New York City Marathon

Ok, so I am late with this post.

I live a half block from an early point in the New York City marathon route. Everyone is fresh and cheery, and the Kenyans are more of a blur than they are at the end of the race.

This year, I endeavored to see how many tattoo candids I could snap of runners as they passed by. I did not have high hopes. The mass of humanity that is 30,000 souls is a blur and by the time your brain registers something interesting, it is already gone in a trail of cells just starting to sweat.

I snagged one partial shot. (Don't forget, one has to factor in the photographer's ineptitude and the several-years-old technology of a Kodak Easyshare camera.

Of course, I'm not counting painted on flags like this one:

That's Pia Larsson from Sweden, by the way.

Anyway, I did catch this guy as he blew by:

I know what you're thinking...."What tattoo?" Take a peek at the guy on the right side of the photo and see what I salvaged:



And then lightened:


And then blew up:


I don't know exactly what it is, but there is definitely a patriotic theme here.

That's the best I could do. Sorry!

Tattoos I Know: Brooke's Courage

Here's another piece from a co-worker:

Brooke Goetz moved to the New York City/New Jersey area a couple years back, transplanting herself from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Earlier this year, in May, she was hanging out with some friends at a bar in Hoboken called Mikie Squared. One of her friends, Christian, was talking about tattoos. Brooke has two koi on her back (subject for a later post, hopefully) and another friend at the bar, Bill, admitted he did not have any tattoos. One thing led to another, and Bill posed the question to Brooke, "If I pay for it, will you go get a tattoo right now?" Brooke was game and agreed, without hesitation.

They called around but couldn't find any shops that were open. So the proposition died. Or so Brooke thought.

The next day, Bill called her and asked her if she was still up for the tattoo. "Sure," she said, and the rest is history.

The funniest part of the story, in my opinion, is that, on occasion, if Brooke's out with Bill and other friends at a bar, Bill will ask people, "You wanna see my tattoo?" When they say okay, Bill grabs Brooke's arm and shows them the tattoo.

The tattoo was inked by Robbie at Hoboken Body Art.
This kanji cost $75 and Brooke actually went back a few months later because she wanted it darkened. They re-inked it for free, an impressive pro-customer move.

Brooke chose the kanji for "courage" to represent the courageous act of leaving the relative "safety" of Utah for the faster-paced and exciting life of the Tri-State area. She likes having it on her inner wrist because she sees it all the time and it is a constant reminder to her to always be courageous in life.

Of course, Tattoosday has had its share of kanji tattoos in our short existence. The problem with kanji tattoos are that they are prone to errors and misinterpretation. It's hard to throw a cyber-rock on the web and not hit a story about an ill-inked kanji tattoo.

This one, however, seems correct, much to my relief. It would suck to have to tell Brooke her tattoo doesn't mean "courage" but "angry goat" or something silly.

Take a closer look:

Which is pretty close to this piece on the web:



Still, I like to get a second validation, which I found here:

Below are some of the characters styles you can choose for your "Courage / Bravery (alternate)" calligraphy when you select this option...

Xing-Kai
Shu

Xing
Shu

Kai
Shu

Li
Shu

Zhuan
Shu

You can see from the above selection the differences in the same character, done in the different kanji styles (each labeled ____ Shu).

Kanji tattoos continue to simultaneously intrigue and befuddle me. Thanks to Brooke for sharing her courage with me.

Memorial for a Father

On a cold morning in the beginning of November, I spied a tattoo on the bare left calf of a guy at the corner of 31st and 7th in Manhattan. He crossed the street, walking the same direction I was headed and, lo and behold, headed into the Starbucks in my office building.

He was ahead of me in line and after he ordered, I expressed admiration for his tattoo:


Obviously, it's a memorial tattoo. The host's name is Jim and, as he explained, his father had passed away 3 years ago. I didn't notice until later when I uploaded the picture, the dates 1961-2005, making his father 43 or 44 when he died. The inscription reads "In Loving Memory James R. Frederickson".

Jim explained the tattoo for me. His father wanted to be cremated, so the tattoo is an ersatz grave site. He also added in the cheap, wooden cross, because his father always had been critical of people who spent a ton of money on grave markers.

Jim explained that the piece took him 2 1/2 years to design and get just right, so it must have been completed in the past year. It was inked at Lake Geneva Tattoo.

Thanks to Jim for sharing his tattoo with me!

Tattoos I Know: Jeff's Lifelong Long Life

Tattoosday is back after a November hiatus. If you want a further explanation, check out BillyBlog. Pickings have been slim, but I still hope to present a tattoo or two through the winter months. I have a few posts stored up to carry us through December......

Today's tattoo is from a co-worker named Jeff.


This piece is on his upper right arm. He got this at a tattoo shop in Rhode Island about a dozen years ago when he was 19. He'd always wanted one and designed this "under the influence of narcotics".

He thought it had meant "life-long" but found out later that it meant "long life". I have neither the time nor the wherewithal to fully research kanji mysteries like this. Here's one example of a stock "long life" kanji:


I don't see the similarities, but at least it doesn't mean "cow," like previous tattoos I have featured.

Either way, thanks to Jeff for sharing his tattoo!

Tattoosday Doldrums

Autumn has come to New York and the tattoos have all but disappeared. Despair not, oh readers of this blog, there is hope.

To the woman I met outside of Rite Aid with the rose tattoo on her ankle that she said din't mean anything, I'm curious to hear about the tattoo on your arm, hidden last Sunday, which you want to get removed. You said there's a good story behind it. Please e-mail me.

To the woman at Duane Reade in Penn Station who sold me the Advil Cold & Sinus, I hope you're reading this and will participate in Tattoosday so I can get the story (and photo) of the ink on your wrist.

Alas, we fired a woman today at work who I had hoped to ask about the tattoo on her leg. My friend at Starbucks with the pine trees on her arm, commemorating her homesickness for Michigan, has transferred to a different location, unknown to me.

There are two co-workers who are prepared to offer me their tattoos for the blog. Patience, dear readers, and tomorrow is Halloween and it's supposed to be warmer.

I also have a New York Marathon post planned for next Sunday. 30,000+ runners will be zipping by me at the corner of 92nd Street and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. How many tattoos will I capture?

I will leave you today with a pre-Halloween shot, a candid I snapped on the streets of Manhattan back in August, when I was a timid Tattoosday blogger.

I don't know the story. I don't know anything, except that it's a pretty cool black tattoo.

A New Awakening

At the beginning of the week, Summer was still clinging to the Northeast, which meant that there were still tattoos to be spotted out in the sunshine.

Monday afternoon, I noticed a woman in the plaza outside of Borders with a cool ring of flames and a lion tattooed around her ankle.

When I approached her about it, she was kind of down on the piece, saying the guy who did it out in Huntington, NY overcharged her and messed it up. It still looked pretty cool to me.

She also showed me her first tattoo, a star in a circle, on her lower back.

However, the third tattoo, which I hadn't seen until she pushed her hair back from her neck, was her favorite. That was the one she liked the best:


She gave her name as "Marla," which she acknowledged wasn't her real name. She slipped later and said what her real name was, but I will honor her desire to be anonymously misidentified.

Marla had her piece inked by Cheryl at Ink Alternative in Ronkonkoma, NY. She spoke nothing but praise about the shop. Marla was thrilled to not only let me photograph her tattoo, but was excited when I showed it back to her on my camera as she hadn't seen it in a while.

Marla said she had the tattoo done after getting through a hard time and that it represented "a new awakening". The symbolism of the sun and the tears represented the moving on from the difficulty she had just gone through.

Thanks to Marla for sharing this cool design with the Tattoosday community! Thanks also to Stacey Sharp, another artist at Ink Alternative, for identifying for me the artist who inked Marla's neck.

Update 7/27/2009: Stacey is now at Inkpulsive Custom Tattoos.

Mike's Quintet of Tattoos

Last week, in front of Madison Square Garden, I met a guy named Mike who had several tattoos.

I have found the most success with people in this area because, generally, people are loitering in the fresh air while waiting to head into Penn Station and catch a train.

That's what Mike was doing and I must give him kudos not only for being open to talking with me, but for proudly showing me all of his tattoos (5 in all) and for being forthcoming about his life, more than others may have been.

This is the tattoo that first drew my attention:

This piece was designed and inked by an artist in Miami at a shop called Art Attack, which is now known as Merlin's Tattoo.

Mike's ex-fiancee's pet name was "Jellybean," because, he said, "she was sweet". The name was merged with the express train logo by the artist.

Mike was a first for Tattoosday, as when I asked him what shop his tattoos came from, he hesitated briefly, but then stated matter-of-factly, "State Penitentiary".

So, four of his tattoos were credited to an incarcerated artist named "Kenny V." I must say, in my opinion, considering that these were not done in a shop, per se, the work is superb.

Below the "Jellybean Express" tattoo on his right arm, there was this dragon (because he likes dragons):

What was particularly cool about this dragon was that its rudimentary spine-like body wrapped around Mike's arm from the biceps down toward the wrist. It's hard to really capture the effect, but I did the best that I could.



On his left arm he had two tattoos. A wolf:


and below the wolf was a row of paw prints, wrapping around his arm. Each paw print, Mike said, was a tribute to a friend in the penitentiary.


Lastly, on his right calf, Mike had this intricate ace of spades with a skull inside of it:


Thanks to Mike for sharing his tattoos and helping display them here for Tattoosday.