kswan530

There's a split album by the forgotten and the heartaches that has an awesome cover that I would believe to be a tattooer and I've searched the liner notes and its not anywhere in there. So yeah I totally get what ya meant.

Or fathers/father figures need to teach boys how to be men; this stuff starts early. Just my .02

Yes they have. Most notably would be the post it note tattoo I got with lyrics from a panzer AG song. I got it two years ago right after my dad got out of the hospital. Every day I look at that tattoo and realize I need to make my parents proud and honor them. They may not agree with or like all the tattoos I get, but they sure as hell influenced that one and it will forever be one of my favorite pieces of work that I have on my body. It will always remind me of how you can lose your parents at any given time and you need to respect them and spend as much time with them as humanly possible while they are alive. Luckily my dad pulled through and after two weeks in ICU he was released, but it could have easily taken a turn for the worse and not have happened that way. I am thankful that it did not. I have the utmost respect for my parents and love them with all my heart.

I tried a similar method with the work I had done on Friday. Took the initial wrap off after my ~3 hour drive home, showered, air dry for 30 minutes, re-wrap with no ointments or lotions, drink a beer, and go to sleep. Wake up, shower, air dry for 30 minutes, re-wrap again, drink a beer, 8 hours later wash again, air dry for 30 minutes, re-wrap again until next morning then shower and let air dry and apply a little unscented lotion. Basically kept it wrapped up for the first 24 hours. Best healing experience of my life. Zero scabbing, just that super thin "sun burn" peel, and no worrying about sticking to sheets. Now I have significantly less tattoo healing anxiety.
photo evidence **warning graphic display of dry skin flakes**:

Yeah I just find it hard to lie to my mom these days. I use to try to hide it for a couple weeks but eventually I'll just walk around the house with my shirt off and let her see it. When I was 18 and got my first tattoo I let her see a full half-sleeve immediately after I got it. It was just too bothersome to try and hide it. Plus I hate wearing a shirt when I'm the house. That and me and my mom/family have been through so much in the recent past it's just hard for me to lie. I'm even contemplating telling her I don't believe in God anymore but I don't want to give the poor woman an early death. Maybe I can last a couple more years til I graduate and move out. I mean I have my chest and right arm completely covered it's just way too bothersome to hide it from someone you live with. I'm me and she has to accept that.

Yeah, it wasn't me man :P. I'm big on biographies and shit like that. Currently Im reading Blood in the Cage: Mixed Martial Arts, Pat Miletich, and the Furious Rise of the UFC, because I love stuff like this!
Talking about Biographies, I have read Education of a Felon: A Memoir by Edward Bunker like six times. Its fucking amazing.
My all time favorite books are (besides Education) perhaps
Neil Gaiman - American Gods (It is just magical, in all sense of the word, magic.)
Noah Levine - Dharma Punx (It helped me)
Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark (cleared the cobwebs)
Richard Matheson - I am legend and Cormac McCarthy - The Road (both dense, close as skin)
Hmmmm. Shit, cant remember more. Oh! Marilyn Manson - The Long hard road out of Hell. Hail Satan.
I really havent read any real classic classics. They bore me. For example, Jack Kerouac On the Road. Well, Ithink Henry Rollins said it best.
“Kerouac, what a pussy,”
:D

sorry kiddo, but you're in la familia.

I'll ride with JeffK on this one, and advise that you get it altered.
Behaving in Russia, well, in the unlikely event that you did go there, if anyone saw it, it wouldn't matter how you behaved, you'd draw serious attention.
And there are many communities in the States that are populated mainly by Russian expats, with a sizeable Thief-in-Law presence. You could find yourself the recipient of unwanted attention there too. Not sure if you have that type of thing in the UK, but wouldn't doubt it.
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Jeff, you're one of the few that I've seen voice a sensible opinion about that over the years. Guess being a Chicagoan helps PEOPLE to see that kinda thing. I think too many look at these images, or images they see in movies/magazines/whatever, and just see a "cool" image that would look so tough.
And then they meet a gangster and things go downhill from there.
It's kinda like the fashion statements. I absolutely love waiting for friends in the International Terminal at O'Hare, seeing all the Euros heading out of the terminal, their kids-and sometimes them-with one pant-leg rolled up, or a baseball hat all busted right or left, jailin tough, Lakers gear, or like that...they have no fucking clue. Always want to warn them, but I know from experience they just won't listen!

I like you guys. Just saying.
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Now that I have a new job that I don't hate, I don't have to listen to this before work every morning:

This on the way to work.
Gets me in a lovely fluffy mood.

At Taylor Street Tattooo they have a "Get What You Get" deal where you pay $50, get a token, slide it into a capsule machine (like at grocery stores for toys and candy) and whatever flash is in that capsule you get. I've done it and got a "Hot Stuff" tattoo and was thrilled. It's all classic stuff and fun.
I may not go out and get it "right away" but like within a week or 2. In fact most of mine are like that. My most recent "Morning Star" tattoo was booked only a week in advance and it came to me right before I called to get the appointment.
I've learned stuff I thought of too long I always eventually scrap then come up with something out of no where and it's way better and just run to get it. It's how I work I guess. I like to keep things loose. Sometimes it's fun to just roll in and pick some awesome wall art. I remember a time where that was looked down on vs. "custom" tattoos but as someone once said to me about wall art "it's done by guys who've been tattooing for years and years and know what'll look good so you can't lose."

Just your luck, because I managed to find an hour free wifi at a gasstation somewhere near Austria and I'll be writing another fancy story now

I know I joke about a lot of stuff (especially my skinny naked man-ass!!!) but really, getting the back piece has been like therapy for me this past year.
Starting March 19th 2012 I started having some really bad back and pelvis issues. Through misdiagnoses and what not it has been a real struggle to get it corrected. A LOT of really low points in my life over the past year with some very bad chronic pain. I was beginning to get to the point that if pain was all that was left for me the rest of my days, I'd just pull a Hunter S. Thompson and not live like that anymore. Chronic pain over a long period of time can fundamentally change your personality.
But, anyway I went ahead and I got the back piece started on June 30th, 2012, and about once a month thereafter I'd go in for another 3 hour session. For those 3 hours I'd know getting tattooed was going to hurt worse than my back and pelvis was that day, when it was gonna start hurting, about how much it was going to hurt, and then, when I'd had enough, I could say "Stop, I've had enough."
Long story short, I got the back all finished, touch-ups and all around January 20th 2013. Ironically (hipsterism!!!) I was reading Tamblog shortly thereafter and saw one of the health posts and discovered Piriformis Syndrome (look it up on wikipedia folks, it ain't fun), turns out that's what I have. It can be fixed with exercise and physical therapy, and I'm now on the road to recovery. I ain't out of the woods completely yet, but I'm getting there. I feel much better now and I've buried Hunter completely.

I just youtubed this guy and I miss when having lots of tattoos meant you were in a band like this:

I have a few tattoo's that don't "match" the rest. I didn't get them because the style was hot at the time (it wasn't) I was just 20 and that's what I was into. Then what I was into when I was 30 was different. I think about getting them covered, but it's like why? It's a road map of my life (lame way to put it, I know, it only sounds cool if you're a Russian prisoner) and so it's just what I was into when I was that age.
I get more OCD about colors matching than styles on a certain limb or part.
I also prefer, for myself, patchwork style. A ton of random tattoos, vs. 1 big sleeve or piece. Except the back, that large slab of skin with no nipples was made for 1 big ass tattoo.

It's not size, it's technique.

I LOVE this city!!! There is art everywhere! Lots of tattoos! Eye candy to the max!
It is also sunny and I've been deep in the dark days of the Seattle winter and early spring, so maybe my sudden and intense (though hardly new) love for this place is influenced by the sun and warm(er) weather...
Getting some work done at a coffee shop before a tattoo afternoon...today is a good day!


<3 SF and you crazy people who live here. :)

this forum is my home from home. just as simple as that. mostly good people( yeah i figure you are eventhough i haven't met anyone from LST for real...), good reading, good tattoos.....just good shit you know?
as of where the tattooers are...they should be doing tattoos right? :)

@JAllen, I'm on here a lot less too, due to my work and remodeling the house and general life business, too. I used to read every single word ever put up on this forum, but it was much smaller then. Now I might not get around to reading something until a month or so after it's posted, but I try to get there eventually. I don't think I was on much or at all during the incidents you mention. Our internet was even off for 10 days at one point last summer, it's ridiculous how far behind one can fall from something like that. I don't mean on just the forum, I mean with life's daily business and correspondence. I know it's no giant secret that the whole "instant access" has it's trappings, but it was more debilitating than I'd like. I've always enjoyed your contributions, and I remember you were trying to sell your house and move to Atlanta, right?
Obviously, I'm not a tattooer. But my husband is one of the founders of this site, and his intention was never to be on the forum everyday answering questions about bubbling and bleeding outlines and whatnot. It's not that he's not interested or entertained here, he's just busy. Since we've been remodeling our house, his time online has been generally spent researching building radiant heating systems and studying siding installation instructions, or just checking the local lumberyard hours. I also see him on craigslist looking at fishing boats, small ones that won't provide shade for easily sunburned women or hold a lot of noisy children. Every minute of his non-tattooing/drawing or family time has been spent either working on the house if the sun is up, or building machines when it's down. He also made a roses line drawing book, I think the e-book version of it will be on LST any minute now. But he is at the Reno convention right now, and if there's someone he thinks need to be interviewed for LST, he'll bring it back for us. Or maybe he'll just bring back a ton of stuff from Cabella's.
So I can answer the question "where did the tattooers go?" for one tattooer only, I'm pretty sure he went to work and will be back soon. Either that, or he's gone fishing.

funny...i get back on here and i see this and the post speculating about our departure from ctc! ha! one kind of answers the other...it's more a forum for civilians (no offense). i'd like to chime in here and there, but honestly, i'd be more interested in a forum for tattooers only, as i chat with "civilians" all day!
but i want to try to make an effort again to be on here more because i do think it's a positive!

I had a nightmare last night about missing my appointment that I have tomorrow and for the life of me I couldn't get ahold of the artist to let him know that I wasn't going to be able to make it. So I ended running to the shop and searching frantically for him and still not being able to find him. Everyone in the shop was like "dude that's messed up, you didn't even call man" and stuff to that effect haha. I woke up in a panic and scrambled for my phone so I could see what day and time it was.

Interesting History
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families
used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken &
Sold to the tannery... if you had to do this to survive
you were "Piss Poor"
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't
even afford to buy a pot... they "didn't have a pot to
piss in" & were the lowest of the low
The next time you are washing your hands and complain
because the water temperature isn't just how you like it,
think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about
the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their
yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by
June.. However, since they were starting to smell...
Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting
Married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man
of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then
all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the
children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so
dirty you could actually lose someone in it..
Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no
wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get
warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs)
lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and
sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof...
Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the
house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs
and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top
afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into
existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other
than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had
slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet,
so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their
footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping
outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.
Hence: a thresh hold.
(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big
kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit
the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly
vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the
stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew
had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence
the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas
porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could
obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.
When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination
would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.
Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running
out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins
and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the
grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins
were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they
realized they had been burying people alive...
So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night
(the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone
could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that's the truth....Now, whoever said History was boring

this picture reminds me of the scene in Home Alone when Joe Pesci grabs the door knob that Macaulay Culkin rigged to be burning hot and is left with a scar of the door knob's decorative pattern.

One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
There are shops I don't care for, but what I see as one thing, someone else sees differently.
Guess I'd rather talk about shops I think are outstanding than name the ones I don't care for.