(1/2 the crew. megan, zac, tyrant, & tina not pictured)
Lori (bottom left) is the person who has the drag queen pin up girl, and it's printed in this month's issue of ITA.
I have a whisper of a voice right now, so it's a good thing I'm typing. I kicked off the whole Tattoo Convention weekend by being the first one to start a tattoo out of the 180 artists that attended. Some people were setting up still, most people has not yet arrived, but with a few people watching, I started on a pretty unicorn on my good friend Megan.
I stayed at her and Zac's house the night before (in Philly), so we were there bright and early. I think most of the CT crew arrived before there were more than a few people tattooing. I handed out Bird Flu Crew shirts, and they made things awesome pretty quick.
Cases of Dr Pepper arrived with them, and the party started. I had a bunch of problems, with equipment breaking ( I hate air travel ) and not having supplies, but the nicest humans to ever hold tattoo machines had a booth across from me, and they hooked me up over, and over, and over again. Thanks, my Ohioan guardian angel pirates.
After Megan was Ghostship Matt, who sat for at least 6 hours.
Guy Aitchison's collection of "Scratch Art- scratchboard art of the tattoo artists" was unveiled at this convention, and my Bird Flu piece was included. I'm pretty excited about that, for sure. I think you can get a copy on his website.
The next day more of the CT crew came down, I handed out more shirts, and then drew on and tattooed an entire peacock half sleeve for Sarah. She made it a grueling 6.5 hours, and was still smiling afterwards.
Then tyrant rocked out for a tree with finger roots on his ribs for a bunch of hours, and he won the bet by not pissing himself.
Even though we were then hitting the closing time for the day, we needed to squeeze in a rework/cover up for Bethany. She drove nine hours to fix her Blue Lobster tattoo, which was originally a wedding gift from me. Blue lobsters may be only one in a million, but that doesn't mean they are also dope. So, since she left the dude, she needed a little change to the tattoo.
We then had a super fun late night, hanging out till some ridiculous time in the morning, waiting for the sugar to wear off, so we could go to bed. We found some poop in the hallway (originating from dog or human is still being debated), and couldn't just leave it there....so we turned it into art. All the credit to my man Tyrant.
On Sunday, Dean got a huge fanged snake, which fit in between his graffitti piece and his puking bird. He sat forever, but we didn't finish the forearm sleeve completely. Soon, though.
Then Megan's equally rad half Zac came and got a tree coming out of a turtle shell. I drew it on with sharpies, and in order to not over use the color green, i poored 14 caps of color, none of which were green. I'm pretty into it.
That took me past the end of the tattoo convention by an hour, and by the time I was done packing up, the workers had removed all of the booths around me. I then went out, found a Chinese restaurant open late, and had my first vegetables in days. Then I went and hung out with my Ohio buddies telling stories till the wee hours when they kicked me out.
My favorite quotes of the weekend were these:
Megan (in a lot of pain) : "Tattoos are so stupid!!"
Guy Aitchison walking past us in the hallway: "WHO pooped in the hallway? !!?!"
Megan, and Bill Clinton, respectively, on the streets of Philly: "Whooooo! Hooo! Bill!" - "Hey, guys".
Consider me the busiest, loudest, and biggest sticker distributer of the whole show. A gazillion thanks to everyone that drove too far to spend too much on a hotel room, bought me vegan goodies, kept me stocked on the DP, rocked a shirt and kept my booth tidy, held down the fort and basically made Philly a lot more like CT for at least three days. I love you Minnesota, but, damn, Connecticut wins.
