Porky’s Revenge

So my friend Pete stopped by today and got this tattoo of a porkchop, you can tell it’s a porkchop because there’s a nice banner there that says “porkchop,”  see how that works?  Pete is a really awesome guy and I always love hanging out with him, this was the first tattoo he had gotten since I last tattooed him a few years ago when I very first started, and for some reason he let me tattoo him again!  It’s a little less straight up traditional than I would normally do, I just felt like trying something different, pretty happy with how it came out.

In other quite surprising news, the owner of the shop that screwed me over last week called me to apologize and offered me Saturdays, I accepted so we’ll see if I actually end up working next Saturday.  Life is weird.

NYC/NJ Tat-bros, I need your help.

So once again I got fucked over, the shop that “hired” me 3 weeks ago where I was supposed to start last Thursday informed me on SATURDAY (after I chased after the dude for 3 days) that because of scheduling it “wasn’t going to work out.” and he had already hired someone else. When he planned to tell me this shit I don’t know, but I guess I get what I deserve for dealing with a shop owned by a non-tattooer.

Anyways I’m now once again screwed, I’ve still got 3 days a week in Jersey City but things have been really slow and I’ve just been racking up zeros. I’ve actually had to take up a part time job with a cleaning service making 50 bucks a day and I still haven’t been able to pay my rent this month. Shit is really bad. I know things are slow for everyone and nobody owes me shit, but if you know of ANYTHING at all, any shops that have a day or two open, whatever, I’d be forever in your debt. I’m fucking broke and cleaning toilets sucks.

Thanks, -AP

(Forgive the repetition but I’m posting this on all my profiles, I’m pretty desperate.)

Thank heaven for little girlheads

So the other day while having a coffee with the lady at Blackbird, I ran into my friends Lauren and Amanda.  Lauren expressed an interest in getting some gaps filled on her arm to bump up what was already about 80% covered to about 95%.  We kicked around ideas and since I wasn’t doing anything we just decided to meet back up in a few hours and do it then.  Lauren is a really awesome kid, and apparently some kind of superstar DJ, I dunno much about the club scene but she seems to  spend most of her time jetsetting all over the place which seems like a lot of fun!  I’d done a few silly jokey tattoos on her before but it was nice to do something substantial this time.  She opted for a girlhead from my flash for an empty spot on the inside of her arm, and a rose to fill some space off the side of her ditch on the same arm.  It was a decent amount to do all in one session not to mention those being two of the most painful spots on the arms.  Regardless, she sat like a true champion we had a lot of fun and she even considered getting a THIRD but reconsidered at the last-minute!  Probably a good thing for her arm, not to mention my lower back.  Here is what we ended up doing:

Ouch.

Ouchier.

In other news I start that other shop on Bleecker street in the city next week I’ll post info when my days are finalized, should be an adventure if nothing else!  Also my birthday is coming up soon, December 7th I’ll be 32 years old!  One foot in the grave!  Can’t believe it, when did I get so OLD!!??

Greetings from the depths of boredom

In the past 7 days I have done 3 tattoos. only one of them was larger than a silver dollar, all of them were black.  The combination of not having work, the recent dismal weather last week, and the fact it gets dark at 4PM now is really taking a toll on me.  I can’t wait to start this new place in the Village even if it sucks, just so I’ll have something to DO!  Luckily I’ve had this photo project (see my previous post) to keep me busy these past few days, but now I’m at an impasse as I’ve gone through all the photos I have and now need to begin getting some of the 24 other rolls I have laying about, developed.  Unfortunately I’m a bit broke at the moment.

Anyway, out of the three tattoos I did this week here is the only one I got a picture of, it’s on one of my best friends, Jason.  Jason is a really great graphic designer his work is at once refined, contemporary, and humorous and I admire him very much. you can check out his work HERE.  He called me back this week as I had been trying to get some photos I left at his house and asked me if I’d do a quick tattoo on him when he brought the photos over.  Of course I was more than happy to, the tattoo is his rendition of the Gadsden Flag filling some space between a couple of sweet tattoos from John Reardon and Scott Campbell.  As you can see it’s traditional caption has been slightly shortened (there’s that humor I was talking about).

It was a quick tattoo but we hung out for a little while after, it was nice to spend some time with him as we don’t see each other too much anymore what with me being a homebody and him jet-setting all around the world with the girls in his BAND.

So that’s what I’ve been up to, In case you were wondering.  Before I go I’d like to  send out a big fuck yeah and high five To our friend Rob Lotzko who will be rejoining the civilized world later today after a recent and unfortunate hiatus.  Good to have you back!

Not Tattoo Related

but I have recently uploaded a bunch of photos from the 2002-2006 era to my Flickr account.  This was a particularly  fun and crazy time in my life and years later I’m glad I recorded it’s varied cast of characters.  Photos from New York city are HERE Photos from my trips to Florida during the same era are HERE.  I still have a few hundred Photos I’m in the process of adding to the NYC album so check back in the coming weeks if you are so inclined.

Gay dudes, straight razors.

So yesterday my friends Patrick, Ryan and I finally had a dudes day we’d been planning for about a month or more.  We all went to get haircuts from our neighborhood barber Gaspare (I got a shave too) and then I tattooed them.  Gaspare is just about the coolest dude ever, he’s an older Sicilian fellow in his late 60’s and has beeen cutting hair in the same little shop in our neighborhood for 40 years.  Which means he has great stories for miles, and on top of that is about the sweetest person you could hope to meet and has “hands of gold’ (as he says) as far as shears or a straight razor are concerned.  So after leaving Gaspare’s we 3 rejuvinated and handsome young men proceeded over to my place to do some hurting.  Ryan got some nice script across his collar bones which, unfortunately proved impossible to get a good picture of.  It is here I must say that Ryan had one of the worst cases of Cryabetes that I have encountered in recent memory.  He was whining like that woman who fell stomping grapes, and sweating like a whore in church.  We finished it in about 2 hours though and I was pretty happy with it, I’ll post a healed picture as soon as i can get one.  Patrick, who sat like he actually had a set of balls, ended up getting the old Percy Waters skull and dagger rework from my flash. I did it 2 colors and black with a nice bold outline, about as straight up traditional as you can get.  I figured the fella had enough fancypants tattoos, I might as well give him one that looked like a man put it on.

All in all it was a nice day with my friends.  On a sidenote, Pat is also a writer for a few Tat-mags and blogs (there is a link to his personal blog to the right over there) and he wrote up his own account of our day on needlesandsins.com which can be read Here.  (Thanks for the plug Pat, and right back ‘atcha)

In other news it looks like I’ll be working at a little shop on Bleecker Street in 3 weeks.  Hopefully the NYU clientele wont be super annoying and my co-workers won’t be drug addicts, I can deal with the first but not the second.  Anyway, it’s a job.  More info as it comes on that one.

for now I’ll leave you with a picture of my snazzy new haircut courtesy of Gaspare Cuomo.

First rate tattoos and third degree burns

So last night after a lovely couples dinner with my best friend, his fiancee and my girlfriend, I decided I would spend the rest of my evening making some needles.  Don’t ask me why I decided to make needles as in this day and age they can be bought for next to nothing, I suppose I’m just a fan of outmoded bullshit and foolish behavior.  Making needles consists of playing with all sorts of fun stuff , tiny sharp needles, corrosive acid flux, and the star of this story: a 40 watt soldering iron.  I had just put together a few needle groupings and was soldering them onto their bars and for some reason (i think I was distracted by the noise of the asshole neighbors partying on the balcony at 1:30am) when I reached for said soldering iron in my periphery I grabbed a little too high up.  All i remember was the blinding pain and the hiss of searing flesh, the iron stuck to my finger then finally fell to the ground.  My skin was instantly blanched stark white, and holy shit did it ever hurt.  After some loving tending to by my girlfriend and 30 minutes under running water my fingers just look like they were stained white, the pain stopped but only because my fingers were now numb instead.  Today the stain remains and instead of blistering the burns are slightly sunken in, it hurts a little around the edges but luckily the burnt areas themselves are completely numb, which I’ll take over pain any day.  Thankfully I was still able to tattoo Caitlin comfortably today, she got the crybaby from my flash. She also has some awesome tattoos from Eli Quinters and Daniel Albrigo so I felt honored for my little tattoo on her to be in such good company.

Earlier in the week I put another tattoo from my flash on my friend Bill.  Bill is an awesome dude who plays in Attake and books metal shows in Brooklyn.  He got the “Party Dragon” while we watched intervention and talked about our mutual dislike for pseudo-punk crust-bums.

Anyone who feels like getting anything else from my flash or buying a set, please get in touch. Here’s a picture of my finger. I know it doesn’t look like much, but you can go ahead and try it at home.

Flash For Sale!

So my new set of flash is finally finished and boy am I excited!  I stayed up until the wee hours of the dawn putting the finishing touches on it but here it is!  You can obtain copies from me via paypal, they will be printed on heavy grade cardstock and will come with line sheets for $50 bucks postage and sturdy packaging included.  If you order now they will hit the mail by this time next week.  Email me at a.p.tattooer(at)gmail.com for paypal info since wordpress seems to have an aversion to the paypal button.  Thank you for looking!  Also I will do any tattoo in the set (aside from the gigantic snake vs. eagle situation) for $100 or under depending on the design for the next few months so if you see something on there you’d like to keep forever and ever, please get in touch!  Thank you ever so much and please forgive the slight shininess of the photos, my scanner isn’t big enough to accommodate 11×17 so I had to photograph them in the sunlight.

Fairly Normal Activity

So I had quite a big day today, I spent most of it cleaning my house top to bottom.  Sweeping and mopping the floors, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, organizing my drawing and tattooing areas.  Its nice to have everything tidy, and it made my girlfriend quite happy to come home to a clean house, and that is always a plus.  later in the evening my good friend Twiggy and her roomate stopped by to get little anchors tattooed on the insides of their fingers, I used a rotary machine and piled them in pretty hard so hopefully they will stay put.  It made such a horrible sound tattooing that part of their fingers as the rotary is very quiet and you could hear the machine rattling over the bone.  They were both troopers however  and barely complained, even though they barely had time to, each tattoo took about 5 minutes.  Here they are showing them off. (one is slightly puffier than the other and still has a smear of hectograph stencil)

Sinky-Pinkies

After that my friend Valerie who I hadn’t seen in a while stopped by, she wanted a little silhouette of her kitty in a fancy frame on her leg, I love doing fancy frames so I was more than happy to oblige, the tattoo went smoothly and quickly, she sat like a rock, note that her kitty has a goatee, (in real life as well as in the tattoo.)  Here’s a shiny slightly off-kilter photo.

Lastly I downloaded and watched the movie “Paranormal Activity,” it was far from the scariest movie of all time, but entertaining enough.  However the torrent I downloaded contained both the Original ending and the theatrical ending and I must say the original ending was far superior to the one in theaters.  The original ending is much more believable and tragic (well as believable as it could be anyway) while the new improved theatrical ending was way too scary-monster-movie.

I’m now going to take some well earned rest in front of the idiot box (or idiot flat-panel as it were.)

Oh Also, Happy Birthday to my Dad, a sweet kind man and a tough motherfucker to boot.  I love you Dad!

Dad Circa 1982

Tis The Season When The Rent’s Still Due

Well it’s officially that time of year again, nobody is getting tattooed and I am dead broke. I have taken a job at a little shop in the West Villiage hopefully it will help me get through the winter. I’m not getting my hopes up just yet. With all this downtime I am however making progress on the flash I’ve been painting, just finished all the black shading tonight. Here are some pictures.

It should be done soon, I should have copies for sale shortly thereafter and would love it if you wanted to get a tattoo from it.