Where do FL readers stand on tattooing?

[Burma Shave]

I'm wondering what Loungers think about tattooing. I know many, many soldiers and sailors back in the 30s-40s got inked on their travels around the world. If you have a tattoo, is it somehow period themed? Or did you get it before getting into the Golden Era scene.

Wondering because I'm working on a design for one. I'm 33 and don't have any permanent ink yet -- but I've just been thinking about what to get. What I'm working on now is an anchor that has a celtic knotwork cross at the top, where the ring would usually be. The knotwork continues down into the anchor. It'll be a celebration of my Scots-Irish ancestry and my time spent as a deckhand (although tow boats don't use anchors).

Any thoughts?

 

[Miss Neecerie]

I'm wondering what Loungers think about tattooing. I know many, many soldiers and sailors back in the 30s-40s got inked on their travels around the world. If you have a tattoo, is it somehow period themed? Or did you get it before getting into the Golden Era scene.

Wondering because I'm working on a design for one. I'm 33 and don't have any permanent ink yet -- but I've just been thinking about what to get. What I'm working on now is an anchor that has a celtic knotwork cross at the top, where the ring would usually be. The knotwork continues down into the anchor. It'll be a celebration of my Scots-Irish ancestry and my time spent as a deckhand (although tow boats don't use anchors).

Any thoughts?

http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=3641&highlight=tattoo

has quite a few opinions...as a starting point.

 

[Burma Shave]

Shoulda done...

... my research more thoroughly. Sounds like I'm considering something that would get the sign of approval from those who previously posted: It'll be easily hidden (on the arm, and I almost always wear long sleeves); I actually was a merchant marine, in the strictest sense; I've been working on this design or some variation of it for about 7 years; and I have the A-OK from my lady friend. Oh, and I am a biker, or at least a motorcyclist. Most people don't think of people on Beemers as "bikers," as such.

Thanks for the link, Ma'am.

 

[Senator Jack]

Loungers, Show us your tatts

As long as they're for public consumption.

I waited a LONG time before I got mine, and I'm glad I did. I didn't just get something from out of a book but kept hunting around for the right guy who then designed something specifically for me. When I went back there a year later, he had a pic of my arm in his book, and now I wonder if anyone else has got the same tattoo.

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[scotrace]

Like one

I'd get one in a minute if I could think of a single blessed thing to put on my body forever.

 

[EL COLORADO]

Thats a rockabilly inker if I ever saw one.
Fancy you the Tennesseans do ya?



EC

 

[Katt in Hat]

Drawback is what Lenny Bruce's Aunt Mima said when she saw what he got in Malta.

It's getting to the point where I'm...
considering putting a tat - DNR - where my # would have been placed a ?Ǭ? Century or so ago.:rage:

 

[LaMedicine]

I'm wondering what Loungers think about tattooing....
Any thoughts?

Here's another thread from way past.
http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=660&highlight=tatoos

The time lag may have had some change in opinions. The way things are these days, a couple of years ago sometimes seem like a couple of eons ago.

Some are beautiful, some can be obnoxious. I can take the tasteful and discreet ones, but there are some I can't fathom. (I get to see a lot because of my racket.)

Kool Kat, Senator Jack.

 

[Big Man]

My father-in-law (USMC - World War II) summed it up when he said: "A tattoo is a permanent reminder of temporary insanity."

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I have a few. Death on the upper left arm. Vajrabhairava on my back - unfinished, 7 hours was long enough for one sitting. And a third (my first) on the upper right arm Will post pics later ...

Obviously i have a positive opinion of tattoos.

I got my first one when i was 18. My second when i was 19, third when i was 23. I've been working on a design for a fourth, which will encompass my first which was my first tentative experience of tattooing. I'm thinking along the lines of a pre-raphaelite type (morris-esque) design. On the upper right forearm.

bk

 

[Baron Kurtz]

As long as they're for public consumption.

Cool cat, Jack. Very Wain-inspired, by the looks of it.

bk

 

[Clyde R.]

My Dad was an old time Marine and his opinions of them were similar to the above mentioned vet's...permanent reminder of temporary insanity. Probably colored my thinking on tats coming up. These days they are very popular, accepted more and more. Like another poster said, if I could think of something I liked well enough to have on my body permanently, I might do it. Still haven't thought of what that could be, though. I tend to abhor whatever is fashionably chic at any given moment, so that probably means I won't be getting one any time soon. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

 

[Big Joe]

Tatoos? Not my bag.

A tatoo might do something for my 40's impression. However in my other lives it would get in the way.
We do Civil War re-enacting, a golden age tatoo would be hard to explain to the 'rebs.


Big Joe

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

I agree with ya, Clyde,....

My Dad was an old time Marine and his opinions of them were similar to the above mentioned vet's...permanent reminder of temporary insanity. Probably colored my thinking on tats coming up. These days they are very popular, accepted more and more. Like another poster said, if I could think of something I liked well enough to have on my body permanently, I might do it. Still haven't thought of what that could be, though. I tend to abhor whatever is fashionably chic at any given moment, so that probably means I won't be getting one any time soon. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

.....whatever is currently popular just doesn't appeal to me, I guess that's why I'm into history and the whole vintage thing. If somebody wants to get some tastefully done ink applied to their hide,...well, that's entirely up to them.

 

[Rinterstate]

Well it started with a wolf on the side of my calf, then 2 years went by and I decide it was time for another. So another wolf on the side of my other calf then last year it snowballed. I now have a total 12. I have a cool B-17 on my forearm and other the side it I have a 40's pinup. So I decide that I will get a full sleeve with 1930's and 1940's themed tattoos.

 

[Burma Shave]

Thanks for all the responses!

My brother in law is a case in point of the "temporary insanity" line. He woke up from a two-day drunk with a tattoo. Of a naked lady. Badly drawn. On his forearm. When he was 17. And he was supposed to be in school. Insult upon insanity, I guess.

I just discovered that I'm not even able to get the ink done here in South Carolina. They're just now getting around to "legalizing" tattoos, so maybe I should just head to Augusta, GA. Of course, you also can't buy anything but "essentials" in stores on Sunday until after 1:30 p.m. in SC, you can't buy liquor after 7 p.m. any day of the week or at all on Sunday, and many towns don't have to bother with a property tax because they have such efficient speed traps set up. Interesting place I've moved to!

 

[adamgottschalk]

Diehard!

Back in the very early '80s, as a grammar school boy, I got my first earring. No one was wearing them back then, except for a few "radical" types; I was called names on the street more times than I can count. I had it in mind back then to get my back covered in a big tattoo kind of like one of my idols then, Jorma Kaukonen of Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane. Then one day on a subway platform in NYC, I saw a cutesy, over-protected type teenage girl standing there with a butterfly on her shoulder. I decided right then, just as earrings were becoming acceptable too, that I would swear off both tattoos and earrings until after the fad.

20 years later, well, the fad may never haver really died, but the world is more clearly divided now between the posers and those of us who are in it for the long haul. I have 5 tatts, and money is the only thing between me and many more. Being a writer, I envision most of my tattoos being famous quotes and lyrics and such. The first one I got, a few weeks after my exwife walked out, was a big "TRUTH" on my right pec. Love it.

I wouldn't dream of etching something into my body unless I'd thought hard about it for months and months and more, and wouldn't go to an artist unless I'd seen numerous examples of their work. The portrait of Clint Eastwood with the word "DISSIDENT" which is on my left forearm was just meant to be; Clint was my foremost idol when I was a boy, and that tattoo looks to me like it was already there waiting for somebody to trace over it for me. Here's a thumbs up from a lifer.

 

[adamgottschalk]

Clint

Gee, it's harder to get a photo of your own forearm than I would have expected. Anyway, you get the idea. A better picture would show that this is a really fine portrait, extremely detailed, with painterly shading. And it's tiny, only about 2" by 2.5".

 

[tonyb]

Tattoos weren't fashionable when I was a youngster. If they had been, I may well have gotten one. I do, however, wear a small diamond in my left earlobe. About 25 years ago my then-girlfriend and I pierced each other's ears, using a sewing needle, a bit of rubbing alcohol and a potato sliced in half, which we each placed at the back of the other's earlobe, to provide a steadier target to run that needle through. Hardly hurt at all, as I recall. It drove my somewhat red-necked dad nuts, though, which made it all the better.
I gave up the earring after the girlfriend and I went our separate ways, but took it up again a dozen or so years ago, first with a sapphire bestowed upon me by yet another girl and then with the diamond I wear now, which is a gift from the girl I married. If I'm remembering correctly, it took a bit of effort to reopen that little channel in my earlobe after all those years with nothing in it.
My wife, who is 18 years my junior, has a tattoo on the top of her leg. We've been an item for 10 years now and married for five. I don't even notice the tattoo anymore. Indeed, at this moment I can't say for certain which leg it adorns.

 

[Twitch]

I believe you should do what you like without considering what anyone else thinks. Unless someone else is paying your rent or making your car payments they don't have anything important to say about it.