Who doesn’t like food?  That’s what I say, anyway.  I was just reading an article about food tattoos and how they are apparently growing in popularity.  Now, I’m not so sure that they’re actually growing in popularity, considering that the article only really talks about a small handful of people who have food related tattoos, but then again, you never know.

In the past few years, food seems to have had almost as much of a fashionable resurgence as tattoos have.  Don’t believe me?  Turn on your TV and check out the Food Network.  Celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali and Bobby Flay have never been as widely recognizable as they currently are.  Along with the celebrity of these chefs comes a new appreciation for food and with that passion for food, it’s understandable why so many people turn to tattoo.  A tattoo of a cupcake or a sandwich?  Why not.  It doesn’t surprise me a bit that people would want food tattoos.  Does that mean that these types of tattoos are becoming any more popular than any other type of tattoo?  I doubt it, but placed in perspective with the everyday common nature that tattoos now have, it only makes sense that something as common and everyday as food would find its way into some ink and on to the skin.

Check out some of these food related tattoos and see what you think.

Some bad news coming out of Los Angeles this week for former gang members looking to erase the marks of their past.  Sunrise Community Outreach in Westlake had its front window smashed this past Friday and when police arrived they found that SCO’s $50,000 Palomar Q-YAG 5 laser system was gone.

Sunrise Community Outreach is a non-profit organization which provides affordable tattoo removal for former gang members.  About 200 people are aided by the organization each year, but now that the laser removal system has been stolen, it looks like SCO might be finished.  Adding insult to injury, the laser was not insured, as the SCO’s executive director, Rosemarie Ashamalla says that SCO’s status as a non-profit organization made insuring the laser more difficult.

Not sure who would do something like this, but like Ashamalla says, “This is not something you take to a local pawnbroker.”  Either someone has a lot of tattoos that they want to get rid of, or they know someone who’ll pay for such equipment.  Either way, it seems like a pretty brutal blow to an organization that was helping people get their lives on track.

I have to admit, I’m starting to wonder if there’s something in the water in Portland.  I mean, there’s got to be some sort of reason why so many awesome tattoo artists either set up shop in Portland or are simply home grown examples of seriously rad tattoo skills.  London Bellman, James Kern, Jeff Johnson – to name a few – and now I’ve discovered another artist to add to that list: Alice Kendall.

Though she was born in California, Alice first made her way to Portland in 1989 to study graphic design, mixed media and sculpture at Pacific Northwest College of Art.  However, it wouldn’t be until 2000 that she stayed in Portland for good, landing an apprenticeship followed by a permanent spot at Infinity Tattoo.

According to Alice, she sees art in everything all around her.  That much is certainly obvious when you look at her tattoo work.  I think the first thing that struck me about Alice’s work is her use of colour and the control she exercises with that colour.  Nothing is wasted, nothing is overused, everything has its place and is doled out with just the right sense of purpose and necessity.  Nature seems to be a recurring theme in the tattoos found in her portfolio, which makes sense when you consider that nowhere is there more colour and intensity than in the wings of butterflies or birds, or in the trees and flowers found so abundant within the Pacific Northwest.

Beyond her tattoo work, Alice has worked quite steadily within the community.  She worked full time for 3 years in San Francisco with homeless youth, teaching them colour separation.  This desire to lend her expertise to more disadvantaged sections of society has stayed with her even now in Portland as she helps her husband with his non-profit programme, providing music and arts education for homeless youth.  Did I mention that she’s also a mom and that she still takes art classes at Pacific Northwest College of Art?  Yep, she does.

A talented, compassionate artist with a real social conscience.  No wonder Alice Kendall sees art all around her: she’s continually creating it for both herself and others.  Nice work, Alice.

Video games are great fun.  I don’t have any of the really cool systems like Xbox 360 or the PS3, but there are tons of people out there who do.  Believe it or not, but the average age of gamers has actually gone up over the years and in England for example, the average age of a gamer is 33.  Video games it seems, are growing up.  That’s fortunate because now that the average age of gamers is increasing, it’s easier for video game companies to run promotional campaigns that specifically target people who are over the age of 18.

Take for example the current campaign being waged by the fine people at Sega.  Promoting the recent release of their game Yakuza 3 (which I haven’t played, but which looks like a lot of fun), Sega has offered one lucky winner the opportunity to have their entire back tattooed with the same back piece that Yakuza 3’s hero, Kazuma Kiryu has.  We’re talking a $9,000 dragon back piece here.  The tattoo was designed by Japanese tattoo artist Horitomo.  Anyone can enter this competition and if you’re interested, you need to fill out this application and send it in before Saturday, March 27th at 11:59pm.  Not sure what time zone that’s in, but if you’re interested, best to just play it safe and take the three seconds it requires to fill out the application form right now.

So there you go, a seriously crazy tattoo could be yours and all it’ll cost you is never being able to take your shirt off in Japan again.  Other than that, you’ll be as close to the Yakuza as you can ever be.

I think that we all know by now how fascination can lead to obsession which can then lead to having a lot of really bad tattoos.  To be honest, I try my best never to judge people for the types of tattoos that they want to have.  Everyone has their own tastes and opinions and it is of course, entirely possible that something that might not be cool for me is very cool for someone else.  Fair enough.  I do tend to judge however, when someone gets a series of really bad tattoos – and by bad I mean poorly done tattoos – as a result of their obsession with a famous or in this case, a notoriously famous person.

John Riddux, 28 of Ayr, Scotland recently had the chance to meet his hero, Mike Tyson.  Riddux has numerous Mike Tyson tattoos on his body and he drove to Blackpool after hearing that Tyson would be appearing at a hotel to talk about his boxing career.  After meeting Tyson and having the former heavyweight boxing champ and current convicted rapist check out his tattoos, Riddux then had Tyson sign his back.  Riddux later had the signature tattooed over, permanently etching it into his back mural of Tyson fandom.

Hey, it’s cool that John Riddux had his dream come true by meeting Tyson and getting him to autograph his back.  Personally, if I was Tyson I would be a little weirded out by the whole thing.  Then again, it’s probably pretty hard to weird out a dude who once bit off another dude’s ear…

An update from the horror movie website Oh My Gore! provides information about a new tattoo documentary called Tattoos: A Scarred History.  Not sure why a horror movie website is reporting this, but none the less, this thing looks pretty cool.

The film follows a young woman named Souslla Pilay as she seeks to discover why exactly it is that the tattoo phenomenon has taken such a hold over western society.  Along the way, the film meets up with various tattooed celebrities such as the now deceased David Carradine, John Landis, Jason Mewes and even Gordon Ramsay.  The DVD will be released on April 12th, 2010 and will contain quite a few nifty little extras, including:

– Official Trailer
-Leather Zoo’s ‘Stranger’ Music Video
– Tattoo History 101 Animation
– Raw and Uncut Interviews with the cast
– Angelwish Video featuring Kyra Sedgewick
– Deleted interviews: Police discrimination. Is it Art?, Removal & tapping
– Unseen Celebrity Survey

Check out the teaser trailer below, but I’ll just give you a quick heads up that it’s got a couple really quick NSFW moments (unless your place of work happens to be a tattoo studio, that is).

Ooh, the plot thickens.  When I first heard that Sandra Bullock’s husband of five years, Jesse James, had been cheating on her with a tattoo model, I thought Meh…that’s a little National Enquirer for the tattoo blog.  Bullock’s already been getting tons of publicity for that crappy Blind Side movie and I didn’t really feel the need to post something that sort of had something to do with tattooing, but not really at all.  That news was just tabloid stuff.

Fast forward a few days and man, I’m sorry but I just can’t resist putting this up on the blog.  It seems that this tattoo model, one Michelle McGee is more than just a home wrecker: surprise!  She’s also a Nazi!

Recent photos have surfaced of McGee in a Nazi photo shoot where she sports all the typical Nazi crap: hat, swastika arm band, etc.  She’s also got a the letter W tattooed on the back of one leg and P tattooed on the back of the other, which allegedly stands for “White Power”.

Wow, Jesse James dude, you really know how to royally mess things up.  Not sure what Bullock has to say about this little extra bit of info, but I’m guessing it’s not really going to make the situation any better.  Anyway, yeah, I know, this was a little tabloid-y, but hey, sometimes when it’s something this ridiculous, you just have to be.  Click here for Michelle McGee’s photo shoot photos.

When Aaron Cain was a wee lad growing up in Pacific Grove, California, his single mom would give him broken appliances or electronics to take apart and play with.  This fascinated Aaron and as he grew up, his interest in how things worked and the functioning mechanisms within machinery itself remained a constant in his life, just as art did.

From his earliest days, Aaron held a fond regard and special knack for creating art.  So it was no great surprise when he found himself intrigued by tattoo – an art form which combined his two loves: mechanical curiosity and drawing/designing.  In his own words, Aaron had a “couple years of experimental scratching” before going the distance and becoming a professional tattoo artist in 1989.

Since that time, Aaron has developed a style that is influenced by numerous tattoo artists, yet entirely his own.  He works in the genre of Bio-Mechanical tattoo, and while it may not be for everyone, it is first rate art, developed by a truly original and highly creative mind.  Aaron’s tattoos are a vortex of colour and parts, twisted and linked together like the innards of some sort of man/machine/beast/demon.  It’s crazy stuff that completely speaks for itself.

In addition to the tattoo work, what Aaron finds is taking up more of his time these days is his other art form.  Painting?  Nope.  Graffiti?  Guess again.  T-shirts?  No way.  The truth is that Aaron Cain creates some very cool, one of a kind tattoo machines/guns.  If you’re a tattoo artist, chances are you already know all about Aaron Cain’s tattoo machines but for those of us who aren’t tattoo artists, the craftsmanship and design of these things is still admirable.  They really are works of art.

Apparently Aaron was also on the TLC TV series Tattoo Wars, but I’ve never seen the show and I don’t even know if it’s still on.  Regardless, if you don’t know about Aaron, it’s time to see what he has to offer.

Because of the rise in popularity that tattoos have received in the last few years, I often get surprised very easily.  Not because of how popular tattoos actually are; but because unfortunately there are still places where the whole “tattoos are mainstream now” thing hasn’t really caught on.  I guess the message was lost somewhere along the way and places like Florida just kept going on with life as usual.

Hey, I’m not picking on Florida.  It’s just that I found out that in Florida, all you need to legally get a tattoo if you are 16 or younger is a note from your parents.  Seriously, a frigging note.  Well, okay, it’s not quite a note.  It’s a notarized consent form, but that’s still pretty close to a note, if you ask me.  It’s not 16-year-olds getting tattooed in the state of Florida that bothers me, it’s the fact that even today Floridian tattoo artists don’t have to register with the Department of Health.  What?  That’s crazy.

Fortunately, new legislation is currently being considered that will ban kids under the age of 16 from getting tattooed and require all tattoo artists to register with the Board of Health.  Making artists register with the Board of Health is just one step closer to making tattoo artists legitimate in the eyes of the public and it’s something that Florida should have done a long time ago.  Come on Florida, get it done.

I’m sure everyone out there has heard about the passing of actor Corey Haim last week.  Though I wasn’t a particularly big fan of his past work (I was a fan of The Lost Boys though), it was sad to see someone go out like that.  Well, being that my last post was about a memorial tattoo, I thought it was interesting when I found out today that Haim’s good friend and co-star in many of his films and the TV series The Two Coreys, Corey Feldman, just had a bit of a memorial tattoo done for his pal.

Opting out of attending Haim’s private funeral in Toronto, Canada, Feldman stayed back in LA, heading over to Studio City’s T-Man tattoo to have artist Howard T set him up with his latest tattoo.  The tattoo is of:

“…a hot air balloon with a pair of eyes underneath. Corey had his son’s name, Zen, tattooed in the balloon’s basket, and the number 222 beside the basket. It turns out the number is a reference to an inside joke the two Corey’s had together.”

No one seems to have any idea what the 222 means and in a letter that Feldman published on Tuesday, he explained that the meaning of the 222 will never be known by anyone other than himself and the deceased Haim.  Bloggers are already curious as to what the 222 means and looking to find out, but I personally could care less.  Not because I don’t care about Haim’s passing, but because it’s a private matter between two friends and it’s cool that Feldman’s memorialized his friend in this manner.  That’s all that matters.