gougetheeyes

To be honest, I kind of like the idea of earning the tattoos on your hands and neck. I don't just mean already being tattooed (though, I totally agree that you should already have a more than decent amount of tattoos before getting really visible ones), but I also mean knowing you can get away with them, in a way. Any idiot with money can get a load of tattoos and then go for the jugular. When I get my hands and neck done, I'll get them done when I'm doing so well with my career that I know it won't have any effect on me. That's how I see earning your visible tattoos, and I like that. Plus, I really want those areas tattooed so it makes me work really hard.
I think your hands and neck are also the ones where you really want to go to the best tattooer you can physically get to, because they're so visible and kind of special. Even if that means waiting for ages on a waiting list, it shouldn't matter. Now, if only my neck was ridiculously long, then I won't have to have such a huge decision on my hands (literally! Wheeeey!) when the time comes, haha.

my favorite tattooer. i got this bull head from him a few months back, based on a design my grandpa got in WWII
hell of a nice guy, too.
Copper Beehive – Tattooing by Bailey Hunter Robinson

Seconded. And check out BookMistress, too.

I think Hustler is the worst tattoo magazine.
Have you seen some of those tattoos? Holy Shit.

Like bigjoe said, Tattoo Life/Energy are good magazines. Tattoowier seems ok, although I can't vouch for the writing quality, as I can only read English.
The only magazine from the UK worth looking at is Total Tattoo. Sally, Perry and the gang are a rarity in tattoo magazines (along with Mikki Vialetto's Tattoo Life crew) because they can (mostly) tell what a good tattoo looks like. But most of all, they actually like tattoos and get tattoos by some great tattooers. If your favourite tattooers write articles and send photos to a magazine, it's probably worth taking a look.
My rules of thumb for a magazine being shit are:
Poor quality control, including spelling.
Photos of shitty tattoos.
Interviews with shitty tattooers.
Repeated articles about 'women in tattooing' or 'women with tattoos'.
Mis-spelling tattooers names, especially well-known people like Filip Leu, Ed Hardy, Freddy Corbin etc.
If more than 10-20% of the content is colour realistic tattoos.
If more than 50% of the content is any one style/school of tattooing.
If there is an abundance of fetish-style photography.
Interviews with freaky people with shitty facial tattoos.
An editorial lean toward controversy, smut or celebrity.
Re-prints or articles with content just cribbed from the internet.
There are many more things that I personally dislike, but I think that these things are too common in tattoo magazines.
I'm guessing that none of this will help you decide which magazines you want to work with, just my 2p.
But as your question was more toward which magazines to avoid outside of the uk, we (Frith Street) had a bad experience with Skin & Ink, but i think they have a different editor these days and they did have a cool article about Chicago Tattoo Co a couple of months ago.
Tattoo Savage used to fulfil almost all of my crappy criteria above but I haven't looked at it for years.
International Tattoo Art has gone through periods of being cool and being crappy but I don't know what it's like now.
You probably know this already, but very few tattoo magazines have full-time writers. They mostly use freelance contributors. I'm friends with a few magazine contributors and most of them are photographers/writers, rather than specialise in just one. This works out cheaper for magazines. The best ones conduct interviews face-to-face and visit shops and conventions. Some tattooers and shops are hesitant to allow strangers to interview them so it would help if you are likeable in person and seem to care about tattooing.
Expect it to be very different from blogging or writing for an online magazine as you will be creating content rather than commenting on existing content.
Good luck.
This was supposed to be a quick post, but it almost turned into a rant. Hopefully there is something useful here.

Take a drink every time they hire someone who refuses to sweep the floor, take out the trash, has no shop experience or work ethic...

Witness is my personal favorite. That album just hits a nerve.
Fuck it. All their albums are amazing.

When I got into tattooing all my friends were either punk/hardcore/skinhead scene (non racist scene) and a few of my most influential friends got tattooed at this local biker tattoo shop. The artist did awesome tattoos, very new school style so of course I went to him for my first one. I've never been afraid to speak my mind or tell people how I feel or what I feel and that is one of the main reasons why me and the artist hit it off so well. I wasn't afraid to talk shit to him when he'd dish it out first. So after me getting a few tattoos I told him how I was going to art school (originally american academy of art in chicago) and expresed how i wanted to be an art teacher in inner city schools. Needless to say he talked me out of it and asked if I'd pursue a career in tattooing. The rest is history. It's been ups and downs, depression, happiness, loneliness, joy, every emotion possible. Tattooing chose me. I learned the hard way, the extremely hard way. To this day I still have repercussions as to who I worked for, why I worked for him, and what I'm still doing running his shop but overall I don't give a fuck. Tattooing chooses you and not the other way around. I'll never respect someone who paid 5 grand to learn how to tattoo. Fuck that, paying for an apprenticeship is easy, but EARNING one that's a different story.

The Full Back Piece Thread prompted me to start a new one about what the experience was/is like of getting your entire back done. I've actually always been extremely nervous about starting (my goal is to start before I'm 30) because I'm convinced my back is weirdly sensitive..
SO. How's it been for all of you who either have full coverage or are on your way? How's the process? How incredibly draining is it? How much have you had to plan, artistically? Mentally? Physically? Financially?

I was stationed at Ft Sill in Lawton, OK in the mid 80's...if you wanted a tattoo you drove to Wichita Falls, TX...I just waited til I got to my permanent base in Hawaii.
That was my first shop experience I can remember (Hawaii). I got tattooed in a little shop that probably did 90% military guys right outside of Schofield Barracks in a town called Wahiawa in 1986. I just remember going through the flash with a couple of my friends and we all got something done that night. We were totally sober, but it all seemed like it happened really fast and I dont remember the name of the shop, or who tattooed me. I do remember really enjoying it and I couldnt wait to go back and get another one.

growing up a poor black kid in mississippi oh wait... I am a pale face.
I got some sketchy at best tats at a juvenile facility in the early 90s. In my mid 20s I began fighting in smokers tournaments and later MMA. and noticed these tattoos didnt represent me so I had them covered on my arms and back. I never put much thought into it but now in my mid 30s I really have an appreciation for art and artists and want to litter myself with said art

I forget that its there, but when i remember its a nice surprise. We were just sitting around bored so this happened. He took 5 minutes & i love him.

Stumbled over this today...

Ruaidhri, just came across this on the King's Ave blog, great example of what some laser treatments can do to facilitate a cover-up (if that's a route you're considering): Kings Ave Tattoo N.Y.C-Grez | kingsavetattoo

Ruaidhri, just came across this on the King's Ave blog, great example of what some laser treatments can do to facilitate a cover-up (if that's a route you're considering): Kings Ave Tattoo N.Y.C-Grez | kingsavetattoo

Do you have other tattoos? I'd just get more tattoos.

Ruaidhri, just came across this on the King's Ave blog, great example of what some laser treatments can do to facilitate a cover-up (if that's a route you're considering): Kings Ave Tattoo N.Y.C-Grez | kingsavetattoo

Wait... Bob Baxter has FRIENDS?

Do you have other tattoos? I'd just get more tattoos.

bob baxter is a piece of shit.

got 3 H2O tattoos:swallows holding banner with EVERREADY in it,dices with ONE LIFE ONE CHANCE and the first H2O logo as the water drop and a MADBALL ball from HOLD IT DOWN altough i prefer SET IT OFF as album and logo.
perhaps i'll get one day the bad brains banned in DC design but with the milan's Duomo(cathedral) instead of the white house,or PMA (altough it's not exactly from the brains but from Napoleon Hill)

I don't have any cover-ups on my body but I tattoo a hell of a lot of them.
Most of the larger work that I do (bigger than 1/2 sleeve) usually incorporates some kind of cover-up.
I started to make a point of NOT taking a 'before' picture. Sometimes I do, but I found that the cover-up requests got bigger and bigger the more cover-ups I showed. Covering a half sleeve sized tattoo with a full sleeve compromises the end product but I sometimes enjoy the challenge and the problem-solving aspect of it.
This is one of the more tricky ones from last year or so, when I used to take 'before' photos:

I got an email today asking if I could cover a full sleeve - with a sleeve.

Grant Cobb from Spotlight Tattoo in LA just tweeted ( @GrantCobb1 ) this new panther and snake tattoo picture he did that caught my eye....

I personally do not respect tattooers as much that have no tattoos either. Now maybe I'm being closeminded but fuck it. I wanna know that a tattooer is devoted to his trade; mentally, emotionally, financially and most of all physically. I'm not talking about being heavily tattooed but at least a forearm shot or two. If you're a tattooer and have not one single tattoo or maybe just one... You're just a tourist in our business, go back to selling real estate, there's more of that 'glory' stuff you're lookin' for.