Ending with a Little Luck on the R Train (Tattoosday Plays the Alphabet Game)

After the Q, I knew, alas, I was throwing in the towel. I could potentially finish out the Alphabet Game, but I would be battling commuters during rush hour on the R, S, W and Z trains, and I was, to be honest beat after having ridden the rails for eight-plus hours.

So, here's the final chapter of the first annual Alphabet Game on the MTA:

4:39 P.M. Off at 57th Street in Manhattan with the intent to catch a southbound R train.

4:45 P.M.  Board the R, southbound.

4:58 P.M.  At Prince Street, I decide to drop by my office to get some things, take a bathroom break, recharge the phone. I can still ride the R home and hopefully get one last tattoo.

5:07 P.M.  Exit the R train at Rector.

5:45 P.M.  Back on the R at Rector.

This is the final train of the day. For fun, I map my route:

R->A->B->C->C->D->D->E->[Break]->E->F->G->F->J->J->N->L->L->M->N->N->Q->Q->R->R 

That's 24 different trains between 8:15 A.M. and 5:45 P.M.

Just shy of 6:00 P.M., on the R between Union and 9th Street in Brooklyn, I introduce myself to Mita, who shares the 12th tattoo of the day from the subways (13th, if you count Adrien on the F train, who shared two almost five hours earlier).

This is Mita's tattoo:

Mita tells me she got this from Brooklyn tattoo legend Michael Angelo, who has been working out of his basement in a residential neighborhood in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, since 1976. He doesn't take appointments. You just show up and he gets to you when he gets to you. She says she camped out for it to guarantee she got the tattoo.

This lucky horseshoe has Taíno colors for her Puerto Rican heritage.

Thanks to Mita (and to all my the subway riders who shared their tattoos) for helping make the Alphabet Game a successful endeavor. We'll be sure to play again some time in the future!

To see the whole sequence of tattoos, from A to R, check out the main post here.

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Tattoos I Know: Paul's Taíno Ink

Last summer, my friend Paul had some new work done by Pierre at The Fort Apache Tattoo Studio near Penn Station. You can see some of his old work here and here and here and here (yes, he's a regular!).

Fort Apache is up several flights of stairs, but it is conveniently close to my day job, which makes up for the aerobic ascension to the shop on 31st Street.

This is what Paul had tattooed on his right forearm:

These four symbols are petroglyphs from the Taíno culture in Puerto Rico. They are one way Paul has chosen to acknowledging his and his ancestors' culture, in ink.

From top to bottom, the symbols each have literal meanings, and then personal meanings for Paul. The triangular piece is a zemis, pointing in three directions - to the sky and the Creator, to the underworld and the realm of the dead, and to the world of the living.

The second petroglyph is Sol, or the sun and the fourth design is the coqui, or frog.

Thanks once again to Paul for sharing his latest installment of ink here with us on Tattoosday!