Syracuse Ink: Part One

What they say about tattoos is true- once you’ve got one; you want another, and another, and another. It’s been three years since my last one, and the desire never went away. What stopped me is that I wanted something creative and unique, but for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with an idea. I suppose it worked out better that way since tattoos are mad expensive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my tattoos, but they’re very simple. They’re indicative of me and my personality, but only part of it. On my triceps are black fists. A friend of mine gives me shit about channeling rage Against the Machine. It’s not that far from the truth. They’re a symbol of strength and standing up for what you believe in. I suppose they’re my version of the barbed wire around the bicep.

Across my chest is “Me Numquam Infringes,” written in solid black, pseudo old English font. It’s Latin for “You will never break me.” I suppose it’s in the same vein as the fists, but I’m actually much more partial to the tattoo on my chest. I think most other people like it better too. I’ve certainly gotten more compliments on it.

But I wanted something different this time. I wanted something artistic and creative. Unfortunately, I am neither artistic, nor very creative, at least not outside of the realm of the written word. I wanted something with color. It took me a long time to have the epiphany of what I wanted.

The bug really bit me again in November. What set it off was simply seeing what I thought was an amazing tattoo that someone else had. I’m not sure if it’s possible for a still drawing to be graceful and elegant, but the simple yet beautiful tattoo of a bird was. Something just clicked in my head, and I wanted another tattoo, very badly. I started browsing BME, not necessarily looking for ideas, but hoping something would spark my imagination.

I love BME, short for Body Modification Ezine. It’s a website devoted to body mods in general. They’ve got pics of everything from piercings to tattoos to scarification. It’s a simple layout, with categories for different kinds of tattoos; old school, new school, sci-fi, faeries and angels, fantasy, geek, and political are just some of the different categories. Best of all about the site is it’s fast, it’s free, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of photos and stories. Unfortunately, the website hasn’t been updated since September, so I’m not sure what the status is.

I hadn’t been there in a while, so there was a lot of new stuff. At the time, there was probably some actual work that I should have been doing, like my TWS, possibly a paper for one of my other classes. But to hell with that. I was bitten and needed to come up with something. Normally I check out the lettering section first, since the written word is my comfort zone. Since I wasn’t looking for a purely text tattoo, I checked out the other sections first.

I could get an angel with wings spread across my shoulder blades, but that’s so been done. I have every intention of getting a back piece some day, but it’s going to be epic. With that much space to work with, I’m getting something grand. What I really want to do is go into tattoo parlor, throw down a couple thousand dollars on the counter and say, “I want a back piece. Go to town.” I bet some guys would love to have that opportunity.

So the angel on my back is a no go. I wasn’t feeling anything in the other sections either. Dragons have been done, and I’ve pretty much outgrown my AD&D geek years anyway. There’s nothing that was setting a spark. So I venture into the lettering section.

There’s a lot of cool work being done. There’s some fancy lettering that looks amazing in a few pics. A lot are just names of loved ones. There are some interesting quotes and epigraphs. Then I see a simple tattoo across the chest of a girl, very similar to mine, just below the collarbone. The tattoo itself is interesting enough. It says “First thought=Best thought.” That’s not what caught my eye, though. It was who the quote was (falsely, I know now) attributed to: Jack Kerouac.

Then it struck me. After three years, I finally had my epiphanic moment.

“But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, made to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see a blue centerlight pop and everyone goes ‘Aww!’”

That’s from On the Road. I didn’t want the whole passage, since it’s far too long, but it makes for an amazing visual. Suddenly, I knew what I wanted. I wanted the fireworks exploding across the night sky, with “The only people for me are the mad ones” underneath.

Once I figured out the idea, I had to figure out where I wanted it. My back was obviously out of the question. I contemplated putting it on a shoulder, but discarded that idea quickly. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, searching for a place to put the tattoo. It sounds cheesy as hell, but fuck it; it worked. I settled on my upper ribs on my left side. Placement might be tricky because of a birthmark, but it seems right.

Now I had to find someone to do it. I decided against going back to Ray at Halo in Liverpool. He did fine on my other two tattoos, but I didn’t like his style on more complex pieces. I wanted to go to someone who had positive referrals. My choices were a guy in Geneva, which I wasn’t to hot about driving to, or Taylor, from Halo on Erie Boulevard. I decided I would meet and talk with Taylor.

Part II:

The inside of Halo Tattoo on Erie Boulevard sort of reminds me of a southwest motif without all the trappings of trying too hard to have a southwestern motif. The walls are painted a pale golden yellow. There is short brown carpet covering the floor. It is one big open room, but the “lobby” is clearly designated with plastic chairs and white linoleum floors instead of carpet. Behind the front counter is a chalkboard with all the prices for different piercings, written in different colors of chalk. Also on the walls is flash art. Flash art never really interested me, but most of it is fun enough to look at. There are half walls that separate each artist’s work area. The half walls are covered with the same brown linoleum lop as the main counter.

Sitting on the half wall around Taylor’s area are two binders with pictures of his work. Since he’s busy working on another customer’s tattoo, Adam and I flip through them. I’m really impressed by his work. It looks amazing, especially a really large and intricate back piece that was in progress (yes, I’m totally obsessed with back pieces).

Adam introduces me to Taylor. He’s tall and skinny with dark hair. He looks a lot like Travis barker from Blink 182 if Travis wore the thick plastic rimmed glasses that one sees most punk, emo, and hardcore kids wearing. He’s wearing a long sleeved shirt that’s rolled up, exposing what must be full tattoo sleeves. I’m a little envious. It must be nice to be in a profession where it’s basically encouraged to have as many tattoos as possible. While he looks like your average tattoo artist, and I of all people should know that tattoo artists live normal lives, I couldn’t help but smile when he talked about the mundane events of “chilling with the wife” and buying Christmas presents for his dogs.

Taylor’s a nice guy. He asks me what I’m looking to get done, and I asked if he’d read On the Road, hoping that maybe, finally, someone would know what I’m talking about when I read the passage. He hadn’t, so I tried awkwardly to explain it.

I feel like such a huge dork pulling out my “reference materials” as Adam called them. In the pile of papers is a page of printed out Magic cards painted by Quinton Hoover, who’s style I really like and wanted emulated if at all possible. Yes, I used Magic cards. If I could give the finger over the internet to those of you laughing, I would.

I also brought in the full passage itself, which threw Taylor a little bit, “That’s a lot of text.” I tell him I’m not looking for the whole thing, just “The only ones for me are the mad ones.” Incidentally, I also brought that line printed out in the font that I wanted, Goudi Medieval for any fontophiles out there.

Also in the pile was a quick sketch to illustrate what I was looking for. I made it well known that I have no artistic ability whatsoever. I probably didn’t even need to verbalize it after showing my sketch. The drawing was just to show the general idea for the layout.

What impressed me the most about Taylor was his understanding of his craft. After showing him my sketch, he started offering ideas. “Have you thought about giving it sort of an ‘S’ shape, with maybe the main center light at the top and curving downwards?” I got a little confused and he does a quick, ten second sketch to show the shape. I don’t see how that works, so he uses the girl at the counter as a model. I ask him why he can’t just make my sketch look pretty and we could go with that. He says, rather bluntly, “Well, I could. But it’d look contrived and out of place.” I like him for that. He wants my tattoo to look good because it reflects on him as an artist.

He gives a quick lesson shape and human anatomy. From a profile view, the human torso has a gentle ‘S’ like curve. He explained that having the tattoo have the same shape, it would look more natural, and that if my body ever changed, like getting morbidly obese, it’d still look fine. Or as find as a tattoo can look after being stretched over 200 extra pounds, I suppose.

Shape isn’t something that I was totally oblivious to; I just hadn’t considered it for this tattoo. When I was talking to the desk guy when I was getting my first tattoo, I asked him about what general shapes go best on which body parts (inverted triangle on the upper back, etc). He just gave me a blank stare and said, “Dude, whatever you want, we can put it where ever you want.” The fact that Taylor took this sort of thing into consideration was a very pleasant surprise. Needless to say, he sold me on the idea.

After asking a few more questions about how I wanted it to look, I Taylor explained that he was leaving New Years Day for Arizona and wouldn’t be back for two weeks. That was fine for me, since I actually preferred to wait a couple of weeks to get it done. Now the two weeks is coming to a close.

Part three, wherein I actually get tattooed, will hopefully be next week’s entry.