It took me a long time to finally get a tattoo. My favorite band since high school was the Ramones so I always figured that when I see them in concert, I’ll get a tattoo of their logo. Seeing them in concert never happened. I also thought about getting a tattoo while in the Army, like jump wings, but I also thought that was kind of cliche, so I never followed through with it.
In 2023, my daughter’s best friend since they were little babies started apprenticing at a shop. She does great work (and was even happy to let my wife be her third professional tattoo customer, right after her mom and her dad) so I figured that I would jump in on the action.
This is one of my actual axes, I have hockey tape on it that looks like diamond plating and the screaming face is Richie Ramone (who I have seen in concert twice). Excuse the bit of blood on the pic, I hit the bottom of Lake Michigan after jumping in near Montrose Harbor.
I got the second on 2024 after I saw my tattoo artist publish a picture of a punk rock cardinal on her social media. I thought “Hey, I like punk rock music and I like cardinals.” The only drawback of this tattoo is I now get asked if I am a fan of the St Louis, Arizona, Illinois State University, or Iowa State Cadinals. The answer to all of those is no.
