Tag Archives: tattoos

The explosion of tattoo culture

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Steve: I rarely see anyone under the age of 30 without a tattoo. Could be any number of reasons for this: location; my age; etc. Wasn’t that long ago that you didn’t see that many people with tattoos. Bikers, Navy vets, the occasional free spirit. But sometime in the last 15 years (?) I started seeing them everywhere. I’m wondering if there has been some reputable academic research on the cultural causes/significance of this trend.

ChatGPT: The explosion of tattoo culture in the past 15–20 years is a striking cultural shift. It went from fringe to mainstream with remarkable speed. What was once associated with bikers, sailors, punks, and rebels has become almost a rite of passage for a lot of younger people, and yes, there’s been a fair amount of serious academic and sociological attention paid to the phenomenon. Here’s a summary (PDF) of what that research tends to say, along with a few respected sources.

Tattooed underwear model

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This direct mail marketing piece showed up in our mailbox yesterday. Two things immediately caught my eye: the model didn’t look like he spent hours in the gym every day, his body looked more like a normal person’s body. And the tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos.

According to a 2023 survey by Pew Research, 41% of Americans under the age of 30 have at least one tattoo. And we’re not talking high-grade Yakuza-class fine art here. These tats look like something you could get in the strip mall. Once again, I turned to ChatGPT for some insight on this cultural phenomenon.

Steve’s temp tattoo

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tattoo250-dcI came this close to getting a tattoo while in D.C. last week. Changed my mind at the last minute and knew immediately it was the right decision. It wasn’t the permanence of a tattoo that changed my mind. Rather, the insight that tattoos are not permanent.

Oh sure, that ink will be beneath your skin for a lifetime, but how long is that, really. A blink of the Cosmic Eye. Is there really that much difference between a child’s lick-it-and-stick-it tattoo and an some elaborate kanji that translates to: “I’m a dip-shit who thinks this is ‘Bad Ass’ in Japanese?”

If you’ve stayed with me this far, you can understand why the Sharpie-drawn fez by the talented Mr. Roe has the same metaphysical lifespan as any other tattoo.

Paul Roe, British Ink

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I jammed my way into some very crowded Metro cars to make my way down to M Street where Paul Roe [Fez #30], the owner of British Ink was taking part in an art exhibition called Artomatic. Paul was doing pre-session consultations while his colleague, Cynthia, hummed away on a guy’s right bicep. He squeezed me in for a chat and I even got to sit in the tattoo chair. The interview ran just under 12 minutes.

Coffee Zone tattoo

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I’ve been helping my friend Taisir feed and care for a blog for his coffee shop. It’s a labor of love and I’m there every morning anyway. With help from Phil we got his domain in place.

In time, we hope to build an online community to compliment the one he has built with his customers.

It was in this spirit that I stopped by Our Ink Don’t Stink and got my first body art.

UPDATE: The website where the image above was created no longer exists. But I did find what appears to be the source image.

Cool Tattoos

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Cooltats
Thanks to a fascinating new technique you can cover yourself in body art and no one will be the wiser, unless they see you in the dark, which is the only time these tattoos are visible.

The new technique uses blacklight reactive ink, which is reactive to UV light. [The Cool Hunter]

My kind of scavenger hunt

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I’m not a state fair kind of guy. I’m just not. But that just shows you how little imagination and creativity I possess. And why I missed the Hoosier Hunt at this year’s Missouri State Fair.

The Hoosier Hunt is what happens when black humor meets the digital age. You fire up your camera phone and bring back the following images:

  • Mullet
  • Marlboro T-Shirt
  • Woman 2x as big as her man
  • Matching shirts
  • Camel Toe or Melvin
  • Best girl’s ass (not your wife)
  • Best boy’s ass (not your husband)
  • Most tattoos
  • Most in need of having roots done
  • Picture in stranger’s hat
  • In same shot with girl with “D” cups
  • Picture with someone famous
  • In shot with Jeff Gordon fan
  • Woman in bikini top
  • Man/woman in overalls
  • Someone eating a turkey leg
  • Person wearing air-brushed T-Shirt
  • Woman with 80’s hair
  • Woman without a bra
  • Big belt buckle
  • Someone barefoot
  • Wearing two articles of John Deere clothing
  • Ugliest person with Big & Rich T-Shirt
  • Ugliest person with Cowboy Troy T-Shirt
  • Fat woman/man in belly shirt
  • Most facial hair

If you don’t find this amusing, you’re probably in one of the photos above. And, god willing, I will be able to share the winning images with you. I’m told there were three teams competing in this Hoosier Hunt and they’re compiling the winning photos and will share them here.

BusinessWeek: Don’t quit your day job, podcasters

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Good article in Business Week about how difficult it is to make a living as a podcaster. Seems I am one of about 35,000 daily listeners to Keith and the Girl:

“Keith Malley and Chemda Khalili, the couple behind Keith and the Girl, an engaging, sometimes raunchy Howard Stern-like podcast, have cultivated a devoted online audience. (Six fans have already had Keith and the Girl tattoos done.) The show, which has 35,000 daily listeners, is just one part of the brand. Just as important to fans are the online forums and MySpace.com (NWS ) pages where they gather to talk about the show and their lives. As a result of this devotion, the audience last year was willing to snap up about $80,000 worth of T-shirts, key chains, and other merchandise.”

Some would argue that $80K ain’t bad for just shooting the shit for an hour a day. But, as a regular listener, sounds to me like they’re working damned hard and earning every penny.

The ink that never was

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Tattoo SleevesI confess I was surprised by the number of readers that –even for a moment– entertained the idea that I got real tattoos for my little video project. (You are the people that open the spam email)

It wasn’t Magic Marker. It wasn’t Photoshop magic (I should be so talented). Simple nylon sleeves that come in all sorts of designs and prices (from expensive to cheap. You can even get full-body faux tattoos.)

You pull these on and you start fantacizing about walking into a biker bar and GETTING IN SOMEONE’S SHIT, MAN!!

Everett reports you can still see plenty of jailhouse tattoos in Kennet.

“The L-O-V-E H-A-T-E across the tops of the fingers in ballpoint ink is most common, though the Dagger Dripping Tears on the forearm is a close second. Then there’s the guy who started on the wrong finger and got LOVE HAT.”

Everett loves hats.

Fictional passwords: Western concept of Self

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John Burdett’s second novel, Bangkok Tattoo, was as good as his first (Bangkok 8). Both stories are set in (you guessed it) Bangkok, where Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep solves bizarre murders. Sonchai is a devout Buddhist and the plot is laced with Eastern religion. I especially liked this description of the Western concept of Self:

“…a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging, there is no center at all, everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the environment, your thoughts depend on whatever junk floats in from the media, your emotions are largely from the reptilian end of your DNA, your intellect is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator, and even your best side is a superficial piece of social programming that will fall apart just as soon as your spouse leaves with the kids and the money in the joint account, or the economy starts to fail and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor.”

Ouch. The wannabe geek in me also enjoyed this password to a CIA online database:

AQ82860136574X-Halifax nineteen [lowercase] Oklahoma twenty-2 BLUE WHALE [all uppercase] Amerika stop 783

Won’t even fit on a Post-It note.