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
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