Dispatch from the NYC Tattoo Convention - Greg's Amazing Back Piece

My wife Melanie and I were standing at the balcony, looking down at the floor of the Roseland Ballroom this past weekend at the New York City Tattoo Convention. This offered us a great vantage point of the stage and the mass of inked humanity in attendance.

Just to our left down below was one shop booth where a guy was standing with blue tattoos on his arms and you could tell he had color on his back, as well. Occasionally, he would turn toward our position and pull up his shirt to reveal his back to people in the booth. Camera clashes blinked and faces lit up with surprise, shock, and sheer admiration.

The first time I saw this, it piqued my curiosity, but so did a lot of things at the show. Then , we saw why he was eliciting such reactions. He turned away from us to reveal one of the more amazing back pieces I have seen. I decided that I'd love to have this as my obligatory post from the convention.

Behold, his work, up close:

Greg, the host of this astonishing tattoo, spent one and a half years having this worked on by Ian Shafer at Screamin' Ink Tattoo & Body Piercing in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

Greg also has this pretty cool Jaws tattoo on his upper left arm:

and this amazing Great White shark on the inside of his biceps:

Greg explained to me that, aside from the obvious love of sharks that he has, the original film was the first movie he remembers seeing with his father. It doesn't hurt that he's a Pisces, either, one of the water-based astrological signs.

And, in case you were wondering, Greg told several of us who were admiring the work that the most painful part of this tattoo was the work on the buttocks. Ouch.

I took photos of several other tattoos that Greg had but decided they would just detract from this phenomenal tattoo.

A hearty thanks to Greg who was very cool in showing off his work on a day where I'm sure he had to remove his shirt more than a few times.

Dispatch from the New York City Tattoo Convention

I take pride in the fact that this site is very positive. Even "bad" tattoos get their moments in the sun. If the story behind an "eh" tattoo is compelling, then it's worth telling.

There are enough places on the web where "free speech" reigns, wearing the stained sheet of petty negativity.

So I don't feel too bad about offering this word of advice to the organizers of the New York City Tattoo convention: answer your e-mails, answer your messages.

I left several messages via e-mail and phone offering to help promote the show via the blog. My inquiries weren't even acknowledged. And that's fine. Except, of course, it isn't. Why else would I be writing about it? The rote response from people I've voiced my disappointment to has been similar, "Well, what do you expect? They're old-time tattoo people."

There my be truth to that sentiment, but I'm not willing to embrace it. There are plenty of people who are in the tattoo industry who are savvy enough to hit "reply" on an e-mail.

So, disclosing fully, I approached the show at the Roseland Ballroom last weekend with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. But I was determined to enjoy myself. And I did.

I spent a little over five and a half hours wandering the aisles, watching the artists, introducing myself to various people, checking out some amazing tattoos.

I enjoyed meeting Mike Bellamy from Red Rocket Tattoo and Elio Espana from FlyRite Studio in Brooklyn. I had nice chats with people from Lotus Tattoo in Sayville, Rising Dragon in Chelsea, and New York Adorned. Many of the shops whose artists' work has appeared on the blog, everyone friendly and courteous. It was nice to put faces to the hard-working people in
these, and many other shops.

I was asked by a lot of people after the show if I took a lot of pictures. The answer is no, not what would be expected from a guy who is taking tattoo photos as often as he can.

I posted one amazing back piece on Sunday, and I have another post in the works featuring an incredible artist from Quebec.

Other than that, I just observed, met other fans. Talked with the editors of fine tattoo magazines, like Inked. Took in the sights.

I thought I would feel extremely self-conscious being there with no visible tattoos. But there were a lot of people who appeared similarly un-inked. I showed my tattoos once, to a big mensch of a tattoo shop owner from Staten Island, who started peppering his speech with Yiddish when he saw my last name was Cohen. He told me that his Jewishness didn't stop him from having 52 tattoos, and it drove his father crazy.

And I even ran into two people who have been featured here on Tattoosday. I passed by John, from my neighborhood in Brooklyn, whose work appears here and here. I also had a nice chat with Melanie, whose holstered revolvers remain one of my favorite on the street encounters.

In all, I had a fun time. I can see why many I've spoken to about the New York show have seemed hesitant to admit that it's a top-notch tattoo convention. It's cramped and dingy, but that seems a bit in character with what the promoters are trying to convey.

Will I go back next year? Perhaps. But it certainly leaves me hungry for more. Las Vegas, Vancouver, Milan.

A blogger can dream, can't he?

Emily's Back Piece Takes Yin and Yang to the Next Level

I spent yesterday at the New York City Tattoo Convention at the Roseland Ballroom.

I'll provide a fuller dispatch later but I wanted to share one of the more visually-stunning pieces that I chanced upon.

This is Emily's back piece:


This represents about sixty (60!) hours of work by Erick Diaz at Asylum Studios in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. A smaller, much less complicated tattoo by Mr. Diaz appeared last summer here on Tattoosday.

What's depicted is the classic battle between good and evil, angels and devils, heaven and hell. Emily went to Erick with the basic concept of the piece and Erick did the rest.

"It's the state of every human being," Emily summarized, "a giant yin-yang".

The "13" at the bottom of the back is a memorial, of sorts, but Emily didn't want to elaborate. She also noted that this elaborate piece covered up two smaller tattoos at the top of the back.

I thank Emily for sharing her marvelous canvas with us here on Tattoosday!

Tattoos I Know: Paul Part 2, or, The Traditional Japanese Sleeve

NOTE: This post was updated on March 31, 2008 with three additional photographs.

Here's a Tattoosday first: a repeat subject in this blog's history.

Paul appeared here first, showing off his first tattoo, a dragon. In this post, Paul returns, showing off a full sleeve on his left arm.

The sleeve consists of traditional elements: there is a dragon, a lotus, a mask, a lily, and a koi.

If you went back in a time machine 8 or 9 years to visit Paul's arm, you would have seen a grim reaper holding a skull on the bicep:


and some roses in a pattern on the forearm. These earlier tattoos have been covered by elements in the sleeve. Even when told where the original ink lies, it's extremely difficult to see the previous work.

So I will break this down into two sections: the upper arm and the lower arm.

The upper arm began with the dragon cover-up:

The dark rock below the dragon covered the old piece. This design, which included the aum or om symbol at the top of the arm, was inked by Carlos at Rising Dragon Tattoos in Chelsea back in 2001. The aum symbol is the Siddhaṃ script version and is a mystical and sacred symbol in Indian religions. Note that this om is different than the one that appeare din the first Tattoosday post here.

Paul was not 100% thrilled with the dragon, so when he decided to finish the sleeve, the following year, he went elsewhere.

The lower part of the arm, which is the more prominent part of the sleeve, was inked by Mike Bellamy at Red Rocket Tattoo in Manhattan, although at the time his shop was known as Triple X Tattoo.

The specific elements in the sleeve are all traditional irezumi, or Japanese tattooing, elements.

The largest piece is the koi. It appears to be a golden koi.

There's a whole discussion here on what koi tattoos symbolize.

In addition, one can read here about the symbolic nature of the lotus flower in tattoos.

Paul also referred to the other flower as a spider lily.

However, there are so many different varieties of specific families of flowers, that I often have a hard time finding good pictures to represent the tattoos.

The additional element in the sleeve which is only a small part, but is still interesting is what Paul referred to as the "kite mask":

Masks are traditional parts of Japanese tattoo design, but this specific one is hard to pinpoint for me. Here are some Chinese mask kites. Yet, the fact that I cannot easily find one on the web, just fascinates me more.

Paul estimates that the whole sleeve (including the dragon from 2001) took about 20 hours of work, and he did it in 6-7 sittings, mostly in 2002.

Paul sent me the following photos from the New York City Tattoo Convention, where Mike Bellamy did some of the work on Paul's sleeve:

That's Paul and Mike on the far left of the photo:

Thanks to Paul for helping me update this post with additional shots!