Tattoosday (A Tattoo Blog): wolves

Showing posts with label wolves. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

A Wolf on the S Train (Tattoosday Plays the Alphabet Game)

Last year, when I played the Alphabet Game, I quit at R. But this year, I ventured into uncharted territory. The alphabetical trains at the end of the sequence. Wonder what the hell I'm talking about? Go here and come back when you're done.

My concern with the S train is that S stands for "shuttle" and it runs regularly between Times Square and Grand Central station. One stop, back and forth. How long, I wondered, will I be on the S train trying to interview someone in a short window of time?

Side note: I know that there are other versions of the S train, notably near Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, but that is isolated and out of the way.

Back to the Alphabet Game, at 1:56 PM, after checking off the R, I hopped off at 23rd Street, exited near the Flat Iron Building, and hopped on a northbound W to 42nd Street. Once there, I utilized one of the restrooms and then headed to the S train.

Remember how worried I was that the S would be a challenge? You should, that was only three paragraphs back! Well, I need not worry, because on my first pass of the S, I met Devin, who shared this wolf tattoo:

Devin credited Angel Garcia (@caballonegre33) from Black Horse Tattoos (@blackhorseink) in Brooklyn.

Thanks to Devin for sharing his cool tattoo with us as Tattoosday rides the rails!'

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Thursday, July 19, 2018

Bonnie's Tattoos (Tattoosday Goes to Oklahoma City)

This past March, Tattoosday took a road trip, traversing the nation, driving from Virginia to California. There were some sunny days, but the chill of spring was still in the air, so I didn't get to meet a lot of folks with tattoos, but we had one encounter in Oklahoma City where it ll came together.

We had stopped for lunch at The Loaded Bowl, when Melanie spotted a heavily-tattooed woman with a Beavis and Butthead tattoo. This provided an excellent opportunity to strike up a conversation with Bonnie Blackwolf (@heavymetalhousewife), who shared several of her pieces, including this, the most noticeable one:

Bonnie told us that she got this band of wolves teeth in Portland, Oregon. She told us that the strings of teeth actually run to the sides of her head, that she had the sides shaved at the time, so the tattoo is not just the front of her head.

Here's the Beavis and Butthead tattoo that, she told us, got her more free drinks in bars than you could imagine:

That piece reads "Thrashin' Since '87."

Bonnie, who plays bass in a Death Metal band called Death Squad, also shared this cool burning church tattoo on her upper back and neck:

Uhellig translates to unholy in Norwegian.

Last among the tattoos Bonnie shared with us was this piece on her leg:

Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Bonnie told me, is one of her favorite movies, and August 29, 1997 is listed as the day that a nuclear holocaust led to the rise of the machines. She got this on August 29, 2017, on the twentieth anniversary of Judgment Day.

Thanks to Bonnie for sharing her cool tattoos with us back in March at The Loaded Bowl in Oklahoma City!

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Belle and Dan from Birmingham

Back in February, on an unseasonably warm winter afternoon, I met Belle and Dan outside of Grand Central Station. They were visiting from Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and they shared some of their amazing black and gray work:

Belle's patterns were complimented by this Beauty and the Beast tattoo:

Dan shared this skull/wolf combination:

Belle credited her and Dan's work to Jay Price at Inkskin Tattoo Studio in Tipton, just northeast of Birmingham.

Thanks to Belle and Dan for sharing their work with us here on Tattoosday!

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Adrian's Tattoos Represent Family

This past weekend I was in South Florida and I met Adrian in a Walgreen's. He had a bunch of tattoos and kindly shared some of his work:

"Each animal is for a different member of my family," Adrian told me, pointing out pieces on his forearms as well. His mom likes owls, his dad likes eagles. The wolf on left hand is for his brother and the spider is for himself. Why the spider? "Because I like creepy things," he explained.

He had these done at Love Tattoo in Jenison, Michigan, although the artist, Preston Mashburn (mr_mashburnratc), is now at Mos Eisley's Tattoos in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Thanks to Adrian for sharing these cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Oh Deer! Tattoosday Walks Into a Bar

Last Friday, I went to a book release party for my friend and tattooed poet Jeanann Verlee at the Side Walk Cafe & Bar in the East Village.

I had a Sixpoint Sweet Action (ok, I had two - the Happy Hour deals are great) before the reading started at the bar's performance space.

The beer was cold, rich and delicious, and was poured by the bartender Amy, who was sporting this incredible tattoo:

This black and grey deer was accompanied by a landscape, decorated on the other side of Amy's arm:

Amy told me the work was inspired by the fact that she had been "living in a shitty apartment" and her room had a terrible view, but it did have a poster of deer and wolves in it. This poster was a distraction and made the space a little more bearable.

At East Side Ink, she worked with Josh Lord, who "drew it up and molded it to [her] musculature and shoulder blade." The end result was this beautiful black and gray landscape.

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

Be sure also to check out Jeanann's fabulous new book Said the Manic to the Muse. She's an amazing poet!

Monday, May 4, 2015

Scott and His Friends with Their Spirit Animals

I met Scott while he was having a sandwich in Bowling Green Park last week in lower Manhattan. He had this cool tattoo on his forearm:

Scott explained that the three heads on his forearm represent him and two of his friends. They each got the same tattoo, but with their animal totem in the middle, with the other friends above and below them. He was kind enough to send me a shot of all three together:

Scott elaborated for me:

"This tattoo represents the bond that myself and 2 others share. The three of us actually met online playing video games like Counter-Strike about 12 years ago. It was complete luck that we even met. We spent those 12 years just talking and playing games over the internet from miles away.

Dima (on the left) and Ethan (right) live in NY. I have been in Wisconsin for my whole life up until 2 months ago when I moved here for a job upon Dima's referral.

We spent a good few months discussing how we could signify this bond..and we ended up on spirit animals essentially. I chose the lion because it represents pride and I, too a fault at times, have a great sense of pride. Dima has the bear because his last name is Medved which is Russian for bear. Ethan has the wolf because of how strong they can be individually.

So I took a plane to Albany and Dima came up from Brooklyn and we met Ethan and we all got our tattoos together. It was mine and Dima's first (of many) tattoos."

Scott credited the work to Dan Belcher at the Dead President's Lounge in Albany, New York.

On the other side of his forearm, Dan also had this pretty incredible tattoo:

Or, for a different view:

"This one," Scott told me, "is an interpretation of an album cover." It's based on the work of a band called Protest the Hero. He credited the tattoo to Mark Mansavage at Old Salt Tattooers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "I gave him the album cover," Scott said, "and he did a loose interpretation of it." Here's the original artwork:

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

Tattoosday (A Tattoo Blog)