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Nice ! I just found this. I got tattooed by Bill a couple of years ago at Tattoo Peter in Amsterdam. Very cool, laid back guy. Thanks for posting.

It was Cher. When I was a little kid (in the 70s) I idolized her. I found out she had tattoos and thought that was cool. Haha. But I had forgotten that until just now. I wasn't thinking about her by the time I actually got my first tattoo. I just read this quote by her: "When I got tattooed, only bad girls did it: me and Janis Joplin and biker chicks. Now it doesn't mean anything. No one's surprised. I got a tattoo right after I left Sonny and I was feeling real independent. That was my badge."

when i was like 12, maybe 13 yrs old i seen my friends father's tattoo on his back of a naked girl laying on a back of a scorpion, which also was my first time seen seen a nude portrayal. so ya that had changed my outlook on art in a couple different ways LOL.

my dad has both of his arms tattooed, so i was exposed to them at an early age.

I had seen tattoos in pictures and movies, and had someone explain to me what they were and how they were done (more or less), but the first time I saw a real one, I was 9 or 10. My dad (college teacher) used to work with this lady whose husband was a painter or artist of some kind. They invited us to their place for a party where he would show some of his new paintings or something, and all I remember was this guy looked weird as hell to me (in hindsight, he was the textbook definition of a middle-aged bohemian NY dude in the early 90s), and he had a fucking snake tattoed on his hand. Not real big, just like on the side/top of his hand, over his thumb and almost reaching his index finger, all line and no shading or color. He obviously noticed I was staring like an idiot and was totally cool about it too.

I know I had seen many tattoos before this, but this is when I really took notice/interest and started to really become aware of tattoos. I was in fourth grade (so 9 years old I think). I was at my friends house and her heavily tattooed biker uncle was visiting from out of town. I remember sitting on the couch next to him and just looking at his tattoos and asking him all sorts of questions about them. My biggest concern was how bad they hurt. I remember him telling me they hurt really bad (probably just trying to scare a 9 yr old girl away from wanting to get one haha) he said the most painful one was on his foot and he showed it to me. It was a native american anklet with beads and feathers that went down over the top of his foot. I thought it was so cool! After that I remember I would draw tattoos all over my barbies and dolls. Who knew that one day I would actually be tattooing people :o

On my biker cousin, Henry. I was 5 and he was covered with lots of bright colors which is saying a lot because that was 1974! many many years later after I had bee n tattooing for 10 years or so I got a job at a shop on the beach in Florida. Unbeknown to me initially, my new boss Albee was the one who gave my cousin 90% of his ink! Too cool.

I was 6 at the time. I was on the bus going home from 1st grade, the last day of school too, so it was memorable. Our regular bus driver had been replaced by this guy who was not in his happy place. He was yelling at us to keep quiet and what not... he was wearing a wife-beater shirt and had a couple of tattoos that I could see. I got a glimpse of one that was military related. The only thing that most of us knew about tattoos was the "prize" tattoos that came in boxes of Cracker Jacks. You know the box I'm sure, with the sailor on it that was probably inked from head to toe under his uniform. CG

I always recall people having tattoos, but the first time I saw someone getting tattooed I was about 13 in my friends kitchen, homemade tat gun and ballpoint pen ink and 40's of King Cobra, now it's a party. I call it a tat gun because it was not a machine by any stretch of the imagination. That was the first time when it clicked in my head that anyone could go get a tattoo. Fast forward a few years and my first apartment was behind a pawn shop, a metal club, and Snake's Tattoo in Colorado Springs. My co worker (I was in construction at the time) was piecing together a sleeve at the time so that was really when I started hanging out in tattoo shops.

I would have been 3 or 4. I used to sit on my grandfathers lap and trace his tattoo's. He was the only one in my family with tattoos. It wasn't until I was 11 when I saw another person with a tattoo.She had a thigh piece of Alice in wonderland. It was like a totem pole of the characters. My mom met my stepdad when I was 12 and he was pretty much covered with tattoo's.

I couldn't have been more than 3 when I noticed my Dad had the old school skull with the snake crawling through the the eye socket tattooed on his bicep. I didn't understand how it got there or why it was permanent, but I damned sure knew I wanted one. I was hooked on anything to do with tattoos from then on, always have been, always will be. I found the Sailor Jerry flash version of that skull and snake last year and got it big as Hell on my calf. I can't wait to show him the next time I see him.

There was a group of Bandidos that rented the house across the street from me when I was about 7, and I'm sure they had tattoos, but we were all too scared to look at them for very long. But a few houses down from them, there was a crazy guy named Joe Bailey who would do shit like wrestle alligators for fun. (No, seriously. He once called me over to check out something in his backyard, and he had a six-foot alligator--with its mouth duct-taped shut--in a makeshift chicken wire pen. "We was in the bass boat fishin'. I seen him in the water and I just jumped on him and held on!") Anyway, Joe had a classic Hot Stuff wearing a diaper and holding a pitchfork with "BORN TO RAISE HELL" above it. Zero irony, just the God's honest truth. My dad used to talk shit on Joe's tattoos: "He's workin' on a shirt." In fact, he probably only had 4 or 5 palm-sized tattoos. It's funny how perspectives differ.

The three that sort of blend together: -My dad has a small hand-poked 't' on his forearm that was going to spell out his name, but he stopped before they got that far. he's always said he regretted it. -My grandpa has a bat flying past a full moon on his forearm and a few others, but the bat sticks out in my mind the most. -My barber (first haircut through the time he passed away when I was 18) was in the Navy and had old school anchors and eagles.

I love tattoos like that. I'd rather look at one of those over a 1,000 Bert Krak panther heads or Daniel albrigo Navajo blanket tattoos. Offensive tattoos, racist tattoos, religious tattoos, drifter, hobo tattoos, Political tattoos, obscene tattoos. Tattoos done in garages, motel rooms, Russian penitentiary tattoos, south African gang tattoos, british soccer hooligan tattoos, handpoked punk tattoos, facetats, poorly thought out names on necks. I've always loved ugly tattoos, and I always will.

It was on my homeboy's dad. he was from a old gang called lomita maravilla, from east LA. He had a topless girl ina sombrero, just her torso. I think some roses too. She had a rifle in her hand, her nipples were covered by a ammo belt. On the other forearm he had this little dude in a sombrero, but you could just see his feet, his mustache, some shotgun barrels, and that big sombrero. it said MARAVILLA in gang writing, arched above the hat. Youd see writing like that all over and I used to try and copy it or write my name in those letters too like in schoolwork I'd write the answers like that, or my name all crazy like that and they'd get pissed. Anyways I'd always try and look at those tattoos when I'd go to his house, but they were old and sort of faded. He was a garbage man, and sort of a scary lookin dude, or was back then and i didnt wanna hassle him or fuck with him about it. Years later I asked to see em, and got a good look. Another friend had a older punk rocker sister with a pachuco cross under her eye, but that was later, and I found out it was make up. Lots of punk rockers would do that with a ballpoint pen or mascara if they hung in certain scenes.

I grew up in a hippy ass section of Minneapolis called the West Bank, and there were a few biker bars on the south end of the neighborhood. I remember I was about 8 years old when I really noticed them and thought they were rad as shit. On another note, I remember when my son first noticed tattoos as something unnatural on the body. When he was 3, he was sitting on my lap when his eyes locked onto my arm. He grabbed my arm firmly and scanned it over with intense focus...then let out the words "cool, dad"