Hebrew on the Q Train (Tattoosday Plays the Alphabet Game)

After the N train, next up was the Q train (no O or P in the MTAlphabet).

3:55 P.M. Off of the N train at Canal Street.

3:57 P.M. On a northbound Q train at Canal Street.

4:15 P.M. Doubts creeping in, just about decided that this may be it. Do the Q train and then take the R train all the way home and hope for a tattoo. I would fall short of the last three lettered trains (S, w and Z).

4:18 P.M. Got off the Q at 72nd Street. Will head back on a southbound Q. This is one of the new stations on the Second Avenue subway line and they have charging docks for cell phones. My battery is at 23%.

4:35 P.M. After a brief recharge I am back on a Q headed south toward Brooklyn. I meet Joram, who piqued my interest with this tattoo in Hebrew on his forearm:

Despite my basic rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, I couldn't quite place what this tattoo says, so I asked.

Joram told me that it means "Jesus is my Saviour," but that he left some elements off.

Had this been any other day, I may have deferred on this tattoo, but it is part of the alphabet game experiment.

It is also a perfect example of why I don't often feature tattoos in other languages. I don't know what this actually says, if anything, in Hebrew, but the name of Jesus, as far as I can tell, doesn't even appear correctly in the tattoo. In fact, this is Jesus' name in Hebrew:

In the tattoo, the closest thing to that is the word on the far left. However, it is missing a letter and, to make matters worse, is written backwards, from left to right, when, in fact Hebrew is read from right to left..

Nonetheless, the tattoo holds the meaning for Joram, and, ultimately, that is what is most important.

Thanks to Joram for sharing his work tattoo with us on Tattoosday.

The full Alphabet game can be revisited in the original post here.

Check out the next post to see if I threw in the towel after the R train, or if I persevered and finished the alphabet!

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.

Larry's Back (at the NYC Tattoo Convention)

Last weekend at the NYC Tattoo Convention, I met Larry, the owner of Bklyn Ink Works, a shop down in south Brooklyn in the Bensonhurst/Dyker Heights area.

Larry was proudly standing outside of his booth whenever I saw him at the show, talking to people and proudly showing off the work of Andrey, one of the Brooklyn Ink Works tattooers, which he wears proudly.
Here's his back:

This religious-themed black and grey work is pretty impressive.

Check out Bklyn Ink Works on Facebook here.

Andrey Tarasov can be found on Facebook as well and on Instagram (@sverlo1).

Thanks to Larry for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday!

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.

Emma's Tattoo for Her Faith

Yesterday afternoon, while walking to the subway through Bowling Green park, I met a couple of Korean tourists after they stopped to ask me if the National Museum of the American Indian was closed (it was).

I noticed that one of the women, Emma, had a tattoo on her thigh and I asked if I could take a photo for Tattoosday. She consented:

She told me "I got it for Jesus ... because I am a Christian."

It's a pretty cool variation on the standard Jesus with the crown of thorns, in black and grey, with a rose added at the bottom.

She got this at Wild Rose Tattoo in Seoul, Korea.

Thanks to Emma for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: David Krilivsky

Our next tattooed poet is David Krilivsky. David sent us a wide array of his tattoos:

David tells us:

"Almost all of my tattoos are religious in nature. I was raised in a family which is Catholic on both sides all the way down the line. It was part of my daily life: Catholic school, Sunday mass, etc. While I no longer practice my faith, it was the stories, and particularly the images, that have stayed with me and become part of my fabric, and, over the years, part of my body. Whether it's my sleeve devoted to the death of Christ or the portrait of St. Sebastian, my tattoos represent a belief I no longer subscribe to but secretly hope is true. They are monuments to the haunting images of my youth. Monuments to the haunting images still playing on a loop in my mind in my adulthood. I cannot separate my self from that which shaped me, and from my choices in tattoos it's evident I don't want to even if I could."

He credited all of his work displayed here to Josh Jones from Good Ink Tattoo in Waterbury, Vermont.

David tells us that the poem he sent us, My Inventory is a Wilderness, takes its title from a letter written by Larry Eigner and was first published at Weird Deer. He invites you yo listen to the audio recording here: 

My Inventory is a Wilderness

I have taken stock.

I am not a river.

Not even stones

in a river are my bones,

not smoothed by current

or skipped by teenagers

ditching school to smoke weed

in the woods out of an empty soda can.

I shake rusted fishhooks from my hair,

tie line around my wrists until they bleed.

My thoughts are a character in a Bergman film

riding a horse along a jagged path,

no, lying in my brother’s arms

on the bottom of an abandoned boat.

My eyes.

My tongue is a tree.

My words are fallen twigs

that snap under the weight of your boot.

My love is a plane somewhere on the side of a mountain.

My guilt is a sonata by Scriabin

listened to on headphones as the plane went down.

I smash my teeth with a rock to relieve the pain.

I write letters addressed to no one pleading for forgiveness,

then burn them in a pile of leaves.

My hands are ash.

My limbs smolder.

When I try to sleep, ghosts lean against my lids,

blow rings from phantom cigarettes.

I tell them to leave, but don't mean it.

~ ~ ~

David Krilivsky holds an MFA in Poetry from Queens University of Charlotte. His work can be found at Weird Deer, Poets & Artists, Found Poetry Review, Uut Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.

Thanks to David for contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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.

Musician Monday: A Trio of Tattoos from Justin Y. of Everyone Dies in Utah

 Back in May, I met Justin in the Borders at Penn Plaza and he shared his three tattoos. Justin had recently been signed to a band from Texas called Everyone Dies in Utah and he was moving out from Maryland. He offered up his knuckle tattoos:

Justin has been playing drums for about eleven years and loves drums, which explains these knuckles. Of course, I would be remiss if I mentioned knuckle tattoos and didn't direct you to KnuckleTattoos.com to see more, courtesy of my friend Nathan.

The most compelling tattoo Justin shared was this piece, on his right forearm:

He explained:

"I have a little sister, she's ten now, but it was last year, so she was nine, and she was all bummed that I was moving really far and touring and stuff, so I told her I would get a tattoo for her ... I was trying to think of what would be absolutely unique, and the only thing I could think of was fingerprints. So, I decided it would be cool to get her hand print, so I went out and got a big old ink pad and did her hand print on a piece of paper, took it in, and he [Jason Kramer at Positive Image Tattoos in Baltimore] did all of his magic and got it done."

Justin's third tattoo was this piece on his left forearm:

He told me

"I love Jesus ... simple as that. I was thinking about doing a whole arm, faith-based kind of thing, and I ike the ides of just being able to walk into a room and people know exactly like, well, that guy's definitely a Christina and he's for serious ... It's a good starting piece to talk to people."

All of Justin's work is by Jason Kramer at Positive Image Tattoos in Baltimore.

Be sure to check out Everyone Dies in Utah on Facebook here.

Thanks to Justin for sharing his cool ink with us here on Tattoosday! 

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.

Small World, Tattoosday-Style

I have a few days off and was buying some milk at the grocery store when an older gentleman in line behind me complimented me on the tiger tattoo on my calf, which has been well-documented here, in this initial post, and subsequent ones.

The gentleman asked who the artist was and mentioned his son was an artist as well. "Who?" I asked, and he told me, Mike Perfetto, aka Designs by Michael Angelo in Brooklyn. I gave him a flier and he introduced himself as Ralph Perfetto, our Democratic District Leader here in Bay Ridge.

I know you're likely thinking, "Nice story, Bill, but is it really that much of a small world coincidence?" Actually, yes, because my backlog had brought me to posting a couple of tattoos on Peter, who I had last seen at the Matty No Times benefit back on July 17. One of those tattoos, you guessed it, is by Mike Perfetto.

Let's take a look:

Pete also shared a tattoo on his leg by legendary Brooklyn artist Tony Polito. As you can see, Pete has quite a collection of ink, and he takes pride in the work he has from "old school" New York artists tattooing in the American Traditional style.

Pete explained that "Old Calcutta" was a nickname for Tony's shop from the early '80s to the mid '90s because of the high intensity atmosphere of the shop and the people who were there.

Thanks to Peter for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday (again and again). Peter has been working hard at New York Hardcore Tattoo on Stanton Street. They have recently remodeled the shop and are working hard on producing quality art on the denizens of New York City. Be sure to stop in and meet their crew.

Jesse's Religious Experience

Religious imagery is among the most popular of themes in tattoo art. There is, to the shrinking minority of people who don't like tattoos, a greater level of acceptance of Christian-themed body art.

[Jewish tattoos are coming along, but the majority of Jews have fundamental issues with ink on Jews. Islamic tattoos are less common, and I can't speak to their acceptance. Eastern religious tattoos may be the most popular of religious ink, but there is a greater understang of body art when it comes to Hindu and Buddhist themes. But I digress.]

I generally avoid talking to people about full sleeves, but when I started talking to Jesse while we were browsing the books at the Chelsea Salvation Army store, it was clear that his right sleeve, which continued onto his chest, was the most important work he had.


Jesse's ink is a reflection of his faith. It is inspired by religious images that he has come across while visiting churches in Europe. He couldn't give me the specific locations of the art which inspired his work (Rome, Paris), but I'd be happy to hear from readers who may recognize the
work.
Aside from the obvious depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, Jesse also pulled up his shirt to show me the most recent of his ten tattoos, which was the extension of his sleeve into his chest:


All of this work was done by Mike Pastore at Masterpiece Tattoo in Staten Island, New York. Work from Masterpiece has appeared previously here.

Thanks to Jesse for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Tattoos I Know: Jerome Finds Strength in a Tattoo

After my year end double-barrelled post of Erika's Ink, I wasn't expecting to post right away, but another co-worker of mine got his first tattoo over the weekend.

I hadn't even got into my office when I ran into Tom and Jerome.

Tom said "Bill, you gotta see this!"

Jerome took off his shirt to reveal this freshly-inked portrait of Jesus:


I had my camera out before I even knew what I was doing. There's nothing like fresh ink that pops off the flesh.

Jerome is 45 and this was his first tattoo, less than a week old.

Jerome says "I wanted a tattoo all my life, but I was fearful of the pain. I wanted to overcome my fears".

Jerome says that he finds this tattoo gives him strength. He is in Recovery, and this brings him "closer to a higher power". By being on him, Jerome beamed, "He is part of me".

This tattoo was inked by Jeff at Adrenaline Tattoos and Body Piercings in Brick, New Jersey.

Thanks to Jerome for sharing his fresh ink with Tattoosday!