As a general rule of thumb I tend to distrust the quality and safety of door-to-door piercers that service the “piercing party” market — which range from the friend that pierces other friends to the stranger that makes their income from this. That said, I’m sure there must be some solid ones… However, this isn’t one of them. If a piercer works shirtless, start to wonder, but when he works without gloves, leave.

Speaking of commentary that will alienate the people who contributed the photos (I apologize for that), I find getting tattoos like the one on the right a little disturbing, even more so when they’re not just old tattoos, but current work by artists with a regular clientéle… For starters, it always surprises me when I see the general public get tattoos like this — there is so much good tattoo media out there these days that there’s no excuse for them not to be able to find a solid artist. In all seriousness, what is wrong with their vision that they can’t indentify aesthetic quality? I mean, everyone can identify a beautiful girl… why can’t they do the same for a tattoo?

But what surprises me more is the artists. If they’ve ever picked up a tattoo magazine, ever been to a convention or visited the other studios in their area, surely they know their work is atrocious? Surely they know they’re scarring people for life… Is there not a moral obligation on some level to find a different job? Or do both they and the client simply not care what it looks like? Is simply getting a tattoo the goal, rather than going to the effort to make sure it’s a specific dream piece?

Anyway, lest we get too hung up on bad tattoos, here’s one from Hawaii that I really like: