Lori's Siamese Twins With a Somber Memorial

Back in June, I met Lori at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. She shared this tattoo on her arm:

This cool tattoo of Siamese Twins has tattoos of its own, including the "10/30" visible on the chest.

Lori explained that this refers to today, October 30, which she referred to as the "happiest and saddest day," noting that it was the day she married her husband, but it was also the day he died, one year later, on their first anniversary.

She credited the work to Mike at Read Street Tattoo Parlour in Baltimore.

Thanks to Lori for sharing this lovely, yet haunting, tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

We Are TEN!

Ten years ago today, Tattoosday was born out of BillyBlog.

A decade and 2078 posts later, we are approaching 4 million page views and still puttering along.

Alex McWatt at Three Kings helped me ring in my 50th year on earth, and 10th year of Tattoosday with this custom-designed eagle with a New York City theme.

Stay tuned as we celebrate our tenth year with lots of fun stuff, including visits from some old friends.

Thanks to you, our loyal readers and contributors, who have been so kind to us over the last decade!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Anniversary Ink

Back at the beginning of April, when Tattoosday was celebrating National Poetry Month, my wife Melanie and I were celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary.

After Melanie's birthday tattoo (here), she was eager for another. We decided on something fairly traditional, as Jewish tattoos go, we wanted to get the phrase אני לדודי ודודי לי,which is from the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. It translates to "I am my Beloved's, My Beloved is Mine."

When we got married in April 1995, we decided on matching wedding rings that looked like this:

The phrase is engraved as part of the design circling the ring.

So we knew that this was going to be our tattoo:

Melanie was thinking about wrapping it around her ankle, and I was thinking how I could make it slightly different.

The reason this was so important to Melanie, and why it made such sense as a twentieth anniversary gift, is that her original wedding ring had been lost in the last decade. She had lost a lot of weight and the ring was loose. For our tenth anniversary, I had given her two thin rings to go on either side of the wedding band, which held it in place. However, one of the stones had come loose in one of the smaller rings and when it was being repaired, Melanie's band fell off, somewhere between Chelsea Piers and South Brooklyn. The needle in the haystack story did not end with a miraculous recovery of her ring.

So, we knew what we wanted, the next question was where to go. Who should tattoo us? This wasn't an elaborate tattoo design, but then again, lettering is deceptively challenging, especially if the tattoo is not a straight line on a flat surface.

I put on my Tattoosday thinking cap and reached out to several people, one of whom was Kevin Wilson, shop manager at Sacred Tattoo  in Manhattan. Sacred has top-notch artists and he said he definitely had confidence in whoever would be available on our anniversary.

Melanie met me after work and we headed to Sacred, which was relatively close - another bonus. When we arrived, Kevin greeted us warmly and introduced us to Gunny, who would be our artist.

After some discussion about size and placement, the tattoo was much bigger than I originally imagined and it had moved from her ankle to her right wrist. Melanie went first.

Gunny placing the stencil around Melanie's wrist

Gunny set to work, quickly and efficiently...

Gunny at work on Melanie's wrist

Before you know it, he was done, completing a solid and bold circle of Hebrew lettering around her wrist.

Here's a collage of what it looks like:

Next, it was my turn.

I didn't want anything circling my wrist or ankle, and I wanted something slightly different, yet the same.A little research resulted in the discovery of a design that comprised of the same words, but in a slightly different font and shape. I opted for it over my heart:

This has a more tribal look to it, but I'm pleased immensely. It's also in a circle, which recalls a ring in its shape. And, of course, it's over my heart.

Melanie jokes that she can't lose this ring. Neither can I. The two tattoos were the perfect anniversary gift for the likes of us!

Thanks to Kevin and Gunny at Sacred Tattoo for making this all happen! And thanks to Melanie for twenty years of marriage and patiently waiting for this post to appear on Tattoosday!

Be sure to visit Gunny on his web page here, as well as on Instagram here, and check out the photography Kevin has been doing here. Visit Sacred Tattoo and Gallery here. Talent abounds!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Tattoosday: Five Years and Counting

Thanks to Nathan @ KnuckleTattoos.com for This Image

I'll be honest with you, Dear Readers, when I managed only six posts in August, despite a backlog of over fifty subjects, I feared the worst. The fact that I only had 1 (one) reader inquiry asking if everything was okay certainly deepened my concern.

You see, July 31, marked the fifth anniversary of this post, over on my original site, BillyBlog. That was 1997, and I had my most fruitful year as a blogger. Within six weeks, my idea to highlight someone's tattoo, be it a friend's or a stranger's, had exploded. I had more material than I expected, and I loved it.

So, on Saturday, September 8, 2007, after six Tuesday posts, I spun off Tattoosday into a stand alone entity. And BillyBlog hung around, and still exists, in theory, although I posted exactly three times in 2011 and three (so far) in 2012.

Five years for a blog is past middle aged for this type of media. For, you see, for every HuffPo or other serious, amazing, SUCCESSFUL blog, there are thousands that don't make a year, or two.

But here we are, five years old, celebrating our anniversary. And even though we officially first posted on July 31, 2007, I neglected to celebrate back then.

Like I mentioned earlier, last month was bleak. My job of fifteen years ended on August 31st and I was distracted by the closing of our company which was located across from Penn Station, where there was a prolific supply of tattooed commuters and tourists.

But September, which often marks the beginning of the end of summer, prime inkspotting season, brought me renewed faith in the site, and the desire to continue through this mid-blog-life crisis.

You will be seeing the standard sights from my fellow tattooed New Yorkers. My backlog, as is generally the case, stretches back several months. However, I will be expanding a bit in the format department, adding more news and media.

I've been documenting tattoos in New York City (and beyond) for five years. This is our 1317th entry into that little experiment I started way back in 1997 as a once-a-week feature.

I want to thank all of our readers and contributors for their support and participation in Tattoosday. Your existence, as subjects and fans, makes my life richer, and I am humbly appreciative of your existence.

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Happy Blogiversary To Me! A Re-Post Celebration

Today marks Tattoosday's fourth anniversary, when we first started off here on BillyBlog as a once a week feature, before spinning off into a stand-alone site little over a month later.

To celebrate, I'll be sharing favorite posts from the past four years throughout the day. Just a little celebratory break before we resume our normally-scheduled programming.

I also encourage readers to comment below or email me (tattoosday@gmail.com) and I will attempt to re-post reader favorites throughout the day.

Thanks to all of my readers for supporting me throughout the years! Here's to at least four more years!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.