Tattoo Coomments: 2008-05-25

Sheldon Shares Two Tattoos

One of my tricks for locating tattoos is to walk by the Borders on Penn Plaza and see if anyone's reading tattoo magazines.

On Thursday, I spotted Sheldon in the store in the checkout line. He had two sleeves worth of ink, but I am trying to steer clear of big, wrap-around pieces, because I don't think I can give them a lot of justice in a blog format. There are exceptions of course (here and here, for example), but one generally needs a little more time to do it right.

Anyway, I settled on the left inner forearm (above) that had two distinct pieces.

The top piece was inked in Pensacola, Florida, when Sheldon was in with the Marines. It is a design of a Native American looking out off of a cliff.

The one below it is a King of Spades, but will skulls instead of faces. A friend of his had the Jack of Hearts, so he went with the King of Spades.

He credited this tattoo, along with all his other work (the Native American piece, excluded) to a custom artist in Japan named "Augie". Sheldon was stationed there with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and had a lot of work done before being deployed to a different theater of operations.

Most of his work on the right arm is traditional Japanese design. He started initially with the forearm and then went from the elbow up over the shoulder and onto his chest. He said is was a "yakuza design".

Sheldon told me that Augie didn't have time to finish the left arm, due to his re-deployment, but that he hopes to return to Ginowan, Okinawa to finish up his sleeve.

Thanks again to Sheldon for sharing his ink with us here at Tattoosday!

World's Only Scuba Diving Cat

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Vacuum cleaning our cat

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Homemade Helicopter That Works

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The Baby-Jumping Festival

We’re not joking, the Baby-jumping Colacho Festival is a real annual event celebrated all over Spain since the 1620s. It consists of grown men dressed as the Devil leaping over helpless babies. Why do they do this? They represent the devils that, when they jump, they take all the evil with them leaving the babies clean of evil. Here is a snapshot of one of the weirdest religious traditions.

Production Notes: May 29, 2008

I often find myself wanting to discuss ink, but don't always have the photos to accompany a post.

Despite a slow start yesterday, I ended up photographing three subjects (as of this writing), the third was on the N train.

I also provided reading material for two other tattooed people on the same train. One guy had a forearm piece with Latin words traversing his hand and extending onto one finger.

The other individual sat down net to me and had "To thine own self be true" inscribed on her right inner forearm. I was showing her the printout from this post, and she told me her inscription came from NYC Adorned.

I'm hoping both of them (hint, hint) contact me so we can feature them here on Tattoosday!

I spotted these tattoos on the plaza outside of Borders Books at Penn Station.

He was in town visiting family and he certainly had a lot of tattoos to offer. "Thirty-nine," he answered, without hesitation when I asked him how many he had. His arms were fully-covered and he had others on his neck.

We settled on these, because it seemed easiest, and Tattoosday has never presented fists before.

All his work was done at Bayou II Tattoos in Picayune, Mississippi. He credited all his work to Chip, and said the art on his hands was custom-designed.

Thanks to the guy from Florida for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday.

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Last week, I posted the "after" version of a tattoo I spotted early last Fall. The host, John, e-mailed me the updated photos after I spotted him in at the grocery store.

He also sent me shots of his three other pieces, posted above and below.

Via e-mail, John gave me the run-down on the tattoos, all inked at Body Art Studios in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

"The tattoo with the knife through the heart is a memorial tattoo for my grandmother who passed away in 2000. I drew it and Peter [Cavorsi] tattooed it. It took me a few years to get it because I wanted to get the tattoo done on her birthday... October 13, but I wanted to wait for a Friday the 13th 'cause that was her lucky day."

"As for 'Cheech,' it is another memorial tattoo for my Uncle Patty, my grandmother's brother. That is why it is in red, so it looks like the blood dripping from the knife [that] wrote out his name. He got the name 'Cheech' in World War II. It was his nickname, which is weird, because we are Italian and 'Cheech' in Italian is a nickname for Frank. Both of the tattoos are on my left forearm...".

The black and gray piece is a Chinese character [kanji] with ... fire. The symbol means 'art as a skill' and the fire around it represents my passion for the art, as I am practicing to be a tattoo artist myself. It was...my first tattoo, inked by Peter in 2002/2003".

"...Last is the one on my left calf, which in Chinese means "fear no evil". I got that in 2002-2003, as well. It was tattooed in Body Art, but was done by someone who worked for Peter at the time. I think his name was Sig or Zig...".

On a side note, the guy who worked for Peter did my first tattoo, and he went by the name of "Sickie". I think we're talking about the same guy.

Thanks again to John for coming through and sending me the photos and the back stories on his tattoos!

Editor's note: John's comments are 99% verbatim. I took a little editorial liberty with some punctuation and spelling, along with an occasional edit, for the sake of clarity.

Hidden Radars on the Roads

Radars don’t always come in the standard package. And if you’re a driver addicted to speed, these findings will surely be useful. Policemen have really become creative and started placing radars in places you wouldn’t even think of. Here’s how speed addicts are apprehended.