Tattoo Blog

But it’s likely to take a couple of years before the best shops establish their names and the less talented artists are shaken out, those in the local industry said.

The first bunch of shops that opened over this last year was mostly local talent. And don’t get me wrong - there are some good local artists. But they’re really behind the power curve. They’ve been operating out of their homes for the most part, said Oklahoma City tattoo and body piercing shop owner Jason King. They’ve been isolated, and therefore their learning has been very slow. - That’s already beginning to change.

The convention will begin at noon Friday at the Bricktown Central Plaza Hotel. Organizer Chris Brady said advance registration has turned out better than I had hoped for, with more than 50 equipment vendors and artists from as far away as New Mexico, Michigan and Ohio.

The purpose of the event is to help Oklahoma catch up from 40 years of being in the dark ages - three days of schooling the average person on tattooing, said Brady, speaking from Miami where he was visiting one of the convention’s star guests, Kat Von D. of the popular Miami Ink cable television show. The event also will feature tattoo contests and Lizardman, a full-body modification performer. On Saturday an award will be given to state Rep. Al Lindley, D-Oklahoma City, for supporting tattoo legislation this year.

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In May, Gov. Brad Henry signed Senate Bill 806, legalizing the practice of tattooing in Oklahoma. Tattooing was already allowed in every other state in the country. Henry said it was important that the increasingly prevalent trend of body modification be subjected to public health oversight to help reduce infections and injuries.

Brady, who has been getting tattoos for about 10 years, opened First Amendment Tattoo on NW 23rd Street this year. Brady is not a tattoo artist; he wanted to set up a shop for a friend who had done the majority of Brady’s tattoos at home.

Brady said of Oklahoma’s current tattoo artists, We definitely have the quality. - When the law goes into effect, it’s going to cut out a lot of the crappy artists.

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I arrived at 2 am, Joe picked me up, and we went to his house for a couple of beers. We talked story, and then I passed out on the couch. Joe has three very large, obnoxious dogs. Dog hair is everywhere. These dogs seem to have control over this house. I’m not very found of dogs, especially big ones who run around the house only to cause me extreme aggravation. Woke up in dog hair and dogs breathing down my neck. Let’s just say I’m a eat person. Sorry, Joe.

earls before swine. Even if they are reluctant to express it in such terms, many fashion writers must feel that their ceaseless effort to create a more style-conscious Britain is an uphill struggle. Take the pensees on beach fashion in Yorkshire Life magazine. After whispering a few tactful suggestions to her female compatriots (”a flirty pareo placed strategically around the top part of the thigh will conceal lumps and bumps”), Janet Reeder turns her attention to a category that arguably constitutes fashion’s greatest challenge: the Yorkshireman. “The football-shirt-over- shorts look is definitely one to be avoided,” insists the mag’s arbiter elegantiae. “Dress instead as if you’re weekending in the Hamptons in roomy shorts and fresh linens.”

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Sadly, it appears that few of the gents vacationing on the Yorkshire coast this summer are familiar with the dress code that pertains in the more fashionable reaches of Long Island. The livery of football teams, both national and local, has considerably greater appeal than Ralph Lauren. In particular, Leeds United seems to be the couturier de choix for those enjoying an extra-mural snack of chips with curry sauce in Filey. The decision to wear such garish garments in gleaming acrylic is surely more a statement of affiliation rather than an attempt to suggest the wearer has gone AWOL from training at Elland Road. Indeed, the least likely footballing figures are those most irresistibly drawn to wearing the strip (sizes for the Leeds home shirt go up to XXL 52-54in), usually with tracksuit bottoms. Chants of a pie-related nature would undoubtedly ensue from the terraces if the wearers were to set foot on pitch.

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The unflattering sportswear excoriated by Ms Reeder is the latest in a series of unfortunate fashions to be adopted by the Yorkshireman on the beach. Virtually obligatory a decade ago, the shell suit has mercifully disappeared, though habitues of the north- eastern littoral only relinquished this ensemble with utmost reluctance. Similarly, the once-ubiquitous baseball cap is now something of a rarity. There has been a near universal, though possibly unconscious acceptance that this form of headwear, whether with peak worn forwards, backwards or drolly laterally, produces an appearance of singular gormlessness. Nevertheless, a few devotees cling on to their dopey titfers, like the last men-about-town to wear spats.

There is, however, one beach fashion that has not gone away. This is because its wearers have no choice in the matter. Unless the bearer has it painfully erased, a tattoo is there for keeps. This summer, I’ve taken a close interest in this weirdly popular epidermal graffiti. (Why have a tattoo in the first place unless you want others to gawp at it?) At least among males, we “blanks”, as the unmarked are known by the tattooed fraternity, are in the minority. Motifs divide between mystic Celtic swirls and a variety of figurative renditions: galleon in full sail, German shepherd dog, panther rampant, Chinese dragon, dog paw prints, Japanese calligraphy, Indian chief in feather head-dress. The cartoon bulldog wearing a St George’s or Union flag is particularly popular. Women go for flowers and butterflies. Resembling girly squiggles in an exercise book, the designs are often etched, astonishingly, on the bosom.

What tends to be forgotten about these souvenirs of a rainy afternoon or a lunchtime on the beer is that tattoos inevitably blur with the passage of time. Only the blue dye survives, like a faded print in a shop window. Even the crispest Book of Kells curlique will decay over the decades like a barely decipherable anchor on an old tar’s forearm. If the Yorkshire coast is anything to go by, we are destined to become a nation of smudges.

At stake is nothing less than human lives. By one estimate, one of every seven adults in the country has a tattoo. Yet, an improperly sanitized tattoo needle can transmit diseases, including hepatitis B and C, which can be fatal.

It’s been a decade since then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation requiring the California Conference of Local Health Officers to establish sterilization, sanitation and safety standards for tattoo and body piercing businesses. The officers submitted the standards to the state Department of Health Services in 1998.

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Then the process fell into a bureaucratic abyss. State Health Services convened a task force in 2003 to help complete draft regulations. “There is no time estimate for when the regulations will become law,” writes Suanne Buggy, spokeswoman for what is now called the state Department of Public Health. “However, the regulatory process includes a public comment period so the public will have an opportunity to review and comment on the draft regulations.”

Meanwhile, local officials have been left to work out their own rules. In the Bay Area, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Monterey counties have adopted ordinances. Now, Alameda County health officials are proposing drafting their own rules.

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To Dominik Scalzo, owner of Dragons Lair Tattoo in Oakland, the rules are long overdue, reports staff writer Chris Metinko. As Scalzo said, “You have no regulations in place for a shop that’s using needles, but you’ll close a restaurant down if it has a bug on the floor?”

The Alameda County proposal calls for seeking input from health officials, review by county counsel, public meetings and then approval by the Board of Supervisors. The new ordinance would affect unincorporated parts of the county. It would be up to individual cities to adopt the rules, if they wanted to enforce them within their boundaries.

This is a terribly inefficient way to govern. We understand Alameda County health officials’ desire to come up with standards. But this is a statewide issue. The state Department of Public Health should be setting the rules so that officials across California can enforce them.

After all, hepatitis is transmitted the same way in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Eureka. The disease doesn’t recognize county lines or municipal borders.

Ten years is long enough for any bureaucracy. It’s time for the state to do its job.

The scene Friday was the start of the third annual Salt Lake City International Tattoo Convention at the Salt Palace.

No one, however, was asking why someone would put a tattoo on his or her body — the artists and customers here had gotten past that.

“You could sit there and psychoanalyze all day long,” said tattoo artist Bexx Miller.

She’s done a bit of that herself.

“It’s the most serious, serious form of self-expression,” Miller said. “And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.”

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