Musician Monday: Louis, Patrick Swayze, and Wolverine

I met Louis down on Broad Street while he was walking some dogs.

I spoke to him briefly about his tattoos, gave him my card, and said we should talk further when he didn't have the dogs with him.

A few weeks later, I spotted him again, dogless. We sat down and talked about his tattoos.

First, this fabulousness:

This is a portrait of the late Patrick Swayze, with the banner 'PAIN DON'T HURT," which alludes to the film Road House.

Louis explained:

"It's a movie I saw a few years ago ... it's so bad, it's good ... I definitely love the movie ... I just really wanted to get the Swayze tattoo ...'Pain don't hurt,' it's laughable when he says that line in the movie ... I also found his biography at a Goodwill for a dollar and I bought it ... I read some of it, he had an interesting life ... the dedication in the front was to his father, who he said 'taught me that a man can be tough and gentle at the same time.' He was a dancer, horseback rider, he did all these fight movies, I thought that was really cool."

Louis credited this to Vinny Romanelli (@vinnyromanelli) at Red Rocket Tattoo (@redrockettattoo).

He also shared this Wolverine rib piece:

Louis elaborated:

"I grew up with the X-Men cartoons in the Nineties, it was like one of those things that my dad use to work overnights, like Friday night, he would work all Friday night, he would come home Saturday morning, he'd bring bagels or something for breakfast ... and we would watch that cartoon, that was like Saturday, we'd live for that. I just remember that as a kid, and also, I read comic books still, and it's one of my favorite characters, as well ... it has a lot of significance to me."

He got this tattoo more than ten years ago from Kurt Fagerland at Empire State Studios (@empirestatestudio) out on Long Island. Fagerland has since moved on and resides in Georgia.

I did mention in the title of this post that it is "Musician Monday." Louis also happens to be the drummer for a Brooklyn band called Ellen and the Degenerates, you can check them out here.

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

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Dean's Wolverine Tattoo Shows Amazing Perspective

I met Dean outside of Penn Station late one Friday afternoon.

I was interested in talking to him about this leg tattoo:


When I approached him, he challenged me, asking if I knew what it was. There's nothing more embarrassing than misidentifying someone's tattoo, so I gave it a careful look.

"Wolverine?" I asked. In hindsight it seems clearer, but at the time I was worried about answering it incorrectly.


I passed the test.

Dean, possessor of seven tattoos, is a huge fan of the comic book superhero, and was even more so 15 years ago, when he had this done by his friend Shawn Adamczyk, who is co-owner of S&S Ink Spot in Columbus, Georgia.

What's remarkable about the tattoo is the perspective, as Wolverine himself is further back, on the side of the leg and, as he reaches forward with his claws, the character seems nearer, as the hand and razor-like talons dominate the top part of the shin:


The tattoo represents four sittings and approximately twenty hours of work.

Thanks to Dean for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!