I love doing that.
Don't think I posted this on LST, but I am 90 percent done with my left arm now. Filler by Tim McAlary at Port City Tattoo LBC, CA ALL DAY.
Great experience getting tattooed by Tim. Highly recommended. Port City has some heavy hitters.
Was wandering around Bath today and got a walk in with Jimmie Tatts, filled in an awkward gap on the inside of my elbow.
The shop is a 20 minute drive from my house but i've never been there before today. Makes a change from all the travelling i've been doing for tattoos!
Just got home after 2 weeks in Jamaica!!
I will spare LST the pain of having to hear about how awesome our holiday in the sun was or how crazy of a place Jamaica was or about how I chain smoked spliffs for 2 weeks straight.
I got the nickname "Colouring Book" during our last trip (everyone in JA has a birth name and a street name, my wife and I happen to be "Colouring Book & Rolling Stone" lol). There are a nuff tourists on the beach with tattoos, but as some Jamaicans I was hanging with said, there is only one Colouring Book pon di beach and that's me haha. There were cats that remembered me from 2012 on the beach, or had heard about a tattooed Canadian who was schooled in reggae, a Kartel fan and "socialized with the local people". The average tourist can deflect the hustle, but when you're a white guy with a rainbow bodysuit in a country that is 95% black people you are going to attract attention wherever you go.
This big fat rastaman came up to me one morning and said "Wha gwan Colouring Book! You the man with the big monk on your back, we cyan see it yesterday from across the beach yeah mon. Whole heap a tattoo, sick tattoo dem!"
Tattoos...you had your beach tourist staples: tribal, polynesian style, fairies, pinterest birds, philosophical rib essays, etc. There was the bro here and there with an unfinished arm sleeve and plenty of gals with sugar skulls. There was the wigger bro at the airport with a tweety bird on his neck. We saw a 50yo woman with a pretty wicked panther head (looked a couple years old) which re-affirmed how awesome panther designs are. I knew what her tattoo was of from across the beach bar.
I met this older guy from Montreal who had a bunch of older tattoos. He said some old guy did it. I'm like "wait Montreal? whoa, Tony D'Annessa?" And him, his wife and his buddy suddenly got super excited, as did I, and they started telling me PSC tattoo stories. Got to see a 45yo D'Annessa swallow tattoo (off the wall, to match his Dads!) among a bunch of other cool things like old panthers, dragons and skulls and a brilliant wolf head that D'Annessa did 3 years ago!
Also met this big black dude who had maad coverage. Jesus portrait, crosses, script, a two giant panthers on his back. Street style tattoos, intriguing and some were very well done. He was super friendly to me and was stoked on my tattoos. He gave me a branch of ganja, we talked tattoos. Said all his tattoos were done in the Arizona penitentiary!
The Jamaicans for the most part are fascinated and get stoked on tattoos and in many ways having tattoos in Jamaica, as explained to me, is a sign that you are successful (money), somebody who commands respect (status) and somebody you don't fuck with (pain, sign of tuff-ness). NAH FI RESPONSE A MAN was a Kartel lyric my homeboy Romie quoted, implying my arm, my leg, my body, my life and I do what I want, I don't have to explain myself to anybody. I repeated that quote when a hustler was giving me a hard time and my homies were like yeah mon, Colouring Book a boss, take no shit. Tattoos became popular in JA because of dancehall artists like Kartel, so if you have tattoos and are down with Kartel than you are going to make some pals and get some respect on the beach in Jamaica.
Some of my JA friends had tattoos like skulls/snakes, nautical stars, script. Typical fare. But they all lamented (and laughed) how you can't see the ink under their black skin. I would tell them, white skin, black skin it doesn't matter. A tattoo is a tattoo, you put it under your skin, it's yours and babylon can't take that away from ya. They liked that.
We ended up at "Scrub-A-Dub" afterhours one night which we found out was a go-go (strip) club that the locals go to after last call at the beach bars. Intense, pretty crazy experience. Lot of pretty ruff looking characters, guys with thugged out tattoos and some with bleached out skin. The women had a lot of the ink, mostly breast, neck and butt/thigh placement. A lot of it was scratchy, but nevertheless still interesting to see.
Sunburned a stripe across my backpiece (lol) I guess we missed a spot with the sunscreen on the day I happened to think I was part dolphin and stayed in the sea for 3 hours. I'm not too concerned though.
@hogg I don't know you offline, but I do know you like reggae! I got a stack of latest dancehall tracks (CDRs) like Kartel, Movado, I-Octane, etc. PM me your email I'll add you to a dropbox I'm setting up for my pals once I sort through and rip the new music. Although I was warned not to play some of the music in front of the children or older Jamaicans, it gets pretty nasty and slack.
And yeah, Kartel is still in prison yet somehow keeps releasing a maad amount of new material. I guess he's got a backlog of unreleased stuff and (so I'm told) uses a cell phone from inside the prison to get his voice out to his people. Crazy! ...voice of the people in modern day Jamaica...
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