Who doesn’t love Jack Sparrow? Not the best guy in the world, but far from the worst. Free-living, rum-loving, living by his wits and sheer luck at times. Ol’ Captain Jack was always willing to take the bad with the good, as long as the reward was worth the risk. Just so he didn’t have to do what he was told.
Tattooing has been much maligned across it’s history. Soldiers and sailors got them while on drunken liberty in various ports of call and the women who got them were not called nice things, generally speaking. Of course, they didn’t really give a fuck, now did they? Those soldiers, back from war and needing something a little more to get the blood pumping turned to motorcycles to get their kicks. A culture of unwritten rules around respect, honor, and booze gave birth to the motorcycle clubs that have been popularized in the movies and television shows people still watch to this day.
And their tattoos came with them.
Searching for a way to fund their counterculture lifestyle, many clubs, bikers, and veterans opened their own shops. Scary, smokey, loud and bawdy, tattoo shops were not for children or sensitive types and the only women that got tattoos damn well didn’t do so on a whim. It’s this air of danger and mystery that intrigued many and scared many others. With that, tattooed people were considered off-limits to squares.
Booze, drugs, sex, and violence. Tattoo shops could be fun if you knew how to carry yourself and what you wanted. But they didn’t exactly scream consumer-friendly. Over the last 30-40 years the business has really managed to fix that image. Most shops are more like boutiques than biker clubhouses now and a much more customer-friendly approach has been widely adopted. Professional tattooers can regularly do guest spots at shops across the country (or even overseas) without changing their business practices by a significant degree and this uniformity has done great things for tattooers and clients. Money began to flow freely.
Then something terrible happened. As the fear of tattooed people and culture subsided due to those television shows’ popularity and shop owners got their hands on some real money, some jackass decided to put tattoo shops in malls and instead of down back alleys in tourist towns, shops popped up on the main drags of big cities all over. With that, a BUNCH of people with no idea what they were asking for got into the tattoo business. While not in of itself a problem, the counterculture feel of this artform has been choked almost to death and with it, any sense of pride in a job well done that didn’t also come with a big, fat check.
Some shops are even offering financing for tattoos (lay-away is one thing, but if it comes with an interest rate, WTF?). While it may make dollars, it doesn’t make sense kids. Something has got to give. So, what does enough is enough mean?
It means once you have enough money, more isn’t necessary and community should matter more than the bottom line. In short, if no one can afford to get a tattoo, they won’t. Shops will close and more artists will get squeezed out of the business. While this may feel Darwinian, what it also means is more and more people will be tattooing from their houses and what ultimately happens is any sort of oversight of this industry gets eliminated and then, well, everything just goes back to shit, tattoo-business-wise.
Enough is enough.
