“If you want an appointment with Vancouver’s Steve Moore, you’ll have to wait until at least 2008. ‘Initially when I started people weren’t getting big tattoos, so you could get a lot more done, you got more people through the door,’ says Moore. ‘Now tattoos are whole arms, big pieces. You dedicate like 20 or 30 hours to a piece so you really can’t tattoo as many people in a year.’”

From Canada.com

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A woman with a shoulder tattoo of a man and woman embracing was asked to cover up her tattoo or get off an airplane. She wrote a letter to complain, but won’t be taking legal action.

Soon after boarding a flight to Brisbane last month, the 36-year-old said she was asked to cover the tattoo on her shoulder blade - even though singlet straps already hid the most potentially offensive bit - or get off the plane.

From the NYDailyNews:

A Brooklyn father getting a tattoo called “Last Rites” inked into his flesh passed out and crashed headfirst into a glass counter yesterday, killing himself, police and witnesses said. Joaquin Laguer, 27, nearly was decapitated during the horrific accident inside Buzz Tattoo, an unlicensed parlor in East Williamsburg.

Reuters picked up an interesting (and predictable) story about post-Katrina tattoos New Orleans residents are getting inked with. If you have any photographs of these please send them to me!

On a recent night at Crescent City Tattoo in New Orleans, she is lined up with about a dozen others to have messages and images inked on their bodies, many prompted by the killer storm that ripped through New Orleans seven weeks earlier.

I recieved this in my e-mail today:

The Revolution is Free Art Show is a touring art exhibit with the goal raising money to support arts in education in both local communities and on a national level. All after cost proceeds, including sales of original work, prints, t-shirts, raffle items, and flash will be donated directly to local schools and Americans for the Arts, a national nonprofit arts organization who lobby on behalf of arts in education. We invite you to participate in the group show, which is scheduled to launch the evening of April 8th 2006 at Transcend Tattoo and Art Gallery in Branford, CT at an event open to the public. The will then be hosted by Visions Tattoo, Piercing & Art Gallery in Medway, MA, subsequent locations to be announced.

For more information see ItsYourLand.com or contact Kevin at (203) 481-9372.

Adults approaching middle age are tired of contantly keeping up with trends, according to NewsDay. The constant trend for keeping up with all of the latest fashions is starting to tire more than a few people out.

“We’re in a post-hip era, which means everybody’s hip,” says Leland. “I can’t tell you how many churches I’ve been in where the pastor has a goatee, tattoos and earrings.”

Without a doubt, tattoos are hardly an “underground” experience in the US today. Recent statistics indicate that 30% or more of Americans have them. For the people that want to stay ahead of the curve tattoos are going to be a dissapointment.

Here is an interesting article from The Dallas Morning News.

“There are too many Western influences. We don’t want naked women when we watch television. I don’t like all these tattoos I’m seeing. Already, there are students at the university who are getting tattoos because that’s what they see on television,” Ms. Talal said.

I believe that the growing acceptance of tattoos in a society is a sign of liberalization & modernisation. This is an interesting concept considering the ancient origins of the tattoos themselves.

Iraq has been filled with violence this past week. I’m guessing that those suicide bombers weren’t wearing tattoos.

Many tattoo designs merge both modern styles with ancient religious symbolisms. I wonder what kind of tattoo art young Iraqis are getting. Do they use Islamic religious symbols?

I always hear about how tattoos are used to help remember parts of your life. I think there is something deeper here. I believe tattoos are a way for the young of a modernizing, or changing, society to connect their own past to the future. The tattoo says, hey, I’m hip — but I have a past — I belong to today, but I also have a history.

In the past tattoos were a symbol of being a criminal in China. In the past members of the Chinese criminal underworld, the Triad, wore dragon tattoos. Along with the rest of the world, tattoos are moving out from the subcultures where they have been in the past. Western tattoo styles are mixed with ancient Chinese symbolism to provide creative tattoo designs for a young & modern Chinese population. Read more in the China Daily [ http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-06/08/content_3059446.htm ]