I finally got a tattoo this week. It didn’t take long, maybe a half-hour, but it hurt like hell, yes it did. Also, it’s a bigger tattoo than I expected to come out with, which is the kind of thing that happens to me. It isn’t that I’m unprepared. I’m a big planner. I plan and plan. Then I leave the plan at home and take off running as fast as I can, until I land in a spot that may or may not look familiar. It sort of works for me.
Uptown Tattoo looks exactly like you’d expect a tattoo place to look – kind of old, dark and funky, with every available surface covered in weird art. Not necessarily tattoo art, just weird art. And of course the artists have a lot of tattoos themselves, so you almost don’t know where to look. There is a stereotype of tattoo artists that didn’t seem to fit. For the most part they seemed smart, friendly and well-spoken. And covered in tattoos.
I like my tattoo a lot. I’d say that I should have done it sooner, but then it wouldn’t be this tattoo but some other tattoo that I probably wouldn’t like as much. It was designed by my friend Sunshine (a talented art director and undoubtedly old soul) and then fiddled with by me. So it is a one-of-a-kind tattoo. It includes five stars, one for each grandchild, with the option of adding more stars if people continue to be as fertile as they have been. I have no regrets.
Grandma Kissed A Sailor 