AverageJer

Have fun!
The wife and I each have small tattoos planned for Saturday and I'm pretty damned excited about it.

There are a lot of good shops in Minneapolis. Most people here will recommend Aloha Monkey which is a great and reputable shop but not located very well for a visitor as it is out of the way and sort of isolated in suburbia. My favorite shop is Leviticus which is in a great neighborhood in south Minneapolis near Minnehaha Falls and lots of great restaurants. Many people also like Uptown Tattoo which is also in a nice visitor friendly location.
Have fun. I think you will find that this is a pretty great city with wonderful food and a lot to do. Also, you have picked the perfect time to visit. Hopefully some others will chime in on shops they like as there are quite a few around these days.

You are a cool mom.

Yeah, this is the point I was trying to make. Sure, the teacher leading the trip should have known better, but the tattooer isn't really at fault here.
And don't get me wrong, I wouldn't get tattooed by that dude, but I was expecting scratcher quality, when really it's just standard lower-tier shop work.

Noooo!!
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Yikes, this would make me angry at everyone involved- daughter included. I'm sure you as a tattooed parent had spoken to her about getting responsible tattoos as she ages into adulthood.
Best of luck with the blood work. The tattoo itself looks to me like it can be turned into a decent tattoo without much trouble- but what do I know. I'll let your artist deal with that. Fingers crossed all around.

There are a lot of good shops in Minneapolis. Most people here will recommend Aloha Monkey which is a great and reputable shop but not located very well for a visitor as it is out of the way and sort of isolated in suburbia. My favorite shop is Leviticus which is in a great neighborhood in south Minneapolis near Minnehaha Falls and lots of great restaurants. Many people also like Uptown Tattoo which is also in a nice visitor friendly location.
Have fun. I think you will find that this is a pretty great city with wonderful food and a lot to do. Also, you have picked the perfect time to visit. Hopefully some others will chime in on shops they like as there are quite a few around these days.

I believe he covered that very point in the second sentence of his article.

Welcome and I'm sorry that you've gone through some difficult things lately, though it sounds like you're well on your way to figuring out how to prevent things like that from happening in the future. With that said, I would caution against getting a tattoo for the reasons you expressed in your post. I understand the idea of wanting to have a permanent reminder on you, but tattoos don't really work like that. I think you should get a tattoo because you want a tattoo, because you like tattoos and the art of them, not because you think that tattoos will make you a better person.

Ugh I could write so much on this topic but I have to get ready for work soon. I'll put it in a nutshell though. First of all, my opinions on this topic are constantly evolving and changing. I also strongly believe that in the USA, the people in power in this country are deliberately manipulating the media and the police force to create strong racial tension that will eventually break out into rioting, giving the state the opportunity to declare martial law (whole other topic of discussion). So with that being said, cultural appropriation and race are hot topics and very sensitive and close to home for a lot of people, also creating a complex of white guilt among many people (bullshit), which is where a lot of the internet social justice warriors come from. No seriously, next time you see someone yelping on the internet, just for curiosity, take a look at their race. So from my perspective, many of these concerns and emotional triggers are definitely valid, but also being blown up to push the buttons of the public to engage in certain hot topics and ignore other extremely disturbing shit that is happening behind the curtain (GMO engineering, climate engineering, drone warfare, DARPA, CERN, etc).
So if a tattoo is offensive to you, guess what? The internet isn't the place to get into it. Talk to the person wearing it, you don't know the reason that they got that tattoo. It could be satirical, or it could be legitimately ignorant. You may have the chance to change your own point of view or influence someone else's.
As for the whole white privilege/guilt thing in regards to cultural appropriation, everyone should be aware of their privilege so as to not capitalize on it and marginalize other people, everyone should generally be good to other people, and nobody should feel guilty about things that their ancestors have done because guess fucking what? You weren't there for it, you had nothing to do with it, and you can't change the past.

Prettyyyyyyyyy pumped about this one, not gonna lie. Yesterday:

There's a vid too: https://instagram.com/p/5075TDTBNR/?taken-by=greggletron
By Greg Whitehead at Scapegoat in Portland, as usual.
My thigh feels like a wobbly hot water bottle today, and I don't even care. :o

I'm bothered by it sometimes. We all have our own boundaries. An Indian Headdress, for example, is a tattoo I would not wear. I have no intention of calling out someone who would as I don't know their relationship with that imagery. I really like Ganesha as a tattoo image but will probably not have it done because I don't know enough about the meaning. I might get Isis someday as she has mostly fallen off as a current god. Perhaps she will come back someday. My daughter could use a god created in her image to look up to. Like many people I struggle with consistency.
The only caution I would have for all of us, myself included, is to not give tattoos a free pass on some of these kinds of issues just because we like tattoos. It's an easy trap to fall into.

I'm bothered by it sometimes. We all have our own boundaries. An Indian Headdress, for example, is a tattoo I would not wear. I have no intention of calling out someone who would as I don't know their relationship with that imagery. I really like Ganesha as a tattoo image but will probably not have it done because I don't know enough about the meaning. I might get Isis someday as she has mostly fallen off as a current god. Perhaps she will come back someday. My daughter could use a god created in her image to look up to. Like many people I struggle with consistency.
The only caution I would have for all of us, myself included, is to not give tattoos a free pass on some of these kinds of issues just because we like tattoos. It's an easy trap to fall into.

I'm bothered by it sometimes. We all have our own boundaries. An Indian Headdress, for example, is a tattoo I would not wear. I have no intention of calling out someone who would as I don't know their relationship with that imagery. I really like Ganesha as a tattoo image but will probably not have it done because I don't know enough about the meaning. I might get Isis someday as she has mostly fallen off as a current god. Perhaps she will come back someday. My daughter could use a god created in her image to look up to. Like many people I struggle with consistency.
The only caution I would have for all of us, myself included, is to not give tattoos a free pass on some of these kinds of issues just because we like tattoos. It's an easy trap to fall into.

I'm bothered by it sometimes. We all have our own boundaries. An Indian Headdress, for example, is a tattoo I would not wear. I have no intention of calling out someone who would as I don't know their relationship with that imagery. I really like Ganesha as a tattoo image but will probably not have it done because I don't know enough about the meaning. I might get Isis someday as she has mostly fallen off as a current god. Perhaps she will come back someday. My daughter could use a god created in her image to look up to. Like many people I struggle with consistency.
The only caution I would have for all of us, myself included, is to not give tattoos a free pass on some of these kinds of issues just because we like tattoos. It's an easy trap to fall into.

I do get this kind of thing sometime. I think it goes to the idea that in order to take the step of getting a tattoo it would need to be an image with deep and lasting personal meaning. I admit that I felt that way prior to getting any tattoos myself. Now I would happily pick a cool image off the wall from an artist I trust. Things change.

I do get this kind of thing sometime. I think it goes to the idea that in order to take the step of getting a tattoo it would need to be an image with deep and lasting personal meaning. I admit that I felt that way prior to getting any tattoos myself. Now I would happily pick a cool image off the wall from an artist I trust. Things change.

I let the artist worry about those things. That's why I only go to people I know I can trust as an artist.

Already some tough stuff this month, but I'll give it a shot. Here's my arm from Grez at Kings Avenue. All healed up.

Shao Lin Monk backpiece
made by Steve Batt in his private studio in Edmonton, Alberta
32 hours, Dec 2014-Jun 2015

Should really have thrown this in over the last couple of months but i'm a lazy fucker, so here it is now.
By Marius Meyer, completed in May of this year (started in December of last).

Jeff Rassier flying Cobra. Done at Blackheart in January. Pics taken Yesterday. Tough to photo...wraps around the arm a lot.

I'm a social worker too. Crazy job that requires lots of tattoos to cope.
I'm relatively new to getting tattoos so I can still kind of relate to not really getting the full scope of skill and talent it takes to be good at. This is probably true with most (or at least many) professions and most of us humans are more than willing to take others for granted without giving it much thought.
Good luck to the OP. For what it's worth, I like new threads and tend not to notice the blogs as readily.

This is your first tattoo? Don't sweat it man. Love it for what it is and now you have a story to tell. Things like that put character in to the tattoo.

Excellent advice regarding this tattoo and so much more.

Excellent advice regarding this tattoo and so much more.