InkSpired Magazine Issue No. 44 | Page 77

a dozen Red Bulls and a copious amount of weed, but it still was pretty far. Nonetheless, we made it to the throng of people moving zombielike along the art walk and were absorbed into the flowing crowd. An endless sea of hipster faces washed up all around me it was an onslaught of mustaches, wax, big beards, and little hats. After being bumped, pushed, and prodded a few blocks, I was getting a little paranoid so we stopped into a tattoo shop where Sean knew an artist. The guy we were looking for wasn’t around but there were two young guys rambling on about the merits of the new school of tattooers and the shortcomings of the old school. Neither of them broke conversation for us and after a few minutes of listening to them talking out of their necks, I decided it was either time to straighten them out or split. We chose the latter and headed back out into the stream of wine soaked art patrons. As we were making our way through the throng, I was mulling over what we had heard and started thinking about the Butterfly Effect—a chaos theory that says small changes in a place in a nonlinear system can cause vast changes in a later point in time on this same system. It’s kinda like a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa then later in Japan there is a hurricane, ya dig? The bottom line is we never really know who all influenced us. We know the big names. We know things like Lyle Tuttle was instrumental in bringing business out of the underground and into the limelight. But we don’t know what countless nameless tattooers did to change the art, change the industry, and ultimately change us. I was distracted from my thoughts by an old ‘70s tune floating from a bar door. We were standing in front of a little bar where the neon was a little brighter than normal, and bathed in its light was a little slice of heaven right here on earth. She looked like she’d been around, maybe rode a little hard. But she had a timeless beauty about her. I mean, she was a little rough around the edges, but I’d ride her. She was an old Panhead with a sheepskin seat, a jockey shift, ape hangers, and a sissy bar as tall as me. I was immediately flashed back to the 70s. We had won the revolution, the war was over, rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay, and everybody had ‘ludes... Good times. I could see myself floating along the highway on that old pan with “Born to Be Wild” playing in the background, wind in my face, sun on my back. I heard someone saying, “hey, bro” when I was shaken out my reverie. It was the owner of the bike that I was staring at and what blew me away was he was a young guy, maybe 20 something. I shook his hand saying, “I thought this scoot belonged to an old InkSpiredMagazine.com 75