My Next Tattoo
Another tattoo is coming. It is the result of a saga of near quest-like proportions.
You see, I have had to learn the hard way just how fucked up the tattoo profession really is. There are really no standards as to who can set up shop or what a real tattoo artist actually is.
Here are some of the bullshit experiences I have had in just the last three months of trying to get a fucking tattoo.
You're supposed to get a personal recommendation, so I did. It didn't pay off. I went to Warlock's because a friend of mine said she liked it.
That was 20 years ago.
Cut to me, standing in front of the tattoo dude at Warlock's. He is looking at me with a kind of smirk. It says, who the fuck is this middle-aged nerd, coming in here to get a tramp stamp or some shit. He looked entirely disinterested and like I was wasting his precious time as a cool tattoo dude. He was in his 50s, tattooed, and pierced, and his whole demeanor said, "I don't respect you."
I start in about what I want. He listens, smirking, and when my girlfriend pipes in with her own thoughts, since I am a newbie and open to suggestions, he says to her, "This is HIS tattoo, not yours." Classy.
I start to tell him what I want, which is a Celtic cross that incorporates elements from five of my family crests. He cuts me off and tells me that what I want is wrong. He starts to tell me what kind of tattoo I should get.
It isn't his fucking tattoo, it is mine!!
I also tell him that I want to get ogham in Gaelic and he seems entirely disinterested, giving me to some other dude to do that one.
A few days later, I show up there and have to wait 40 minutes while dude is tattooing a chick. He never says sorry. In fact, the dude never even acknowledges me. When he is cleaned up and ready for me he tells me to come in and sit down. He looks at my design like it is a fucking lame-ass piece of shit and tells me how he won't tattoo stupid shit like a bar code. I assure him that mine is an ancient system of writing from Ireland and that it says something in Irish that is integral to who I am.
Does he take my design and embellish it at all, making it more tribal looking? No. He tattoos exactly what I brought in, something I had printed from MS Word that I got off the Web.
Fine. At least I know what I am getting.
As he tattoos me, he keeps wiping his nose with his gloved hands and talking about some fucked up shit involving cocaine, drug addicts, and some pussy his friend got that made that dude's dick drool.
Classy again.
So far, I am getting a real education about the tattoo world. It is just as scummy as it seems on TV.
The tattoo I ended up getting was to my satisfaction, so I am fine with it, but I will not go back to Warlock's or recommend it.
The Celtic Cross idea was not well received at Warlocks by the cool dude or the nose-wipe dude, so I took it elsewhere. I ended up at a place on the college strip, and the guy who ran the shop boasted that he had created the health and safety codes for the city. He had a Celtic tattoo among his shown work, so I went to him.
When I arrived at said place, I saw a homeless man walking barefoot and zombielike down the sidewalk, his basketball jersey exposing dirty arms with lots of tattoos. I avoided him and found the tattoo shop, which was a hole in the wall, scummy, and populated by people who I expected were moonlighting at a meth lab.
I ask the kid with the sideways baseball hat in the basketball jersey where the big dude was when in walked the dude.
He was the homeless dude I had just avoided outside!
In he walked, and out I went. Another tattoo failure.
I then found a place called Mad Ethel's, which was rather upscale and preppy. At least it was clean!
I show up for my appointment and end up waiting 45 minutes for dude to show. When he does, I am stewing mad, and I say that I have been waiting and that he is late. He points at another lady who had come in after me and says, "I'm not late for HER."
Classy again.
So he says he has no idea who I am and has no record of my appointment. I am boiling over now and he sees that in the appointment book, my name and appointment time are there.
Oops.
At least he apologized.
I proceed to show him my design and he proceeds to dislike it. He says it is too complicated and I say that I want his expertise to make it work. His lack of enthusiasm is palpable.
I pay the man 40 bucks to draw something up and he says he will email me when it is ready to see. I also schedule an appointment to get it done, a month in advance. I go home and even make a nice comment on the FB page, trying to be nice after our contentious first meeting.
A month goes by and I have not heard anything. I give him a call and he says he has no idea what I am talking about. He doesn't have any appointments that day.
Cue the atomic explosion.
But at the last second, when I am about to blast him, he sees that he is looking at the wrong page and that yes, I DO have an appointment in just three days' time. Has he done the design yet? Nope. He says he will do it the day of.
So I am supposed to what, just accept it and let him throw that shit on my leg --that last-minute piece of inspiration?
I got the impression I was dealing with someone who did not want to do my tattoo and had no interest in being professional or even responsible.
I ended up having to cancel, not because of all of the bad feelings the above had given me, but because there was a scare up in Boston that I almost ended up going to but which ended up being a false alarm. I only found out that it was a false alarm AFTER I had cancelled my appointment.
The universe was telling me something.
I almost gave up on my idea, but I found the will to get this tattoo stronger than my distaste. I next returned to the Web and searched not for a tattoo artist near me, but one who does Celtic designs, since no one I had found was very eager at all to do one.
I found a guy in Rhode Island. I emailed him and told him the basics of what I want, but no one ever emailed me back.
So I returned to the drawing board.
Everyone I emailed took days to get back to me and no one was excited.
Fuck!
Finally, by chance, a friend of mine was visiting and I asked her if she had any tattoo artist in mind. I was told about Libby, at Conspiracy Ink.
I was there the same afternoon.
What I found was a nice, relaxed atmosphere where the people in there do not look at you as an outsider. There was no scumbaggery. And best of all, not only had Libby DONE a Celtic design, she was eager to do my design! In fact, she said that we could do exactly what I wanted and even in color if I want!
Finally!!!!
So I gave her twenty bucks to work up a design and I am happy with my experience at her shop.
I can't wait to get the design done, and I am assured that she will do a bang-up job of it.
What I have learned is that tattoo places are not really set to any standard. Any old person can just hang a shingle. It is a lot of bullshit. So You have to keep looking until you find the right one for you, the person who actually does ART, and does it in a professional way --minus the scumbaggery!
Stay tuned . . .
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