Whether you give two craps about celebrities or not, the truth is that it can be interesting to find out which Hollywood stars or musicians have which tattoos.  There are tons of people out there who are only too willing and ready to get copycat tattoos done of the tattoo or tattoos that their favourite celebrity has.  Not only that, but sometimes it’s cool to check out the tattoos of celebrities that aren’t always hogging the spotlight.  In other words, hell yeah I’m interested to know what tattoos Slash or Goldie Hawn or pro wrestler the Undertaker have, what they look like, what they mean and why they have them.  Wouldn’t you be?

If you answered yes to that question then have I got a site for you!  Okay, I might be making this sound more exciting than it actually is, but cut me some friggin’ slack here, it’s not that easy getting people pumped to see Goldie Hawn’s tattoos.  No offense to Goldie Hawn of course, I thought she was great in that Steve Martin movie, Houseguest.  But I digress.

Anyway, yeah, this link will take you to a site that provides an alphabetical list of celebrities.  If you find who you’re looking for, you’ll be able to get more info about their tattoos and photos.  Some of the listings are a bit of a cop-out, saying crap like “______ has many tattoos”, but for the most part, there’s some interesting stuff on there.  Hell, I had no idea that Tom Waits has a map of Easter Island tattooed on his back.

Bad news for people in Illinois who might have a hankering for some eyeball tattoos: the Illinois senate recently voted to ban the procedure, which means getting the whites of your eyes injected with ink, is now one step closer to being illegal in the state of Illinois.

The technical name for the procedure is actually not “eyeball tattooing” (although I like the sound of that), but scleral tattooing.  This new law proposal will go to the House on April 15th and will then be debated.  Yes, I know that some of you will be crushed by this should it in fact become law, but if you’re really desperate to get ink jabbed into your eyeballs, there just may be a loophole.  The Senate’s one exception for the procedure is in the case of licensed doctors doing the tattooing.  In that case, the tattoo is done for people who have corneal scarring as a result of some sort of eye trauma like a cut or a burn.  It’s basically like a cover up, but it’s a far cry from the high fashion of eyeball tattooing.  Also, very few doctors actually perform the procedure.

So I guess the books will soon be closed (at least in Illinois) on that sort of tattooing.  Personally I think eyeball tattooing is lame.  It’s like being the kid who is always trying to one up everybody else so that people will pay attention to them.  It doesn’t look cool and it’s not like a tattoo, which can be appreciated for its artistic and personal merits.  No one’s getting a portrait of their dead grandmother on their eyeball, so really, isn’t it just an excuse for pretentious jerks to walk around with their corneas all blue?

Hey, I call ’em as I see ’em.

Without a doubt, Berlin, Germany is one of the coolest cities that you’ll find anywhere in the world.  At times the city feels like a living, breathing art gallery, housing some of the greatest artists working today in numerous mediums.  So, it should come as no surprise that included amongst this lengthy list of artists are numerous tattooers and that amongst these tattooers is a great talent by the name of Miss Nico.

I only recently discovered Miss Nico’s work, after finding out how to say tattoo in German (Tätowierung, for those of you who care). I began checking the web for some cool German tattoo artists.  Miss Nico was one of the first that popped up.  Fortunately, you don’t need to know how to speak or read German to check out her often stunning work.  And for what it’s worth, Miss Nico’s headquarters – Berlin’s very own AllStyle Tattoo, has a website that can be transferred to English, just in case you wanted to learn a little bit about the place.

Nico originally moved to Berlin to study Fine Art Painting, but this ultimately didn’t satisfy her, as she felt that she did not fit in to the mould that artists of that particular time and style were being herded into.  In 1993, after tattooing herself, Nico began moving into the world of tattoo.  She tattoos free hand as well as with stencils and will refuse costumers if she feels the art that they want from her is merely a repetition of something she’s previously done.  Some might consider this picky, but I certainly don’t.  An artist sets their boundaries and works within those boundaries to challenge themselves and their art.  The fact that Miss Nico’s waiting list is between 1-2 years certainly testifies to the fact that her work is in high demand.  And little wonder, Nico’s pieces are often huge, highly detailed and filled with life.  She does a mean black and grey, too.

Take a peek at what Miss Nico’s got going on.

When it comes to getting a tattoo done, it’s interesting to take a look at what images or text that people like enough to have permanently etched into their flesh.  Some people (myself included) prefer tattoos that come from a very personal place, that is tattoos that are of family or friends or places and things that really mean something to them.  Others prefer images from pop culture or art, which can often be just as meaningful to people as are the personal tattoos of family or friends.  Today when I was looking at some tattoos on the internet, I found a photo of some woman named Siobahn Magnus, who just got a tattoo done of some Edward Gorey art.  I’ve long been a fan of Edward Gorey’s stuff and seeing this woman’s tattoo made me think what a great idea for a tattoo Gorey’s artwork is.  It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it translates well to black and grey tattoo.

So, thinking about Edward Gorey’s art got me searching to see how many people actually have Edward Gorey inspired tattoos.  It wasn’t long before my searching caused me to stumble upon something else entirely (don’t you just love the internet?).  I found this tattoo site called Fuck Yeah Tattoos and it is pretty cool.  On it you can see all sorts of tattoos that are submitted by the site’s readers.  These tattoos cover a vast range of different inspirations and interests and there really are some cool tattoos on here.  There are archives as well, so you can go back and check out the tattoos submitted from months past.  I’ve gone to a lot of these sorts of sites where people can send in photos of their tattoos, but the sites ultimately end up being clogged with a bunch of crappy quality photos of equally crappy quality tattoos.  Not so with Fuck Yeah Tattoos.  There’s some nice stuff on there.

Check it out.

When I think of the ultimate place to hang out and get a tattoo, well…I don’t, really.  I mean I’ve never actually thought about a place that could be a hybrid between nightclub and tattoo studio.  I don’t really need all the bells and whistles just to get a tattoo, I just need a good clean place, with at least one really good tattoo artist.  Seems like a pretty basic concept to me.

However, that all might be starting to change.  Tattoo artist Mario Barth is all set to open his brand spanking new King Ink at the Mirage in Las Vegas, Nevada this weekend.  King Ink is in many ways, the ultimate height of all the commodification and trendiness of the tattoo world.  Yet at the same time, it’s a lot of people’s dream come true, mixing tattoos, music, booze, partying and faux alligator skin.

With three different rooms to be tattooed in, live video feeds throughout the club of those three tattoo rooms, crystal chandeliers, frescoes of tattoos that Barth has done within the past 30 years and a patio all done up in the style of a castle infused with Austrian baroque, one might be tempted to refer to King Ink as King Tacky instead.  However, aside from the superficialities of the place, according to Barth there is also some depth, some insight into the world of tattoo:

“We invented a new program that is called the Tattoo Explorer, which is linked in a worldwide database of designs,” Barth says. “So you can basically go in and say, ‘I would like to have say an ankh,’ and it pulls up the ankh and it shows you the different styles of it, but it also explains what it means, what’s the meaning, where has it been done the first item, who was wearing it, when was it historically bad to have an ankh, when was it great. All those elements have been implemented.”

Barth adds the interactive and education elements continue with televisions displaying live footage of tattoos currently being done in the three tattoo rooms at King Ink, a complete history of tattooing timeline is part of the bar and tables becoming shadowboxes displaying tattoo machinery and tools from around the world.

Still, if you ask me, the idea of getting tattooed at a place where people are getting wasted off shots that are so potent that they don’t even have a name doesn’t really sound all that appealing.  Although, Barth insists that all his tattoo artists are skilled in determining who’s ready to be tattooed and who isn’t.  Okay fine.  I guess it all boils down to different strokes for different folks and that’s also what the entire art form of tattoo is about.  So while all this seems full blown and way, way, way over the top for me, others will undoubtedly come along and love it.  And that in itself is cool enough.

All right, all right!  It seems that I got the ball rolling with my last post on metal bands and tattoos.  Now it’s come to my attention that Philadelphia radio station WRFF FM is having a pretty good tattoo contest going.  As it stands right now, listeners have submitted photos of their own tattoos.  These tattoos have gone into five different categories: Best Album Art Tattoo, Best Band Logo Tattoo, Best Lyrics Tattoo, Best Portrait Tattoo and of course, what would any tattoo competition be without acknowledging the Worst Tattoo submission as well.

As far as tattoo contests go, this one is pretty good, with the winners of each respective category getting a cash prize of $300.  Unfortunately, it’s too late to enter your own tattoo for the judging, but it’s still cool to be able to check out all the different tattoos submitted by other people.  The radio station’s website even has last year’s results all archived as well, so you can check out what kind of stuff took top honors last year.

There are a lot of tattoos entered, so going through each category can take some time.  I myself haven’t gone through all the tattoos listed, but my two favourites from the album category are both of the Smashing Pumpkins sleeves that have been entered, which is strange because I actually hate that band.  But hey, good tattoos are good tattoos.  It just goes to prove that you don’t necessarily have to like the band in order to vote for a particular tattoo.  And the dude with the Elliot Smith suicide tattoo?  What?

Anyway, have fun and check them all out and a big thanks out to John who supplied me with the info about this contest.  Thanks, man.

There’s probably a few metalheads kicking around out there, reading the Tattoo Blog now and then.  Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong indeed.  Tattoos have always had their place within music.  Of course, it’s not just metal musicians who get tattoos – these days it seems that everyone from hardcore rappers to squeaky clean teeny bopper bands are sporting some tattoos.  Still, by and large the most widely tattooed musicians seem to play in either punk or metal bands.

Well, the website Rock Sins has begun organizing an official “best of” tattoo competition amongst various well known metal musicians.  So far they’ve posted the round one results, which feature competition between Kirk Windstein, Rob Halford, James Hetfield and Mitch Lucker.  Voting for round two is now taking place, so if you’re interested, head over and check it out.

Not really sure what exactly this competition is basing its decisions on, as the reasoning for the actual judging of the tattoos seems odd at best (James Hetfield’s tattoos are more “thought out” than Mitch Lucker’s?  Says who?) But at any rate, it can be kind of fun checking out the different metaler’s tattoos and making your own choice as to who has the best ink.

I don’t know…I search around, I look for tattoo artists that really impress me and then I find someone really cool and I always end up feeling dumb because the art of every tattoo artist that I really like always seems to come from a tattoo artist that is already legendary amongst tattoo artists.  I guess I can’t be blamed too much for this though, seeing as how I’m not a tattoo artist anyway.  So I feel sort of when I find these tattoo artists, that I want to profile them on the site.  Then I worry about “exposing” people to an artist that is already way too well known.

Well, I thought about this for quite some time and then I came across Grime and everything changed.  See, the thing with Grime is that yes, he is one of those tattoo artists that every good tattoo artist seems to know about.  His skills are widely spoken of in these circles.  But outside of these circles I realized that if even one new person were exposed to Grime, then it was a good day for that person.  Why?  Because Grime is plain and simply absolutely, insanely good at doing tattoos.  There’s just no other way of putting it.  If you don’t already know about Grime, then you really, really, really need to find out about him.  What can I say about this guy’s ability to tattoo?

Grime doesn’t seem to say much about himself or his art form – or maybe he does?  I guess that’s up to you to decide.  Check out this interview that he did with Prick Magazine If you’d rather just check out some of his work first hand, then you should follow this link.  I don’t really have much else to say about this guy.  Does it matter where’s he’s from or what his hobbies are?  The guy’s work is really all that matters and it is some of the finest work currently being done in the tattoo universe.  That’s my opinion anyway.

Time and time again we see bad tattoos.  Some are bad simply because someone has bad taste, some are bad because the tattoo artist was a scratcher or just plain talentless and some are bad because they totally missed the mark of what they were originally intended to be.  The most painful to look at (and possibly the most humorous) of these types of tattoos of course, is the latter.

“Missed the mark” tattoos come in a variety of awful forms, but I would say that the most common is the tattoo that has been misspelled.  You know the type: some saying or quote that was intended to be profound, but comes off utterly stupid because of an error as small as spelling “beautiful” as “beatiful”.  Oh wait – that actually happened?  Damn.

Yep, that did indeed recently happened to Amy Ullock of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.  She went into a local tattoo studio wanting to have the phrase “You’re So Beautiful” tattooed on to her arm, but ended up instead with ‘You’re So Beatiful”. Tattoo artist Marie Reid typed the phrase into her computer and then showed it to Ullock.  When Ullock had read and approved it, Reid placed the stencil on Ullock and went to work.  It wasn’t until after the tattoo was finished that Ullock realized what had happened.

“There was a brief confrontation at the tattoo parlour. Reid told Ullock she would have to wait a couple of months before she could fix the gaffe, and Ullock and her irate brother were ordered out of the shop…Ullock went directly to another tattoo artist, who tried to fix the mistake.”

Deciding that she was not going to back down, Ullock took the matter to small claims court and well, lost.  Adjudicator David Parker ruled that Ullock had no one to blame but herself.  And you know what?  Of course she had no one to blame but herself.  If you’re that plain dumb that you don’t see a typo in the words that are going to be permanently inked on to your flesh, then you deserve whatever you get.  Sorry, it’s a hard lesson to learn, but it’s a lesson to be learned all the same.

If you regularly read the Tattoo Blog then you might know that I sometimes like to follow one day’s post up the next day with something similar.  For example, yesterday I wrote about the popularity of food related tattoos.  Today after doing a bit of searching around, I happened to come across yet another food related tattoo article.

This time, the article is about Casa Sanchez; a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District.  The restaurant has been in the Sanchez family since the 1920’s, but it wasn’t until 1999 that Ms Sanchez came up with the idea for a promotion in which anyone who was willing to have the restaurant’s logo tattooed on them would receive a free lunch for the rest of their lives.  Many people said that such a promotion was akin to economic suicide and that the Sanchez family would rue the day that they came up with such an idea.

Well, today the restaurant is still alive and kicking, although since 1999, the promotion has undergone a slight alteration.  Ms Sanchez didn’t think that anyone would be interested in getting the restaurant’s logo tattooed on their body, but before the year was up, the Sanchez family were so overwhelmed by people wanting to get a tattoo of the restaurant’s sombrero wearing kid riding a giant ear of corn, that the offer was capped at 50 people max.  From then on, interviews were conducted with prospective tattoo enthusiasts to determine who would qualify.

“If the potential customer didn’t understand the spirit of the tattoo—becoming an unofficial member of the Sanchez family—and asked too many questions about the meals or the restaurant’s solvency, Ms. Sanchez gently told them, “I don’t think this is going to work out.”‘

The end result was a sort of new addition to the Sanchez family, fifty new additions, to be exact.  Bonded to the Sanchez family and the Casa Sanchez restaurant by their tattoos, these are people who are not just in it for a free meal, but who have come to view the restaurant as something of a home base.  One of those tattooed with the restaurant’s logo – Makena Echeverria – is an unemployed construction worker who takes an eighty minute bus ride twice a week to eat at the restaurant.  For Echeverria, the restaurant and the family atmosphere make a difference.

I think we’ve all seen promotions that tie in with tattoos many times before, but this one seems different to me.  This one seems to have a lot of heart and its purpose goes a lot deeper than just getting free food.  It brings people together and creates a bond that, much like the tattoos themselves, will always be there.