Personally, I don't have any tattoos. Not that I have anything against them. Truth be told, even though I was raised in an era when only longshoremen and felons had them, and even though my mother would disown me if I had gotten one, for years I actually planned on getting one.
My problem was that, as a graphic designer, I couldn't simply pick one off the shelf. It would have to be personally designed to show off my skills. Something cool, stylish, clever, striking. Something unique, like a fingerprint. It couldn't be something generic, a Chinese character that the tattoo artist swears says "long life and prosperity" but that you find out later really says "big mama hair wagon".
So for years I designed tattoos, but wisely I imposed a two week waiting period. From the time I finished I design I swore I loved, there was a two week moratorium before I could actually have it done. And with every single thing I came up with, by the time two weeks had passed, I hated it.
During that time I also saw the pitfalls of tattoos. I had a friend, a big, buff guy, get a striking band tattooed around his bulging bicep. It was a tight Greek key design and was unbelievably sexy. Of course, shortly thereafter he met someone and fell in love. Stopped going to the gym and packed on 50 pounds. The ink spread with his waistline and the last time I saw he he looked like he was wearing a blood pressure cuff. Another friend decided to get the name of his one true love tattooed on his shoulder. His boyfriend was none too pleased when he came home with the name of the dog on his back. They broke up.
And before you knew it, I hit 40. Getting a tattoo after 40 just seemed so desperate. I don't mean to sound ageist, but there are just some things that are unseemly once you hit your 40's. Tattoos and low-rise jeans are at the top of the list.
Which brings us to Bakersfield. This has got to be the epicenter of bad tattoos. I don't know what it is. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the San Joaquin Valley is home to most of the state's prisons, because most of what you see has that amateurish, "Lock Up: Raw" quality about it. Like they were done with a modified Bic pen. Rather than looking sexy, most of them look kind of gruesome.
Yesterday I stopped to pick up something to eat and my eye was drawn to the forearm of the guy in front of me. There, from wrist to elbow, in gangbanger Blackletter he had tattooed...
B A K E R S F I E L D
He obviously wasn't the civic booster type. More a wannabe gangster. Maybe he thought the word "BAKERSFIELD" would convey the same macho threat of "COMPTON".
I hate to break it to him, but to me it was the tattoo equivalent of a "I'm with stupid" T-shirt.
