TATTOOS GONE GLOBAL
By Mike McCabe

In terms of global connectedness, it's not so much that our world is getting smaller; it's more that our sense of awareness and knowledge encompasses more and travels distances that used to be unthinkable. So, in a personal sense, our world is getting larger?much larger. We know more about more things than ever before and nowhere is this process better revealed than in the completely internationalized art form of tattooing. From Beijing to Brooklyn, Tokyo to Shan State Burma, distinctly different tattoo vocabularies coexist today and maintain an intriguing sense of distinctness and integrity. So here's a brief snapshot of five cities and five shops that exemplify the global trend.

HONG KONG
Tough, tattooed girls wearing next to nothing sit in front of neon-lighted go-go bars calling out in broken English, "You buy me drink, no shit!" Groups of suspicious men who know the drill swing wide on the narrow sidewalk and smile. The stroll along Lockhart Road in the notorious Wan Chai district of Hong Kong continues to live up to a reputation that started more than sixty years ago with Suzie Wong and then peaked as a sailor town during the Korean and Vietnam wars. The stairs that lead up to Ricky and Pinky's Tattoo Shop on Lockhart are quiet. The USS Kitty Hawk was scheduled to dock in Hong Kong, but was turned away due to a diplomatic squabble. Ricky sits quietly, surrounded by walls overflowing with classic, hand-drawn tattoo flash. Dragons of every description coil restlessly into themselves, waiting for some business. A TV with no audience babbles mildly in Cantonese.

Ricky looks across the large shop and says in a falling voice, "No payday this time. Too bad." His words are clouded with a heavy Hong Kong inflection as he continues. "When Navy in town," he says, "Wan Chai still good business. But this new world now. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Everything change."

In a different world not too long ago, sailors collected tattoos from every conceivable corner of the globe. They became breathing encyclopedias of tattoo designs shared among a relatively small and private group of appreciators. The designs traveled slowly between different peoples and cultures: Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok, Rangoon, New York, Shanghai, Beijing and the port cities in Europe. The world was a very big, mysterious, round place. Today, distances have been eliminated electronically and some are saying "the world is flat" to describe the new sameness and disappearance of difference between people and cultures. In contrast, the tattoo world looks very round as it explores and appreciates new connections between people and places.

China has the world's largest population, more than one billion people, who are characterized by tremendous regional and ethnic diversity. The capital, Beijing, with twelve million people resonates with a cross-section of Chinese life. Modern skyscrapers stand next to Hutong neighborhoods that look three hundred years old. Tattooing is becoming very popular among young, cosmopolitan Beijingers and body art designs reflect an intersection of traditional Chinese and international influences.

Wang Qing Yuan, or Kisen Wang, is the president of the Tattoo Artist Association of China. He has just returned from more than a month in the Himalayas where he visited the Dulong ethnic group. Until recently, Dulong women's faces were heavily tattooed with identifying markings as a way to prevent kidnapping by larger ethnic groups such as Tibetans or Lisu. In small tribal groups, women are prized for their childbearing capability and must be protected. Less than fifty women with tattoos remain and Kisen believes it critical to talk with them and document their lives.

A month before Kisen left for his journey, he organized his second Beijing tattoo convention. Chris O'Donnell and Mike Rubendall from New York Adorned were invited to attend and exchange art, culture and knowledge with Chinese tattooers. Paul Booth attended Kisen's first convention in 2004. The traditional Dulong women and the contemporary Beijing conventions represent the broad spectrum that describes tattooing in China today.

"As a tattoo artist in China I have always felt I must do this kind of thing," Kisen says. "The Paul Booth event was a turning point in Chinese tattoo. Until then, no one was connecting people and giving support. I always felt it was really important to make an event. To create some connection. The information was available on the Internet, so people could see it.

"The second event was bigger and we invited more foreign artists. Lyle Tuttle came with Mike and Chris. This was a very big thing for China, so that Chinese artists could know foreign artists and artwork. Lately, I have wanted to tell people what real Chinese tattoo culture is about. The combination of Chinese and foreign artists is important.

"There are two different areas of Chinese tattoo history that might go back three thousand years. North of the Chang Jiang River, one tattoo style developed, in the south a different style. The Han people are north of the river, Bai Yue people or people of many nationalities are south. These are two very different Chinese cultures. The Dulong are a part of the Bai Yue culture.

"I spent more than a month with the Dulong people in the mountains. This is a very good example of the kind of tattoo history in China. It is a unique history because it has a past at the same time it is experiencing a future. Tattoo artists in China are isolated at this point. I feel good that I am helping them to discover their past, so they can bring it with them as they become a part of the modern tattoo world."

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Tony Polito has been tattooing in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York for more than forty years. Angelo Scotto has been tattooing in the Bronx for nearly as long and shares his shop, Champion Tattoo, with fellow tattooer Cubo. Other East Coast tattooers like Ronnie of Ronnie's Tattoo in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania and Marvin Moskowitz of Wally's Tattoo in Ronkonkoma, New York (whose father Walter and uncle Stanley were the legendary Moskowitz Brothers); all these tattooers continue to preserve through their artistic taste and mechanical sensibility the original backbone of early twentieth century American tattooing attributed to the Norfolk, Virginia Navy-town tattooer, August "Cap" Coleman.

Coleman's directly rendered, boldly outlined and simply colored tattoos traveled around the globe and profoundly influenced how tattoos should look. His perfectly adjusted machine changed a deceptively temperamental technology into one that got the job done quickly with minimal trauma to the skin.

"This is a business and should be conducted properly," says Tony Polito. "The machine has to run correctly. I set up my machines the same way the Old Man (Coleman) set up his. Strong outline with heavy, black shading and simple colors. You cannot tattoo with all this crazy nonsense. On Saturdays during the summer, I tattoo fifty, sixty guys. Blackie used to tattoo more than one hundred during the summer in Coney Island. He told me, 'I could have tattooed around the clock till it never ended.' Coleman did the same on paydays. He'd sleep in his shop and never leave.

"The Old Man visited Charlie Wagner on the Bowery and passed his knowledge to him. Charlie passed it to Willie Moskowitz, who passed it to his sons Stanley and Walter, who passed it to Marvin. This is how the knowledge was taught, by word of mouth. To conduct business you must set up your machines properly. If you can't see the tattoo from across the street, it's not a tattoo. The Old Man knew this.

"Today, a lot of young artists are doing beautiful tattoos. When I look at the best work, I can see the young artists who understand and respect the fundamentals. This knowledge started in New York on the Bowery with O'Reilly and Wagner. Tattooing was a very small world then, a couple guys here and there. New York is important because of this. It got passed to other guys from here."

BURMA
It is exotic and unnerving. The broken-up sidewalks in Yangon, Myanmar (formally Rangoon, Burma), are congested with a dizzying mixture of southern Asian people. Young street toughs hustle bad money and underage girls. Their bodies are littered with blurry hand-poked, jailhouse ink. Looking at the tattoos is like scanning a time warp. The designs are a feeble selection of motifs taken from fifteen-year-old Western tattoo magazines. The designs are a barometer of a gaping cultural separation between the developing and developed worlds.

Three days up-country in the Shan State, references to the West dim to a flicker. The infrastructure is a mess, electricity is sporadic at best and Internet access is nonexistent. At night, rather than watching TV, young people walk hand in hand, singing traditional songs.

In the town Taungoo, a Tri-Shot pedi-cab boy wears a battered baseball cap with what's left of a Nike logo on its crown. His forearms are heavily tattooed with knife-blade-shaped traditional Shan Thaing fighting designs. He also has impressive tiger-like tattoos on his thighs. The other drivers laugh at his display of bravado. His local tattoos compete in a cultural turf war of relevance with the Nike logo on his cap.

A traditional Myanmar tattooer named Thein-tan has been marking Taungoo men with fighting designs for more than twenty-five years. "The worship of animistic Nat gods continues in Myanmar," Thein-tan explains. "There are thirty-seven Nat gods that are helpful to the people. Young people continue to believe in the Nats, but if they believe too much their minds will be like shadows.

"Shan tattooing is more than three hundred years old," he continues. "There are some designs for life and others for fighting. Some are used by Nga Tat Phya thieves to make them quiet like a cat. Birthdays are important for tattoos. There are eight days to a week in Myanmar, not seven. People remember the day of the week they were born and get tattoos on that day. Usually people wait for the full stars to get tattooed.

"People who work in fields get spider tattoos on their legs and arms as way to scare snakes. Snakes do not like spiders. Men who fight get tattooed on their arms with designs of eels. This makes their skin slippery and difficult to grab. Fighters also have tigers tattooed on their legs. One climbs up, the other climbs down. Before they fight, they slap the tattoos to wake up the power of the tiger.

"Many young men get lotus designs on their chests for protection. People in Myanmar believe in both Buddha and the Nat spirits. Men and women might pray to Buddha, but also have a tattoo of a lizard with two tails. This will attract a new lover. There are five laws to follow when people get a tattoo: Do not kill, do not steal, do not cheat on wife, do not lie and do not drink alcohol.

"Shan tattoos protect but they also help people to think," Thien-tan concludes. "People should use their tattoos in good ways to give their bodies and thinking strength. People need this."

BANGKOK
Mr. Heng tattoos from his small apartment located deep in the maze of narrow old streets and alleys that twist through the Khaosan Road section of Bangkok, Thailand. He has been marking people with traditional Thai Buddhist images for sixteen years and first learned from monks when he was fourteen years old.

"I was a meditation student with monk Lonta Au Au at Wat Pochai which is outside Bangkok. Then I went to Wat Bang Phraw and studied traditional Thai tattooing there with a senior monk named Pain. He taught me how to use the power of the tattoo.

"I can tattoo any style, but prefer the old style. I don't make value judgments, new style or old. I like them all. There are many talented tattoo artists in Europe and America. They make special and amazing tattoos but not necessarily magic.

"There are many traditional tattoo forms. All cultures have these forms," says Mr. Heng. "Artists are sensitive to these forms, no matter where they live. In Thailand these traditional forms are used by people to change their lives. They go to priests and get tattoos and instruction about how to use the tattoo for change. In the West I think that people use the tattoo process to help them change too. It is just different."

It is very late at night but Sasha Aleksandar sits talking with Jimmy Wong at his tattoo shop on Soi Five in Bangkok. Outside in the hallway, the lights have been turned off and young women step in and out of the shadows. They play with the darkness, knowing how to use it.

"Gan Kun Bah (this crazy life)," Jimmy says in Thai, looking at the passing bar girls. "Poo Ying, same same (bar girls always the same)."

Jimmy has been tattooing in Thailand since the Vietnam War period and has chronicled the history of the practice in his culture. Sasha is from Croatia in central Europe but like many tattoo artists from around the world, he has found his way to Jimmy's shop. It is his first trip to Thailand and he is intrigued with traditional Thai tattooing.

"This traditional Thai tattooing is interesting to me," says Sasha, "this belief that the tattoos will change your life. At one time I think tattooing was like this for everyone. Now, in the West, this is seen as only superstition. Here it is a different story."

Jimmy responds saying, "There are still many tattoo ajarn in Bangkok who are practicing these techniques. Rather than becoming less popular, it is growing in popularity. Now young women are also getting traditional tattoos. Before, Thai tattooing was only for men.

"Young people see tattoos on TV but cannot afford Western style designs," Jimmy continues. "They go to see the ajarn instead. In Bangkok there are many serious ajarn: Ajarn Thong in the Thalad Plue district, Ajarn Pra-yawt in the Din Dang district, Ajarn John who tattoos at Wat Tung Set-tee (Fields of Millionaires Temple) and Ajarn Noo.

"Life in places like Bangkok is more difficult for young people now," Jimmy says. "They have bad job, no skills. Bangkok is expensive place. These young people see wealthy people live luxury life, drive fancy cars. Maybe they have no hope, so they ask tattoos for help. I think this is a part of it."

TOKYO
The Shibuya section of Tokyo is totally nuts. The area around the Yamanote subway station is overflowing with young people drunk on shopping. Shibuya Horimasa works from his small, private, apartment-style studio a short walk from the station. The business card on his mailbox is the only hint he works in the building. A customer waits patiently in the front room. while a second sits inside at the work station. Horimasa puffs at his cigarette and fiddles with the fine tuning of a tattoo machine. Heavy metal music fills the room.

As a Japanese tattooer, Horimasa has experienced a cross-section of artistic influences from his own culture, Europe and America. His work reflects a unique sense of depth that results from an accumulation of experience over time.

"When I was younger, I liked Western, one-point styles," says Horimasa. "At the time, America was a very big influence for young people in Japan. I am older now and I see the power in Japanese traditional tattoo styles. It is a strong, powerful style.

"I use a machine in my work, but I am trying to create a power with my tattoos. I realize that the traditional Japanese style has such integrity. I do not want to forget this. Somehow, I try to create a bridge between the different tattoo styles that impress me. Things have become so international now," he continues. "I have gathered influences from many sources and I am inspired by artists from many places. Young, old. I look and learn from so many artists around the world. In the future I see tattoo artists creating art for so many different purposes. Drawing, design, clothing. Collaboration has changed tattooing in so many ways. Tattoo images have worked their way into so many different places. Yushi at Scratch Addiction says, 'Tattoo is now a glue that connects many things. Many different people with different perspectives come together.' Yushi is right! The common denominator is tattooing.

"Tattoo people are excited about the differences between people, cultures and styles. They are NOT excited about the sameness of things. I think tattoo is good this way. Everything around the world can become the same, but not with tattoo. There is such strength knowing this."