Daily Tattoo Diary

2006-06-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

Name: Betsy

Occupation: Unknown

Age: 19

Location: Uptown, Mpls

Betsy was really nice and let me take a photo of her new neck tat even though it was still healing.

She'd been in The Alt a lot. Getting geared up before she left on what was meant to be a cross-Africa bicycle trip after meeting friends in Europe. Betsy also plans to go to Italy to help restorate famous artwork.

I hope thing work out for Betsy.

Those bags were sweet.

Is This Heaven.....

2006-06-01T13:04:00.001-07:00

Name: Beth

Age: 47

Occupation: Prison Guard at a State Correctional Facility

Location: Uptown, Mpls

Having spent several formative years going to school in Iowa, this one is near and dear to my heart.

I met Beth as she was checking in her little Maltese-esque pooch into the dog grooming parlor on Lyndale Ave.

Those of you who have traveled south of the (Minnesota) border are sure to be familiar with the omnipresent symbol for Dekalb Brand Seed. For many Iowans, the flying cob is a badge of home-state pride, for others a mixed memory of growing up surrounded by mile after mile of indistinguishable farmland.

For Beth, it's simply "where I came from."

Having grown up with her family in the town of Dekalb (which is actually in North Central Illinois and hometown to at least one celebrity), Beth had one of the study metal Dekalb signs hanging up in her home.

When a friend and tattoo artist fell in love with the color and design they decided to put the symbol into ink on flesh. It is one of several the Beth has on her body.

Although I doubt that inmates at the prison Beth works at ever get to see her tattoos, chances are it would earn her an amount of respect, as it does here.

The Club We All Belong To

2006-05-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

Name: Dan

Age: 30

Occupation: Screenwriter/Liquor Store Employee

Location: Uptown, Mpls.

The Parade of Tattoos through the door of The Alt continues.

Dan is a very conginial and upbeat individual. He works at an ubiquitous liquor store here in Minneapolis, and in his spare time writes and produces feature length screenplays (a nasty habit near and dear to my own heart).

Dan's current project is a dark comedy about the lasting effects of TV Culture on the ability of people, particularily teenagers, to operate in the real world. Kind of a road movie gone wrong.

To Dan, his Tattoos of the continents of the World represent oneness, "It's the club that we all belong to."

He is planning on expanding the original work, done at the Ink Lab (also in Uptown and a place I have been inked myself), adding some blue that will fade into the flesh of his arm.

Once again confirming that tattoos are very, very habitual.

Once you begin, you can always find a reason to keep going.

The body is a canvas. What is your story?

Just For Kyle

2006-05-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Name: Kyle

Age: ?

Occupation: Event Planner

Location: Grumpy's

The last posting about Noel's Elememt tattoos got me thinking about forearm placement.

It's the place that someone puts a tattoo when they are ready to stop hiding thier body art and let the world know.

During my online investigation I came across a lot of celerities with forearm tattoos. Jessica Alba and Heath Ledger are just a couple of the extremely famous people who are in the public eye and under the microscope of the Hollywood studio camera that have chosen to ink themselves in this highly visible area.

Some of these tattoos are beautiful, others are a bit strange, but all of them will undoubtablly conjure queries as to what it is, and why.

I met Kyle at a post Art-A-Whirl meal with some friends. Having seen some excellent forearm symbols and glyphs in my investigation I was very drawn to the lines on Kyle's arm and asked him what it meant.

He simply told me that although he has many tattoos and enjoys talking about them with others, he would never tell anyone the meaning or origin of this particular piece of ink.

It was strictly for himself.

Respect.

Honoring The Undeniable, The Kult of Kore

2006-05-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Name: Noel

Age: 25

Gig: Uniform Salesman

Location: Uptown/Minneapolis

I was working at The Alt the other day. There is almost a constant stream of Tattooed people flowing in and out of the door, and if I'm not too busy I'll try to get someone to tell me thier story.

One guy had a great rendering of a watercolor painting from the original Winnie The Pooh series. It wasn't quite done yet and he promised he'd come back when it was finished.

But when Noel came in to pick up a repair I had to ask him about his forearm tattoos.

My wife has been bugging me to take on the issue of white people with "chinky" (her word, not mine) tattoos.This seemed like the perfect oportunity.

Noel's tattoos are Japanese Kanji characters for the Four Elements: Wind/Fire (right arm) Earth/Water (left arm). The two lower tats contain extra lines.. The lower symbol on the Fire Tattoo stands for "King" and the line on the top of the water symbol can be interpreted as "Eternity".

When I asked him why he chose those symbols Noel immediatly envoked faith, or was it a lack thereof.

"I wanted to get something spiritual," says Noel, "but since I don't really practice any type of religion I looked for something tangible and unchanging. Something that always was and always will be." Fair Enough.

This is the part where my wife would press Noel on why he chose an Asain character over other elemental symbols, but I think we all know WHY.......? They look really good in black tattoo ink, that's why.

Of course there are some good Asain options out there, like the Scottish characters at the top of the page, but something tells me that the artist might have had a hand in the overall choice.

All Noel's Tattoos were inked by Kore here in Minneapolis. I've been an adimrer of Kore's work since 1991 when I met a woman who worked at the Uptown YWCA with one of Kore's ealry tattoos on her back. Kore's freehand work shows a natural ability to imagine the clearly finished tattoo and the talent to get her there.

Originally inspired by pioneering female tattoo artist, Jamie Sommers (r.i.p.), Kore quickly became known as one of the best artists in a city full of great artists.

Since then Kore's work has adopted a very Asian aesthetic. Kore herself has taken it a step or two further and now spends as much time as a practitioner of Asian meditation and martial arts as she does inking tattoos.

She also has an altar to Xena in her tattoo shop.

Post-Modern Amilia

2006-05-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Name: Mia

Age: 32

Gig: Bicycle Fit Professional/ Bike Shop Manager/Hollywood Wrangler

Location: Bloomington, MN

Mia is tough as nails. The first time I met her she was riding with the rest of The Mess(engers). She'd stop into The Alt every now and then for essentials.

Occasionally our paths would cross at a late night biking/drinking rally over at GeneO's.

She recently left a cushy sales position at Quality Bicycle Products (the largest bike parts distributor in the country and most likely, todo el mundo) to work in the Belly of The Beast.

Mia loves to fly. She grew up flying a J3 Piper Cub (an old stick and rudder classic from the 30's) with her grandfather, taking off and landing in a grass country field.

She wanted to be a pilot, but her mother wouldn't allow it. She wanted Mia to be a ballerina. So she sent her to the Perpich Center for the Arts, where my wife is currently teaching English. Mia hasn't flown a plane since.

The piece on Mia's tricep is an awesome portrait of Amelia Earhart, drawn and inked by Mia's younger brother, Jason who works at Fluid Ink in St. Paul. I first saw it on my birthday. Mia and a dozen of my cycling friends invaded my rather sedate party and shook up my wife's cerebral friends with thier nuttiness and penchant for drink. The tat on her underarm was still fresh and tender, but so well done. It looked good then too.

Jason has done the rest of her work as well. Mia is in the process of a half-sleeve devoted to her love of flying. The detail on the portrait and the bi-planes is sensational. She gets back to work on it this weekend. We'll check back in after she'd had a chance to heal.

Her brother is also helping Mia plan for a full sleeve on her left arm as well.

Never Leave Home Without It

2006-05-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

Someday soon they will invent a camera that can be implanted right into my skull and I won't be able to forget to bring it to important events. Like The Supersuckers at The Caboooze last Saturday, where I missed the opportunity to ask lead singer Eddie Spaghetti about the "Kitty" tattoo that he and his wife both have on thier forearms.

Or...

The Mayday Festival in Powderhorn Park, where there had to have been at least a thousand different tattoo stories to tell.

While I was waiting with my kids to take a canoe trip around the "lake" at Powderhorn we were in line with another family. They wife and husband (also with two kids in tow) were of the Heart Of The Beast ilk. A bit scruffy and covered in really interesting tats. Her's, well placed and strikingly beautiful. His a bit more stark, and revealing of a past filled with pain and grief.

A graveyard, a cross, flags celebrating a European history lost on most but shining indelibly upon his skin. Thier kids were equally goergeous and since thier parent's tattoos were such an prominent feature I half expected for them to have begun thier own ink journey as well. Of course they hadn't but I highly doubt that they will live long on this earth before they too enter the pain cave.

I wonder if that's how people think about my kids when they see meplaying with them in the park or picking them up at school.

For nearly a year I have been wearing this strange Realtor costume daily, long sleeves to the office almost without fail. A few weeks ago I ran out of clean dress shirts and decided to let the freak flag fly around the real estate office for a day. Everyone really shut up around me all day long. Some of the people of color who work in my office came up to me, asking about the artwork and other mundane details about large tattoo projects, but almost everyone else (especially all the older white people) just pretended it wasn't there and have said nothing about it since.

Others, who had been friendly prior to my revelation, now won't even look me in the eye.

I'll never forget a dinner I had many years ago. I was dating a girl from college and the card tattoo on my chest was still quite a novelty. She and I went out to dinner with her sister and her husband, a guy we all called "TV Mike" because throughout his college career he was always to be found in the TV lounge of the senior dorm perpetually glue to the idiot box (shortly after thier courstship began she forbade him from watching television and I'd be willing to bet that if they are still married that he doesn't watch TV to this day, fifteen years later). Point being that my girlfriend's sister was blunt and to the point about people and laying thier flaws out on the table for everyone to see.

The topic of my year old tattoo came up and she told me point blank that she thought that tattoos were a sure sign of mental illness and had a volume of data to back her up.

Given the proliforation of body art over the last decade, it would be hard to argue that EVERYONE who has a tattoo is mentally ill, but I think that many of those who don't share in our worldview do think something along those lines.

"What were you thinking?"

"You do know that that is 'permenant', don't you?"

"Why would you do that to yourself?"

Mental Illness.

That will forever be my answer to those who don't know, or think that they know already.

A lifetime of free tattoos

2006-05-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

Wes

Age: 31

Occupation: Set Designer for Children's Theatre Company

Location: Leaning Tower of Pizza; Minneapolis

I met Wes at an impromptu birthday party for my old neighbor and true blue friend, Anthony. Anthony has a shit load of friends, so it was no surprise to meet someone new, dispite the fact that we've been friends for a decade. Anthony looked suspicously at my camera (concerned about evidence I suppose) and asked why I had it. When I was explaining my new endeavor in documenting tattoo stories, Wes chimed right that he had a story to tell.

Wes has a lot of tattoos and claims to have not paid for a single one since he was seventeen. Rather then paying for his tats, Wes has perfected the art of bartering for body art.

In his wilder days, Wes would trade tattoos for the various 'substances' that he had at his disposal. Of course these substances would be quickly imbided prior to the work being done, and in many cases the art would be implimented with makeshift equipment put together with ball piont pens and whatever motorized parts were available at the time.

Needless to say, between the inferiority of the tattoo guns and the intoxication level of the artist, Wes wound up with some pretty messed up tattoos, which he would then attempt to cover up with other equally messed up tattoos. By his mid twenties, Wes' shoulders and deltoids were covered with a myriad of dodgy tats.

While doing an odd job of cleaning up a gentleman's barn, Wes uncovered an old, but fully functional hydraulic dentist's chair. He asked if he could keep the monstrosity in leau of payment and after loading it onto his truck was soon on his was to a tattoo shop where he traded the chair for yet another cover up. But this one was for full coverage. A complete, semi-tribal blackout of all the old tattoos on his back, shoulders and deltoids.

Had we not been in a public resturant, I would have take a picture of the result. Truth be told, it looks really good. Blackouts can be very difficult to pull off and in the case of Wes' degree of coverage, very difficult to endure. "It took a while for him to draw up somthing that would cover all the old stuff," says Wes, "but when he had the artwork done, he just pulled out the shading needle and got to it."

The tattoo you see above is the outline for yet another cover-up and, once again, Wes is bartering his services for the artwork, but this time Wes will be trading his highly coveted metalwork rather than heinous chemicals.

Although this Asian catfish is not unusual is it's application or placement, Wes has plans to color it in a unique fashion to resemble a rare breed that is yellow with black spots.

We will check in with Wes in a few months to see how the work in coming along.

In the meantime, go to Children's Theatre Company to see the set Wes created for thier production of Pippi Longstocking, a two story house that can be pulled back from the set and rotated to reveal three different settings that represents different rooms in the house.

The Moon and The Fairy Cover-Up

2006-05-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Name: Lindsay

Age: 26

Occupation: Advertising/Print Designer

Location: Lee's Liquor Lounge. Mpls, MN

We met Lindasy at the usual Monday Night Cash-A-Raoke. I saw her tattoo peeking out from beneath her shawl. Even from a distance I could see how soft the colors looked.

When Lindsay came over to act as a wing-woman for her friend, who had taken an interest in Hollywood's 'eyewear', I asked if I could get a closer look at her tattoo. She showed it to me with no heistation, but rolled her eyes and began to tell me her tale of inked woe.

The tattoo as you see it here is a cover up. If you look at the bottom of the work you can see the outline of the Moon that Lindsay chose from the flash art at the tattoo shop that inked her when she was just sixteen years old.

"I didn't give it any thought. I just walked in and picked something right off the wall", says Lindsay. Unfortunately, lack of foresight wasn't the end of her problems with her first foray into The Pain Cave. For whatever reason, the tattoo did not heal very well, and Lindsay was left with scarring and a tattoo that looked in her words, "Like a big ink splot".

At the age of twenty-one, Lindsay had befriended a tattoo artist, and together they planned a cover-up of the tattoo with some artwork that Lindsay was more beholden to. The result is what you see here; a Fairy resting upon a small cluster of purple and blue flowers. The wings on the fairy are extraordinarily delicate (evidence of a VERY light touch on the part of the artist) and stand in rather stark contrast to the hard lines and thick colors in the flowers which do thier best to blend in with the dark lines of the original moon tattoo.

When I asked if she was happy with the result, Lindsay replied that she sometimes wished that it would just go away. "I'm going to be in a wedding soon, and it's just going to be out there for everyone to see. I wish there was a way I could cover it up."

When asked if she would ever consider another tattoo Lindsay was steely enough to never say never, but the look on her face stated clearly stated that she'd approach any further adventures with the needle with a great deal of trepidation and forethought.

Welcome To The Daily Tattoo Diary

2006-04-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

We'll start with me.

I'm a local writer. I've written for a number of publications in the "action sports" world; Transworld (Skate, Snow, Biz, etc), Singletrack, Experience Life, and some local rags like Pulse of the Twin Cities, and my beloved Cake.

I also like to shoot tattoos.

For years I've been fascinated by body art. I've always loved tattoos in particular. The beauty of ink under the skin is undeniable, but what really draws me in are the people who make the chioce to be a canvas. The story that goes along with a piece of artwork is just as intruiging to me as the artwork itself.

What is the story that drove an individual to choose to be amoung the painted people? Why do we choose to enter into this ever expanding "minority" of people who are on this path, one from which you can never turn back?

Here's mine.

The artwork for my first tattoo came to me when I was nineteen years old. I was a sophomore at Luther College and a member of the concert committee, the group of students who worked to bring well known live rock acts to school to play for the student body. I had worked hard that year lobbying for something good, and in the end we got The Alarm. During their signature single "68 Guns" their lead singer threw out a deck of cards into the crowd. I plucked one from the air and put it in my pocket.

Later while sitting in the boxy dormroom passing the bong with my friends we all pulled out our cards from the show and laid them on the table. There were three of us who had cards; myself, Todd and Mark. All three cards on the table were Kings; Mark had the king of clubs, Todd had the king of diamonds, and I had the king of Hearts.

I carried that card around with me for the next two years. It was my charm as I travelled across Euorpe and the Middle East. I thought about getting the card tattooed on me while in Amsterdam, but waited until I got back to the States.

The summer before my senior year, I had a family friend (who is now either serving a life sentence for his involvemnt in the Chicago chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, or in a lifetime of hiding for turning states evidence against other club members, I'm not privy to which) took me to Downers Grove Tattooing outside of Chicago and gave me my first taste of the needle.

I wanted to carry that card forever as a symbol of that time in my life and my commitment to those two friends, Todd and Mark, who held the other cards.

Shortly before second semester of that senior year, Mark's parents had an intervention and checked him into a treatment program. He came to pick up the things he left behind at school, and then I never saw him again.

Last week I got a message on my answering machine from Todd. Over the past decade he has suffered the tortures of the damned due to chronic alcoholism. Even after an expensive round at Hazelden, he never finished his PHD disertation, lost several teaching jobs, his wife left him and even his own parents were reluctant to take him in due to a "lack of character".

When he called last week he said that he was going to yet another treatment program, this one somewhere in Colorado.

I did not return the call.

With regard to the tattoo you see above, the classic Ralph Steadman portrait of Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, it was the first piece in what has become an entire, as of yet unfinished, sleeve devoted to the artwork for that book.

I never knew what I wanted to do with my life until I read that book. And having never had a father, Hunter was the first man to provide me with any kind of roadmap for how to be a man in America. For that I can never thank him enough. This sleeve was meant to honor him.

Shortly after my artist, Charlie Forbes (currently of Grand Tattoos in St. Paul), and I commited to the project, Hunter took his own life. I was really messed up for sometime afterward. I wasn't certain if I should continue with the sleeve. The next session drew out a lot of the emotional pain that I felt at Hunter's loss, especially the confusion at how the bravest man I'd ever known left us in such a cowardly fashion. After that it became a part of my mourning process. Every Tuesday, for several months, I sat, and bled, and cried for Hunter.

It's not a course of mourning that I would advocte to anyone else, but as Hunter would say, "It's always worked for me".

My goal with this blog is to capture a different tattoo story everyday. The good, the bad, the beautiful and even the ugly.

Perhaps we all can learn something about why we make this choice, and what makes this choice for us.

Thanks for reading. Check back often.

Christopher Cross