Keikikalani

You may recognize this from the bottom of the page (or for long-time readers, it once served as the masthead).

This is my second tattoo, inked in July 2005, by Peter Cavorsi at Body Art Studios in Brooklyn. I brought him this art as reference, and he ran with it, customizing it to more closely reflect my younger daughter's blonde hair, and her affinity for Green Day, at the young age of six.
It's my birthday today, and I'm fresh out of new material, so I thought I'd fall back on me. Thanks for reading Tattoosday!

A Double Shot: Steve and Krista Show Off Some Awesome Ink

Last Friday, my head was spinning. It seemed that there were tattoos everywhere. They were as prevalent as the blossoms on the trees. I passed out a few fliers, but hadn’t received any commitments from people to chat. The good weather means that we here at Tattoosday can be more selective in our choices, hopefully bringing you more intricate and complicated tattoos.

Just outside of Penn Station, I saw a man and a woman chatting in the sun. The guy had a bright red tattoo on his forearm. I couldn’t tell if the woman had ink, as her back was to me when I approached.

In introduced myself to Steve, who has six tattoos in all. He offered up the arm piece first, as it was the most meaningful of all his work:

Steve plays bass for a band out of Long Island called The Devilles. Check them out here. He described them as "punk rock n roll". Their MySpace profile categorizes them as "punk/blues/soul". Here's Steve at a gig:

To break the tattoo down a little, the quote in the banner is “When I got the music/I got a place to go,” which are lyrics from the song "Radio" by Rancid, from their 1994 album, Let’s Go. A little research proved that “Radio” was originally released on the Radio Radio Radio EP a year earlier, with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong as a second guitarist in a brief stint with the band. Armstrong is even shares writing credit on the track. The album version, post-Bille Joe, has a significantly different arrangement.

Here's a little video of Rancid performing "Radio":

The guitar in Steve’s tattoo is modeled after his own instrument, a Gretsch.

He explained that the tattoo exemplifies the role of music in Steve's life. He finds it very therapeutic and acknowledges that, without music, "I would not be the same person I am today, or even be here at all." It's the biggest, most important thing in his life.

This was designed and inked by Greg Fly at The Tattoo Shop in Medford, Long Island.

Steve also offered up this stomach piece:

This is a direct quote from the Clash song of the same name from the London Calling album. Pepe at The Tattoo Shop did this piece and it represents Steve's belief that he'll be able to make an impression on this world before he dies.

In the course of talking to Steve, the young lady with him was an active participant in the discussion. Her name is Krista and she works as an apprentice at The Tattoo Shop where Steve's work was done. She said she had about six or seven tattoos in all. After talking with Steve, I asked her if she would like to show off her ink for Tattoosday as well.

She tried to downplay her body art, saying that, compared to Steve, her stories weren’t that interesting. I begged to differ but, to be perfectly honest, she could have been right. I only saw one of her tattoos, but it is truly spectacular:

Krista was born in upstate New York but she grew up in North Carolina. She remembers always being fascinated by the "Western motif" and when she drew up the rudimentary sketch of this tattoo, this was in the forefront of the vision. She took the basic premise to a tattooist named Zam at Visionary (a custom shop). She told him "this is [basically] what I want. Go nuts with it." Like I said, the end result is breath-taking. I believe this is Tattoosday's first chest piece.

Krista wanted me to plug her shop's show on April 26th at Club Bianco in Hauppauge. Check out The Tattoo Shop's page here to get all the details.

Thanks again to Krista and Steve for sharing their awesome tattoos!

False Metal / Real Metal

I don't know if "false metal" is really a good category name for the following tattoos, but I couldn't think of anything better. These aren't the super awesomely terrible demon and monster tattoos that I posted earlier, they're the weird angsty tattoos that are both done badly and are bad ideas. It's a fine line.

Sad Goth Girl With Weird Stuff In Her Hair
(Really, what on earth was she thinking? Who is that hiding in the hair? And why?)


Demon Native American ?
I don't know what this is supposed to be, really, but the "smoke" is what gets me.


The Worst Dracula Ever
hahahahhahahh!!!!!!
Also the cross should be upside down


Demon Hand with Bonus Teeth
This reeks of numetal so I'm putting it in this category, but it is undeniably tough. Look at those gums!


And here are some real metal tattoos:

Rat Grim Reaper


Female Swordmaster Batwinged Demon Something
This rules. Hands down. I think I am going to have to do a top-10 awful metal tattoo countdown in the future, and this might just be on it.


Skeleton Dragons?
These guys are badass. And bad. Really, really bad. The heads are your usual badly-done, badly-healed metal tattoos, but the middle part? A jumble of something hellish. This is next level awful.

Guitar Heroes

If I have to see another badly done flaming guitar tattoo in my google searches, I will shoot myself. I could have posted a billion of them, but I decided to give you guys the most creatively awful guitar tattoos instead.

Here is a skeleton playing guitar. I like the infected face, X's over the nipples, and dreadlocks.


This one isn't executed so badly. The idea could even have worked if the guy had decided on either tribal or "classic", but the font and the guitar and the tribal bits just don't work together at all.


Okay I really can't tell you why I am so annoyed about this Celtic knot guitar tattoo, but I am. Can someone back me up and agree that it's bad? It's not tattooed badly, and I guess the idea isn't even all that terrible either, it just bugs me for some reason.


Here is a NSFW guitar tattoo that almost falls into the so-terrible-and-metal-it-rules category:
click here to see the NSFW guitar

This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the blank space around the signature that just makes the whole thing look messy and unfinished.


And finally, here's another amazing back piece for you guys. It comes with an explanation from the owner (all misspellings theirs):
"Tatoo includes rainbow with seasons, angel with cheerleading megaphone, guitar with wings, hard to tell with picture but also has seashells, sandles, celtc cross, trumpet with halo, birthday cake with lit candles, snow flakes, fireworks, and thanksgiving scene plus other seasons!"