Brian Shares a Freddy Corbin Sugar Skull

As snow was falling on the Northeast Friday evening, I was gathered with friends at 5 Ninth in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan, celebrating our friend Nadyne's birthday.

It didn't take me long to notice that our bartender, Brian, had quite a few tattoos and it was only a matter of time before I drummed up a conversation.

Brian indicated that he has twenty-two tattoos, and when I told him about Tattoosday, he was happy to share.

He turned his arm to reveal this cool sugar skull on his outer left forearm:

Not only do I love sugar skulls (click the tag at the bottom of the post to see how many I've featured over the years), but this particular piece was tattooed on the west coast by the legendary Freddy Corbin at Temple Tattoo in Oakland. Freddy has been interviewed as an "Inked icon" here and has been featured on Vice's Tattoo Age series here.

Needless to say, I always feel fortunate to encounter a tattoo by one of the legends of tattooing.

A big thanks to Brian for sharing his awesome tattoo and to the good people at 5 Ninth for wonderful service as we celebrated Nadyne's birthday in the blizzard!

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If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Ink on 45, Courtesy of Erica (Musician Monday!)

It has been a while since we celebrated "Musician Mondays" here on Tattoosday so, it is with pleasure that we return with a musical tattoo.

Last month I had the pleasure of meeting my wife's cousin Erica for the first time.

She and her girlfriend Moki came over to visit for a small gathering at our home set up to memorialize another cousin who had recently passed away overseas.

And, whereas Moki had significantly more tattoos (we'll see one tomorrow), Erica has only one, and she was kind enough to share it here:

People born in the CD age might not recognize this as a "spider," which was a piece of plastic inserted into the center of small 45-rpm records that allowed them to be played on the small spindles on record players. Records were those things that we, back in the Dark Ages, listened to music on.

Erica currently is the bass player for a band called Poof Pony. She has played in other acts as well, including Turbonegra (a San Francisco-based all-girl tribute band to Norwegian punk band Turbonegro) and punk stalwarts MDC (in the 1990's).

Erica explains how she came by this tattoo:

"I got it done at Temple Tattoo in Oakland - it may have been by Jonah Levin but I wouldn't swear by it ... My friend Kristen had twin hellions that must have been two or three at the time - she had an appointment at Temple and let me know in no uncertain terms that I had a choice - I could either babysit the monsters or go with her to get my own. That meant no choice to me! Since I was turning 45 and love records, the tattoo was a no-brainer. Perhaps I should have thought about it though because quite soon after the ink had settled it was pointed out to me that I had actually put the Spin Magazine logo on my arm and that was just about as cool as getting the Rolling Stones tongue logo (not). I have since seen another bass player with it in exactly the same spot, and it's been confused with being both a swastika and a hazardous waste symbol, which just proves that I don't always run with the brightest crowd."

Thanks to Erica for sharing this iconic tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.