lifestyle.

I hope to catch Jay again in the future, so I can update this post and, hopefully, snap some shots of his leg work.

Thanks, Jay, for your cooperation with the Tattoosday project!