Gnawa

@tacitapproval, Yeah, Prospero threw a hell of a party.

On July 2, Vinny Romanelli at Red Rocket, NYC is giving me my first portrait. To celebrate 10 years teaching high school English, I'm getting Edgar Allen Poe's cadaverous face on my calf. Rather than keep it too simple, Vinny's going to have the image of Poe forming from a flock of black birds flying up my leg. I'll eventually add text, but I'm torn between lines from "The Cask of Amontillado" or "Masque of the Red Death." English teacher problems...

I'll probably never get my knuckles done, but some I've seen on friends or come up with are SHUFFLER for that chronic masturbator in your life BEER GIRL on a bartender/home brewer I know Right pinky: a steaming bowl, followed by HOT SOUP on a chef buddy And my local bias forces me to add BROOKLYN Most regrettable: guy in college, mid-90s, with POT+a cannabis leaf on right index finger HEAD

The sense of pure indecision and the word "regret" came up way too many times in your posts. I work with a bunch of way-too-tattooed 15 & 16 year olds (which I know you are not) who will come to loathe their arms as the years pass. I would suggest waiting until (a) you know what you want, (b) you know what you want, © you know what you want and (d) you are absolutely, positively, 100% sure you know what you want. Wear beautiful ink.

Good day to the LST community. After lurking and availing myself of much of what this site has to offer, I felt it was finally time to become a participant. I got my first tattoo when I was 20. It was done by a girl I was into in her dorm room back in college: a tiny Om on my ankle, and it cost me a pack of Marlboro Lights. I didn't get my next one until my 35th birthday, but it's been a pretty steady deluge of ink since. I think I waited so long to become more heavily tattooed because it took me that long to figure out who I am. I am a big fan of black and grey fine line work, which represents the majority of my tattoos, and Japanese traditional, as well as some Americanized Japanese. I have a deep respect for American traditional, although I don't wear any in this style as yet. Most of my pieces are images of women and animals, particularly turtles, of which I currently wear four. Much of my work was done by Willie Paredes at Brooklyn Tattoo in beautiful Downtown Brooklyn, NYC and I wear a gorgeous pin-up by Myles Karr, one of Brooklyn's Three Kings? My current projects are a westernized Japanese back piece from Darren Rosa at Rising Dragon here in NYC, the outlining for which is now complete and I eagerly await shading and color in coming months; and a calf piece done by Forrest Cavacco of Cobra Customs, Plymouth, MA, which is likewise missing color at the moment (although it stands on its own in black and grey). My next piece, a present to myself commemorating completion of my 10th year as a public school teacher, is going to be a portrait of Edgar Allen Poe from Vinnie at Red Rocket. I consider myself incredibly lucky to live in such an art-heavy city where I have the opportunity to be tattooed by such a variety of skilled artists and I am honored to wear their work.