Steven and Melissa's Friendship Tattoos

This summer outside of Penn Station, on the corner of 8th Avenue and 33rd Street, I met Steven & Melissa, who marked their friendship with matching tattoos:

This is how our discussion went:

Tattoosday: "So what's the story with that tattoo?"

Melissa: "It's a friendship tattoo..."

Steven: "Yeah, I'm a Cancer, so that's a moon, and it kind of describes our relationship, because she's an Aquarius and the moon controls water, it's a push and a pull, we balance each other out."

Melissa: "But he doesn't control me though...our first thing was that we found out that the moon controlled insanity and stuff, and we think we're really weird and crazy...that's what we were going with..."

Steven: "So a little of everything..."

Melissa: "Yeah."

You could tell they are close friends because their sentences overlapped and they seemed to be finishing each other's thoughts.

They credited the design and tattoo to an artist at NYC Kulture on St. Mark's Place in the East Village.

Thanks to Steven and Melissa for sharing their friendship 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.

Tommy's Card Represents Birth and Death

Back in June, I ran into Tommy, in Penn Station, who shared this tattoo:

Tommy told me this is based on a Tarot Card, and that it represents a message.

"I got it the same day one of my best friends passed away. I actually didn't know that happened that day. A friend of mine has a book of birthdays ... and every birthday has its own card and this is my card and I went to go get it and then later that night I found out one of my really close friends passed away. So, it's kinda like represents a whole lot more to me now." 

The piece was inked at Philadelphia Eddie's Tattoo Haven.

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

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading 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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Julie Kantor

As we wind up the Tattooed Poets Project on this, the home stretch of April, we are double-posting to accommodate the record number of submissions we received this year.

Our second tattooed poet of the day is Julie Kantor.

Julie sent us these photos:

Julie explains:

"It was a very early morning in Portland, OR. I picked up my best friend, Jess, to get breakfast. On the way to the cafe, we saw two guys, each had a shopping cart packed to the brim. They were laughing with each other, smiling these huge smiles. Jess turned to me and said, 'If we were bums, we would still be best friends. Bum friends.' I suggested, strongly, that we get matching shopping cart tattoos. After breakfast we found this small tattoo shop with no name off Glisan that just opened. Inside, we made a deal with the shop's very green apprentice to do both tattoos for $40. The 'bf' in the tattoos stands for bum friends." 

Here is one of Julie's poems:

From the series: Land 

12)
Waters flush north under concrete & steel, rods down
planted, now dry cracks through road we drive over, see
red lines run lengthen out from sky blue & darkening,
say “let's trace this back to where the sun doesn't even
want us w/it,” beam bridge can't take us across all the way
w/out drop before we stand safely or span the land’s
end to its own mirrored opposite. Those could be our feet
on the ground, but we ride this straight across the dividing
line where trains’ tracks alongside plains lead away from
& hear the river call us down, would one body’s dead
weight be enough to pull us into, first think we tie our-
selves w/knots we won't learn the names of, but tangle is
thick w/width, & water's feel enough for loss of, & if we can’t
sustain w/just us then we shouldn’t have to begin with.

~ ~ ~

Julie Kantor just completed her first manuscript, the currently unpublished, The Beautiful West. She is a M.F.A. candidate in poetry at Columbia University where she teaches in the Undergraduate Writing Program. She is also a musician and plays in the new band, Cycles. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Thanks to Julie for sharing her poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


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.