Ahh, the life of a scratcher: buy some stuff you don’t know how to use off the internet, make some local kids think you’re a rad tattoo artist who works exclusively out of his crib, tattoo a whole bunch of them without sterilizing your equipment, then subsequently have the police and parents after you while you desperately flee.
At least, that’s more or less what’s been going on with Idaho’s Andrew Walthall, after he tattooed two 15 year-olds and a 13-year-old at his home last October. I don’t know why all this is just coming to light now, but at any rate, the cops in Boise would like to have a chat with Mr Walthall, who is nowhere to be found. Where could he be? Maybe he was taken under the wing of some secret scratcher society that lives underground, a rogue band of fake tattoo artists who only come out when someone is in need of a shitty tattoo in a dingy basement somewhere.
Still, I’m actually glad to see that a story like this makes the news. The more that people are educated about scratchers and how they are likely to misuse or not sterilize equipment, the smaller the amount of people there will be who actually get tattooed by scratchers.
So kids, to recap: Don’t get a tattoo from someone who isn’t really a tattoo artist!