3rd Avenue Festival, Bay Ridge, Part 4

While my kids were bouncing around in the Moon Bounce-a-rama, a woman named Helen approached and her child joined my girls in their attempts to defy gravity.

Helen had this awesome tattoo on her right arm:


Helen explained it: The wolf, combined with the female symbol, and the letter A, or alpha, combined to represent that she is the alpha female in her family.

She had this tattoo done by the artist Dan Brown at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, a tattoo and arts convention in Maine.

The wolf was inspired by a woodcutting. She added the symbols for the alpha female. Her husband was the alpha male, but he sadly passed away two six years ago.

I then asked about her left arm, which had the following piece:


This is St. Francis, patron saint of the animals. The cat is present because Helen rescues cats, and currently has ten (10!) living with her. She credited Lynn Dulaney as the artists of this tattoo, also done at the Mad Hatter's Tea party. In fact, she advised me, all of her work gets done at Mad Hatter's.

I must have raised my eyebrows, as Helen appeared to have only these two tattoos. She revealed that she had 11 tattoos in all, not typical for a school teacher from Queens. These two were the only ones visible, and, had she been wearing a shirt other than a sleeveless one, you'd have thought she looked the part of a tattoo-less educator. She acknowledged that some times its best not to be seen as having tattoos by the students and/or parents. Although if one of my kids' teachers had tattoos, the family would think it was cool.

Thanks to Helen for talking with me and sharing her tattoo stories here on Tattoosday!

Update: After Helen posted her comment below, I updated Lynn's name with the correct spelling and linked her page at Moving Pictures Studio, in Wooster, Ohio. Also, I thought it would be nice to link the page from the New York Times "Portraits of Grief" with the blurb Helen's husband Liam. Helen, if you do not wish to have me link this, please let me know and I will remove it. Liam's brief portrait is at the bottom of the page and rolls over to the next.

3rd Avenue Festival, Bay Ridge, Part 3

In the continuing story of my Third Avenue Festival Tattoo scavenger hunt, we have a piece from the much-tattooed Kimmy, aka Lolita Ford, who passed me at the corner of 93rd and 3rd and, when I stopped her to ask her about her tattoos, was very friendly. Lolita is the blonde, second from the right, in the photo below, from her MySpace page.

She had much ink (13 tats in all) and like those folks that have a plethora of tattoos, I asked her what particular piece meant the most to her.

She had a friend pull down the back of her shirt to reveal the following small tattoo below her neck:



Kimmy explained that this tattoo was inked about ten years ago in honor of her grandmother, who had recently passed away. Her grandma had a china doll collection and, upon her passing, left all of her dolls to various members of the family. Kimmy received one doll, which she cherishes to this day. The tattoo represents her grandmother as a guardian angel, holding the china doll that she passed on to her.

Lolita Ford is head "jeerleader" of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby and is captain of the Royal Pains Jeerleaders who are allied with the team, the Queens of Pain.

This particular tattoo was inked in Pittsburgh, at Inka Dinka Doo. The artist was Tony Urbanek.

Thanks to Kimmy, aka Lolita, for sharing this tattoo with me and the Tattoosday community.

3rd Avenue Festival, Bay Ridge, Part 2

The next tattoo I photographed at the Third Avenue Festival belonged to a guy named Chris.

Chris has a leg piece that is an American flag emerging from under his skin. He wanted something patriotic, but didn't want a regular American flag. The result is pretty cool:



Chris was walking with a guy in an eagle costume, who was at the street fair to promote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a local paper. While I was snapping these shots, the Eagle, who knew Chris, kept telling me to take a picture of Chris' other tattoo, and kept trying to lift Chris' left sleeve.

Chris was game and showed me his other one:


This is the artist's rendering of this famous photograph:


That's 1963, when Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolated in 1963. Chris advised that the monk tattoo represented self-sacrifice.

Chris had these done at Brooklyn Ink. The artist is Joe-Mags.

Thanks, Chris, for your participation!