Best Tattoos

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Jeff Shares Some Amazing Work by Caesar Tattoo

Last Sunday, I met a guy named Jeff at my local laundromat, where I happen to meet a lot of the contributors to Tattoosday, it seems.

Jeff has a ton of work, including neck tattoos and some amazing black and gray sleeves. Turns out tattoos were created by Caesar, an amazing artist who works out of New York City.

He allowed me to grab a few samples of his work:

And this spine running down the length of his arm:

Unfortunately, these photos really don't do the work justice, but I was able to find some of the work on his Facebook page here.

You can check out more of this amazing artist's portfolio at Caesar Tattoo in Manhattan's East Village. Our friends at Needles & Sins ran a short profile of Caesar here. Jeff even told me that some of his work has ended up in one of Marisa Kakoulas' black and gray tattoo compendia.

You can see an even more extensive collection of Caesar's work on his Facebook page here.

Thanks to Jeff for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday!

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Five Years Gone: I Still Miss You, Tom

When Tattoosday was but a wee little blog, with big hopes and dreams, one of the early champions and supporters was my friend, Tom.

Five years ago today, he died suddenly and tragically. I still miss him.

Although the memories fade, his spirit still lives on in the pages of Tattoosday.

That said, I share this post, from 2007, featuring my friend Tom's tattoo:

"This is the sole tattoo of my friend and co-worker, Tom.

Tom designed and drew the art upon which this tattoo was based.

The Reaper is posed on Tom's biceps/deltoid and has resided there since 1984, when its host was a young lad of eighteen.

This is Tom's only tattoo and he has no plans to get more. He is proud of the fact that, because he designed it and because he then tore up the original design, it is a one-of-a-kind piece. He said that it was very painful because of the amount of black ink that went into it.

The tattoo was inked by Dean at Lola's Tattoos, then in Cliffside Park, but now in Bogota, New Jersey. Tom got this tattoo "because it was cool," although the tattooer tried to convince him not to get it because it was "too mean" for him. Twenty-three years later, Tom says he has no regrets about his ink.

Thanks, Tom!"

Last night, on the eve of this somber anniversary, my Google Play shuffle served up the following song, which I had the pleasure of seeing live with Tom at Jones Beach just a few months before he died:

Thinking of you, Tom, I still miss you, and Tattoosday misses you too.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Darcy Shares Some Words of Wisdom

This fall, I found myself in a new neighborhood during the days, down on Broad Street. One of the new people in my life, Darcy, is an employee of a local coffee and pastry shop. I noticed she had some ink on her inner wrists, and one day, after her shift, she let me take this photo:

Her wrists state "90% Work - 10% Talent."

Darcy explains:

"I had a teacher ... his recipe for success was that, if you work at anything, you can become good. It's your talent that will make you great. You can't rely on your talent alone - talent's only 10% of that equation."

She got this at a vegan tattoo shop in Portland, Oregon called Scapegoat Tattoo.

Thanks to Darcy for sharing these words of wisdom with us here on Tattoosday!

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Andrea's Dancing Bears Show Her Dead-ication to Her Favorite Band

A couple months back, I met Andrea, on 3rd Avenue in Bay Ridge, and she shared these bears which are one of the many graphic representations of the band, The Grateful Dead:

I recognized the design right off, so I asked Andrea why she chose a Dead tattoo. She responded, "because they were my favorite band ever since I was a little kid." She added, "my dad used to listen to them, so I kinda got into 'em that way."

When I asked how many times she had seen them, she told me, "I've only seen Bob Weir and Phil Lesh. I saw them two summers ago."

She initially credited this tattoo to Jim Palmer at Moon Gravel Arts in Milford, Pennsylvania, but later corrected me, via e-mail:

"i actually did that one it was the first tattoo i ever did as practice... jim did ...all of my other tattoos however ... he has great work ... u should still check him out, jim palmer is his name and moon gravel arts ... is his shop ... have a grateful day:)"

Thanks to Andrea for sharing her self-inked dead-icated tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Monday, October 7, 2013

Taylor's New Tattoo Bridges Time and Oceans

We're returning from a hiatus with a visit from an old friend, Taylor.

Taylor first shared her work with us here back in 2010. We saw more work from her last year when she shared this incredible back piece inspired by Banksy:

Recently, Taylor shared her latest tattoo with me and I'm passing it along to you:

As you may have guessed, these are actually a pair of tattoos of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Taylor elaborates:

"My mom and I got matching tattoos. It was also her first. For some [people] the Verrazano Bridge is just a pretty bridge connecting Staten Island and Bay Ridge [Brpoklyn]. For me and my mom its where it all began. She moved to Shore Road [which runs along the Verrazano Narrows] from Germany when my parents got married.

Every childhood memory I had was by that bridge. Unfortunately my parents got divorced and I moved with my mom back to Germany.

I've been living in the neighborhood for almost 10 years again without my mom, but the Verrazano is somehow a piece of her."

Here's another, healed perspective:

I love how, not only do these tattoos, bridge the past with her mom, but they also bridge the ocean that currently separates them, bringing them closer together.

Taylor credits local tattoo artist Angel Bauta, from Puncture Tattoo here in South Brooklyn with this work.

Thanks again to Taylor for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Tattoosday in the Berkshires: Sean's Corpernican Title

I met Sean last month at Shakespeare & Company, in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Sean was working at the snack bar at the Tina Packer Playhouse, but I had seen him earlier in the week in an amazing performance as Trufaldin in an adaptation of Molière's Les Faux Pas.

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is the title of a book published in 1543 by the Renaissance astronomer Copernicus. The title, translated from the Latin, is On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

Sean elaborated about the origins of this tattoo, which he had done at a shop in Seattle:

"I was looking at the root of the word revolt or revolution and it comes from Copernicus ... so I was wanting something that had ... the idea of revolt and revolution ... I became curious as to where the word came from ... [and] I started reading about his theory."

As regular readers of this site can tell you, I love textual tattoos, and the idea of inscribing the title of a book almost 500 years old is fascinating, because it's not just about the title, but about the ideas espoused therein.

Thanks to Sean for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Re-Post: Paul's Memorial

I posted this originally in 2008 and re-posted it again in 2009 and 2011. As I've said in the past, it only seems appropriate to re-run it again today:

Earlier this month, I mentioned meeting Paul here, on the bike path that runs along the southern tip of Brooklyn.

I saved the other tattoo photo I took of Paul's work for today, the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

What I didn't mention in the previous post is that Paul is a federal agent who grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

From his vantage point there, he watched the World Trade Center being built in the late 1960's. He was working in 6 World Trade seven years ago for the U.S. Customs Department when the towers came down, and he spent four months at Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, searching for remains.

The tattoo is a poignant piece, with the sun shining between the towers. Below is Paul's badge from the Department of Homeland Security, which has evolved into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Particulatly unusual is the depiction of 9/11 in Roman numerals:

IX XI.

I don't believe I had ever seen it represented that way before.

Like the tattoo in the earlier post, this piece was inked by Joe at Brooklyn Ink.

Thanks to Paul for sharing this WTC memorial piece with us here on Tattoosday.

~ ~ ~

We here at Tattoosday send our thoughts and prayers to all the families of people who died on 9/11, and to the families of all of the men and women who have died since then, serving our country.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.