Touch ground when it thunders

Tattoo

Part of my private itinerary for NZ was to get a rather large tattoo on the inside of my left forearm, up and around the band on my upper arm and ending at the shoulder. I know that sounds like an awful lot of work but the Maori designs work with negative space more than positive, so most of it would be left open. So I asked around and was told that the place to do it would be Christchurch, the last stop on my tour. I made an apointment at a place called Downunder Tattoo and took a cab over this morning to talk to the Gypsy. I'm unclear why so many tattoo artist choose strange nom de' plumes for themselves, but allready having been tattooed by guys named Spider and Slick I figured it was all good. Downunder's out in the industrial part of town, which I liked. I never trust the shops in prime locations, too much foot traffic, lots of cheesey flash work, etc. Temple Tattoo in Oakland was the most trustworthy shop I'd ever been to. They were by appointment only and you had to book 3-4 months in advance to get a session; foot traffic is irrelavent if you're really good. Anyhoo I talked to Gypsy, who owns his own shop up in Hamilton about what I basically wanted, how much space to cover, etc. I've also drawn the majority of my tattoos,so this was a departure in that way as well. I said something like, "I'm really interested inthe negative space aspect of Maori design, how they tell a story and highlight the body." Or some crap like that, and he said, "So you're looking for big, black and open." "Uh, yeah, wide open." He said no worries just give me a few minutes to work it up. He looked at my arma bit and then went in the back and I lingered around the front of the shop looking at all the shit on the walls and the t-shirts. West Coast choppers is huge even down here, unfortunately and the giant iron cross that's Jesse's symbol now adorns heaps of Kiwi boys and their back windows. He came back out with a big piece of flash, huge thivk black lines and placed the paper on my arm saying, "Powerful isn't it." It was, it was also the exact opposite of what I was looking for. It was symetrical and bordered and all in black rather than all open and just generally wrong. So I said, "Something like that, just all the black will be skin and the white black right?" and he said, "Yeah we could do it like that, but it won't be as powerful, but let's play with it." This guy's been tattooing for about 30 years, so I had a fair amount of trust for him. He put me in the chair and shaved my arm,aplied speed stick (preffered antipersperant of tattooist's everywhere) and then placed the carbon on it. When he took it off I looked at it a bit, this giant blue thing, a little larger than the tlingit design I have on my right forearm and then I said, "I'm gonna look at it a while, give me a minute." As an aside I've had this re-occuring dream about having a big fuzzy blue turnip or something on my left forearm and thinking it to be a huge bummer. It's always nice to wake up to my naked arm after that. So I walked around the parking lot out front looking at my forearma nd trying to picture what it would look like in negative. Then I went back inside and told him thanks but no thanks, I offered to pay him for his time, he refused and I walked out. Now I have a bald blue left arm, but nothing that won't come off in a couple days. Oh well, trust your gut. There were lots of other reasons as well, but that would be long and fairly boring.

Outside the hostel here in Christchurch is another giant chess set. I've been watching the locals play and a couple of the guys have game. Behind the chess set is a medium sized cathedral, classically styled. In front of the cathedral is a man reading from the bible standing on a step stool and next to him is a guy dressed up like Gandalf (Gandalf the Grey, beard and everything) standing on a wooden step ladder yelling about the PM and the big bang amoung other things. Next to him, continuing west is a Chippy and a Kebab truck and a giant sculpture that looks like the paper they wrap flowers in, that cone shape, without the flowers. Oh wacky NZ, how I'll mis you. I forgot to mention in my last post that I've discovered it is indeed possible to sleep when one is cold, wet and hungry on a boat in rough seas.

posted by jts @ 4:34 PM