Tuesday August 30th, 2005 @ 7:08 PM
I just got this picture and email. I think maybe it is a sign that at least in little ways the world is becoming a better place, even if just one person at a time?
This is me at Mahatma Tattoo studio, Rio de Janeiro-Brazil. This facial tattoo represents my Guarani heritage.
I’d read that Maori tattoos were making a comeback among current generations in New Zealand, so I asked Robson whether his tattoo was part of a larger trend or not.
No man, only me, I guess. All the guys were doing facial old school daggers or something… We do have a lot of people of indigenous descent here in Brazil, but the media doesn’t show anything about our culture.
These kids that are like, five, ten, fourteen years old, they stop me and ask “wow! are you an indian?” and I reply, “sure, just like you!” Most people here, especially in Rio, are a mix of Portuguese, Indian, and Black… and the Indian side I think is pretty cool.
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Tuesday August 30th, 2005 @ 5:26 PM
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Monday August 29th, 2005 @ 5:26 PM
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Monday August 29th, 2005 @ 3:50 PM
Tattoos are — when they’re done right, in my opinion — an integral part of people’s lives, and have a meaning that’s tied to their self-chosen destiny.
[This is] a tattoo in the honor of an album I heard a few years ago, called “The Ugly Organ.” I took the album art, in this case, the jagged piano design, and pretty much photocopied it. The design credits go to Cursive. The album changed the way I heard music, and more importantly, changed the way I write music.
I now run a record label, play in several bands and just released my tenth album. None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t had heard “The Ugly Organ.” The combination of dischord and cacophony along with melody and tender moments struck me in a special way. The lyrics, predominantly about the paradox that successful writers constantly must seek out pain in order to write about to continue to be successful writers, was a concept that I had been battling myself before I had heard the album.
I devoted about 14 inches of my chest to this album, this work of art. It took about 5 hours, with four breaks, and the Subway I ate afterwards was the best in my life, if for no reason than I was no longer being tattooed across my chest. Those with chest work understand the pain, I’m sure. But, It was totally worth it. Tattooed by Matt at Evolved.
- Evan
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Along those lines you may remember pro cyclist David Clinger (pictured on the right), who tattooed his face with a Maori-style warrior’s pattern and was told by his employer to laser it off or lose his job. Forced to choose between part of his face and twenty years of dedication to his sport, he chose to do a partial removal… Needled reports that after spending $15,000 on laser treatments, Webcor decided to fire him anyway.
Clinger, who already had several other Polynesian designs, got the tattoo because he felt it represented his life as a sort of “warrior” and that he needed it. I’m not sure that I’m going to argue that Webcor had no legal right to fire him, but I will say that ethically they are far in the wrong, and their suggestion that it would cause their team to lose sponsors is laughable… sports celebrities grow through a combination of skill and being outrageous characters — with this firing, Webcor has lost what could have been a valuable promotional ally.
With something like 10% to 20% of Americans now being tattooed, you have to ask yourself — if Webcore builders is willing to fire tattooed people, why should tattooed people offer them any business in return? It’s not as if there aren’t other construction companies in California.
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Sunday August 28th, 2005 @ 9:17 PM
It’s my old friend Blair’s birthday and he’s decided to take a week or two off of busy life in Toronto and relax in the slow moving city of New York, New York. While he’s there, he’ll be doing some guest work at Brian’s PURE Body Arts in Brooklyn.
If you don’t already know his name, Blair is not only a generally talented body piercer, scarification, and body modification practitioner, but he’s also one of the best traditional strike branding artists in the world with about a decade of experience in the medium… So if you’re in NYC and strike branding is something you’ve been looking fore, considering contacting him. He’s only there for the next week or so!
You can see some more of his work at his website, byblair.com.
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Sunday August 28th, 2005 @ 5:26 PM
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Sunday August 28th, 2005 @ 1:19 AM
Friends don’t let friends choose their own nicknames.
[LINK via IAM:Mikesch.]
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Saturday August 27th, 2005 @ 5:26 PM
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Saturday August 27th, 2005 @ 4:43 PM
BE (UK suspension team) has been playing with a new ultra-simple “hook/rig” design, with Wormy modeling it below. It looks super cool, but my take on it is that if you had any amount of motion (swinging around for example), it could shift out of place or perhaps even catastrophically slide entirely out as more weight is on one side than the other?
I suppose some kind of safety knobs could be put in place on each side of the flesh penetration, but at that point you’d lose the visual simplicity. Seeing this picture has me thinking about a photoshoot in which the suspendee is “skewered” on rebar sticking horizontally out of a concrete wall… Someone please shoot it, I need that poster!
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Friday August 26th, 2005 @ 5:26 PM
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Friday August 26th, 2005 @ 4:44 PM
Kent Fazekas’s parents just came to visit him from Indiana, and while in California not only did they each get a small tattoo, but he got their footprints tattooed (by JD at Outer Limits in Long Beach) on the bottom of his feet — “Hurt like none other, but I’d do it again”
And I’ve seen lots of Orion tattoos and even piercings and scarifications before, but I kind of liked Bimbieus’s full body “anatomically correct” concept interpretation of the Orion constellation (done by Allen at Euphoria in Tallahassee, Florida) — although perhaps one could argue that the placement of Saiph and Rigel are too low (aren’t they — or at least Saiph — his knees)?
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Thursday August 25th, 2005 @ 7:54 PM
OK, so he’s getting some help from his dad, but this is the youngest tattoo artist I’ve seen yet!
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Thursday August 25th, 2005 @ 7:51 PM
From the “There has to be more to this story” department, several news sources have picked up on this sordid little nugget.
A North Carolina resident was apparently scheduled to have a tattoo done by an acquaintance of his, yet inexplicably, a fight broke out between the two.
This, however, was no ordinary donnybrook; the man seeking the tattoo ended up not only getting his ears cut off, but was also castrated with a butcher’s knife. Then, without even so much as an aftercare sheet, he was thrown into a car and instructed to leave.
Thankfully, he’s recovering well in a Winston-Salem hospital, and his alleged attackers have since been charged.
At press time, Mr. Blonde could not be reached for comment.
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Thursday August 25th, 2005 @ 7:24 PM
Here’s a collection of just some of the inner lip tattoos that people have sent me over the years. Got an inner lip tattoo? Sent it to me at submissions@bmezine.com.
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Thursday August 25th, 2005 @ 6:13 PM
Steve Haworth has been playing with a piercing-style method for implanting genital beads with a reduced level of trauma. Normally either a larger gauge incision has to be made and/or a taper has to be used to stretch the holes up to the size of the bead to place it under the skin. Using his “squishy” silicone beads, he reduces the incision size required to place a 1/4″ bead down to 8ga.
The tools: A. a 1/4″ taper for comparison (this is what would normally be required to place the bead), B. a pusher rod which will later be used to push the bead into the skin, C. the bead reducer which will “inject” the bead, D. the 3/16 taper which leads the bead into the hole, and of course E. the silicone beads themselves.
First the bead is placed in the reducer and then compressed down into its tip, squeezing it from round to a nearly cylindrical narrow form.
The bead reducer is then attached to the 3/16 taper.
The taper and reducer assembly is pushed into the fresh piercing (made with an 8ga needle for a 1/4″ bead, or a 10ga needle for a 3/16″ bead) behind the needle, and then release the taper, leaving the reducer in place.
The pusher rod then pops the bead out of the reducer, leaving it under the skin and it expands to its normal 1/4″ form.
Steve is talking about offering instruction in this method at his advanced beading seminars, and may be selling the tools and beads on his eBay store in the future. The only problem that I can foresee from this method is that so far silicone has had an unusually high materials reaction (ie. allergic response) in comparison to titanium, steel, and teflon beads. This reaction is not supported by the scientific literature on the subject, so it’s yet to be determined why silicone from Steve has seen these complications.
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Thursday August 25th, 2005 @ 5:26 PM
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Wednesday August 24th, 2005 @ 8:51 PM
You’re Scott Spiezio. You’re divorced, you’re injured, and your .064 batting average is so pathetic that even the last-place Seattle Mariners have no spot for you on their roster anymore. Ostensibly, things are in the crapper. What do you do?
Apparently, you get a tattoo.
“It’s been a bad year,” Spiezio said in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Jim Moore. “I said, ‘Hey, let’s have a little fun’ instead of being uptight. I guess I went a little bit crazy.”
Forgoing the traditional “crazy athlete” route — such as developing a crippling drug addiction or failing to appear for a probation hearing — Spiezio instead celebrated his relationship with his new model-girlfriend by getting a large, seductive portrait of her tattooed on his upper arm.
Wanting “the tattoo to look like a pin-up found on barracks walls from wars in the past,” he sought out the services of talented portrait artist Rich White [PORTFOLIO LINK] of Action Tattoo & Body Piercing in Auburn, Washington.
You’re Scott Spiezio. You just got your first tattoo, you’ve got a beautiful girlfriend, you’ve got an indefinite amount of vacation-time, and you’re still getting paid over $3 million next year.
I’d be smiling too.
Spiezio with his new tattoo.
Spiezio claims that he is saving his other bicep for a tattoo dedicated to his three children, and sources close to the athlete confirm that he is also currently consulting with friends to concoct a believable cover-story to tell future girlfriends about the pin-up on his arm once this relationship crashes and burns.
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Wednesday August 24th, 2005 @ 6:00 PM
Damn Darn, what’s with all the religious posts recently? I just got an email from police officer and Christian preacher Aaron Davis showing me pictures of his new tribal work. Aaron just put out a book encouraging Christians not to judge others — including those with tattoos.
Can’t say that I can entirely at all support his D.A.R.E. stance, but I suppose this trend in Christianity to embrace different ways of living is a good thing — certainly better than the extremism that’s brought us, oh, a couple thousand years of war!
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Wednesday August 24th, 2005 @ 5:25 PM
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Wednesday August 24th, 2005 @ 4:42 PM
I like tattoos that make me laugh. On the left are Solanum’s mexillant tattoos (signifying his profound love for burritos), done by Brett at PURE (NYC), and on the right is John’s tattoo done at Delicious Ink in Rockford, IL — he would like everyone to know that he is “very afraid of spiders”. Maybe that’s not really funny in and of itself, but that someone would be so petrified that they’d put a WARNING: NO SPIDERS logo on their arm cracks me up.
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Wednesday August 24th, 2005 @ 3:12 PM
As you probably know I have magnets inside my fingers, implanted courtesy of Steve Haworth (made by Jesse Jarrell and previously covered on BME). My magnets are mostly intended to be functional, to give me “magnetic vision“, but Steve and his partner Cookie recently opted for something far more romantic.
Each one got two magnet implants done; one in the fingertip, and the other behind the knuckle, positioned so that if they are holding hands, the magnets draw toward each other, linking them. It’s yet to be determined whether there will be a noticeable sensation or not (the magnets are very small), but on a purely symbolic level I really love it!
If you’re interested in something like this (or are an implant artist looking for silicone coated magnets), you can contact Steve via his website at stevehaworth.com.
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Tuesday August 23rd, 2005 @ 9:57 PM
It’s always interesting to me what people choose to do while suspended (assuming they don’t just swing around or “do nothing” and zone out). I’ve seen a lot of people take out their cell phone and call friends, but many people choose to integrate things from their life — sing Opera, wear a beautiful dress, eat a great meal (seriously), play the saxaphone, and so on… Well, at the latest House of Wah suspensions in London (UK), IAM:namesofthedead tried extreme knitting:
Photos by Joker
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Tuesday August 23rd, 2005 @ 5:25 PM
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