Colored Guy

I have to have a rapport with the artist too. I've walked out of good shops before and I'll do it again if there is a negative vibe going on. Since I'm sitting there for an hour or 4, I like the experience to be as nice as possible. Rob

Seek out an artist with some experience in freshening up old tattoos. I had 2 freshened up in 2008, one was 30 years old and the other maybe 27 years old. Old ink is easier to cover up than I would have thought. Rob

My wife worked with a girl who did the derby thing. They had matches about once a month at a rink close to us. We went a few times and it was a ton of fun. Of course at least a few inked ladies on every team. Rob

I've ridden out some wild hurricanes before and they go on for many hours and are quite destructive. The one Sandy from 6 months ago, people are still picking up the pieces. How do the insurance companies keep paying out for new houses? Some up here will drop you for putting in a measly $1000 claim. Rob

Warm and fuzzy to a point I suppose. And when I'm 1/2 naked in the chair, some ass keeps opening the front door and I freeze. I always bring roughly 2x of what I think it should be. I'm always surprised when it comes in under what I expected. I just toss a bigger tip on top of it. Rob

Hipster goes back as far as the beatnik days, look up Jack Kerouac and you get an idea. I haven't heard it in decades and now it seems to expemplify dbaggery to the nth degree. Rob - - - Updated - - - I just showed my son this. He called it "the ever-lasting job stopper". Great lulz... Rob

I can live with that.... Rob

I eat very conservatively the whole day and even the day before my appointment. Nothing really bothers me, but the day of a tattoo appointment I had eaten an egg sandwich off the coffee truck at work... which ran through me like a freight train. I was fine by tattoo time. Just couldn't imagine siting in the chair and having to get up every 10 minutes. Rob

I did fart about that time.. too much of a coincidence though.... We had a short one by me about 2 years ago, shook everything enough to get us outside. My wife works a few miles north of me in a glass building, even creepier there. Rob

I've gone to the gym more than once the day after getting new ink. I wear a looser shirt so I'm comfortable. Also use an antibiotic cream on anything exposed and wash it as soon as I get home. As long as nothing rubs directly on the new tattoo, you'll be okay. My son's friend walks in the other day, very large fresh lower leg tattoo, still swollen. He took a few days off from the gym. Rob

Use a good name-brand of sun block and you'll be fine. I use Neutrogena SPF 45 and it works really well. Target has them in a 2-pack for around $11 which is pretty good. Rob

Any shop should tell you up front what their rates are, just ask if you want to know. All of my work is done by the hour and it works out in my favor. Haggling for tattoo work is a general breach of tattoo etiquette. I never had anyone ask how much I wanted to spend. For whatever reason, if you don't have a warm and fuzzy about the shop/artist, go somewhere else. I've walked out of shops before if I wasn't comfortable with what I was hearing. Rob

Sometimes it does after a couple of weeks. I had 2 worked on more than once, alternated the outline/shading and coloring. So everything had time to heal up. Rob

I've seen the aftermath of a F5 in 1987. Shopping malls cleaned right down to the concrete slabs. How anyone can live there is beyond me. I'd have to sleep in the basement or storm shelter. It could have been much worse from the reports of the width and wind speeds. Rob

Figure with his $$$$ he'd be going to the best of the best. Rob

When in doubt, stop by the shop and ask the artist what they think. I've been healed up nicely in 10 days, but generally 2 weeks should be fine even with minor peeling. Rob

I had gotten most of mine before I was age 30 and by the time I was age 50, they had faded for the most part. At one point I considered getting them lasered off. I practically had a long-sleeved shirt on all the time. Then I walked into a shop a friend recommended to me to get a lizard tattoo on my foot. IT came out great and I got talking with the artists there... "old work.. pfffffttttt.. we can make them look like new again.". So I took them up on it and had 2 large pieces on my upper arms freshened up and added to. OMFG, what a difference. Got an old horribly faded tattoo? Slap something NEW on top of it! Now people stop me, show me their ink all the time. I've met some awesome people this way. I wear short-sleeved shirts all summer now, got nothin' to hide. So I'll say they did change my life for the better. Rob

From what I've seen, the shops make up a sheet of flash with fairly small tattoos on them. Some have the apprentice draw them up AND do the tattoo. It's a good way to bring new people into the shop, like touts giving out free $5 vials of crack. I gave one apprentice a nice tattoo outline #13 drawing I made, it just needed to be resized. He wound up copying it freehand and it looked like ass. Rob

Its a good way to get new people coming to the shop. Especially those who want something small, maybe their first tattoo. I've seen those "walk-in-wednesdays" that are good to drum up a little new business. Rob

I might go on Saturday, have to see what's up at home. I can grab the train or drive in. Rob

In colored guy speak, journalist = urinal-ist. Of course not applicable in your case, since you are one of us, first and foremost. I'm not a big fan of the so called free press, except for the crossword and comics. Rob

Shit.. the place I go to has a Chinese takeout place in the next group of stores, the Hess gas station down the road a bit has all sorts of cold beer and microwaveable morsels you can imagine. Sometimes a 40 of OE and a nuked burrito hit the spot after a tattoo session. Rob

I see some shops with a $100 minimum charge, which is fair as there are new needles, things to be sterilized, sundry shop supplies that get consumed, etc. And it all takes time. Rob

I had a similar reaction to surgical tape following a spinal injection earlier this year. I was tanned from being in Florida and the tape also lifted my sun tan off me. It healed up fine. Rob

I posted this elsewhere here. Someone I know had to have a lymph node removed, since he's very heavily inked, the node was blue. It seems to be a natural reaction to something foreign entering the body. Rob