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Published on 07/07/1999 All articles from this issue

Who's wearing tattoos? You'd be surprised

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By Clyde Noel

A Side of Clyde

The weekend was warm and a trip to the Santa Cruz beach seemed the best way to cool down. The beach weather was in the low-70s and people were more interested in soaking up the rays than soaking in the water.

In the calm quiet of the beach, your mind wanders and your powers of observation start settling in. The clouds resemble the buttermilk sky Wallace Stegner described. You smell dried kelp.

You notice a mother trying to desperately ignore her two kids clobbering each other with large plastic shovels, and a couple sitting on a bright blue blanket holding hands.

You also notice people baring more skin. Now you see a lot of those hidden tattoos you didn't see at the office. It hasn't always been like this, but the beach is a fabulous place for tattoo watching.

Tattoos used to be the birthmark for the Hell's Angels, and you had to go to a seedy part of town to get one. Tattoo parlors were always in the same block as they had bars with names like "The Red Dog Saloon."

Tattoos have gone suburban. Temporary tattoos that wear off or come off serve as fund-raisers for organizations. Tattoos are worn at parties, college football games, school events, and the beach. As accessories, people enjoy and change these tattoos just like jewelry.

At the beach last Sunday, the tattoos were almost all decorative bands worn around an arm, ankle or neck like a necklace. When I walk downtown along Main Street, I'm surprised to see the tattoos male teen-agers wear on their arms and girls wear on their ankles. The ones at the beach were mostly one-color black or dark blue with a minimal design.

One man wore a twisted thorn branch around his biceps and another appeared to have a chain-link design. Some of the girls had a couple of plain black bands around their arms like Roman slaves used to wear. There were a lot of flower and butterfly tattoos on ankles and thighs.

To get an inside on tattoos, I went down to Dragon Tattoo in San Jose and talked to one of the artists who said tattoos are more a craft than an art. He's been around awhile and has probably stuck more customers' arms than nurses do before flu season starts.

The shop is probably cleaner than your doctor's office and everything is done with sterile procedures. The shop displays thousands of patterns to choose from, but they run into big money.

"Arm bands started to get popular about ten years ago, and I think they're boring. People with no creativity see them on sport stars or rock musicians and want one like it," the artist said.

I asked the artist if he could see a future trend in tattoos. "Yeah," he said. "I've been doing a lot of women lately between the ages of 40 and 60. They want eyebrows, artificial moles, and flowers and butterflies on their ankles or upper thighs. They drive up in their Mercedes and probably surprise their husbands later."

Frankly I hope the tattoo trend doesn't enter my household. I can't visualize my wife or daughter with a skull and crossbones on their upper arms or a cupid with an arrow in it.