It’s Just Poison…

I woke up at 9am on the dot and felt a lot better than the night before. I jumped in the shower, sprayed on my deodorant (that’s important to note because I couldn’t find gel anywhere. I’ve never used spray before and I’m not a fan…), through on my leather pants, and added a couple layers to my top. On my way out the door, I received a text from Dan telling me that he was downstairs and had a taxi ready.

Dan, his wife, and I all got in the taxi and headed to a local flea market / vintage clothing store area of Milan. Dan’s wife wanted to do some shopping, so we dropper her off there, then we got into the Metro and headed uptown to the cemetery.

Exiting the metro, we used our natural innate sense of direction (obviously because we’re men =), to guide us to the cemetery. We even used the angle of the sun to determine time and direction. We were like friggin’ boy scouts. Just heavily tattooed, freaky looking, wearing black leather boy scouts =).

We came to the cemetery without a single wrong turn (because it was a straight line =). Again there was a no photography sign outside, but that was slightly ignored. Once stepping foot inside, there was no was not to take photos of these graves. They were the most amazing, over-the-top, massive, and decadent grave sites that I have ever seen. There wasn’t a single regular grave stone. Each one has their own bronze stature, or hand carved granite design. Those were the smaller ones. The more extravagant ones looked like miniature churches getting three or four stories high! Now most of these were family plots, or for couples. But there was one massive churchy-tomb thing that was for just one girl that had recently died. The amount of money people pour into the afterlife is amazing!

A lot of the statues were very depressing, but amazing pieces of art. Others just deserved hoaky commentary. I think we found sky diving jesus, new age jesus, Tim Burton jesus, High-Five Moses, and a few others that were kind of entertaining. There were two that really stuck out as modern pieces of art. They were very mechanical in nature. What made them even cooler was that they were made in the 1960’s. The designs of these rival any modern bio-mechanical art that’s been made in the last 20 years. On top of that, they’re grave markers!

There was one tomb that was just perplexing and gave almost no information to it’s meaning. It was an inclosure about thirty feet high and ten feet deep. It had astrological-like symbols and mathematical signs all over it. They looked more like a new type of math equation, or crop circle than anything I have seen before. There wasn’t even a handle to open the doors, just four finger holes carved into the stone. Wanting more answers, we found a window on the backside of it. Again, making no sense, as the back was surrounded by bushes and trees. No practical use for the window. Peering inside, we could just barely make out some gold text in a ring around the door. It was all in italian, so we didn’t know what it said, but one of the words was “occult”. This was a story I really wanted to know the end of, but will never get. Kind of like a song that’s stuck in your head. WHAT IS IT?!

The last area of the cemetery that we check out was back by the entrance, the burial ground for the Jews. They had their own walled off corner. Very walled off. Somewhere around 20+ feet high and ten feet thick. I wonder who wanted it that way, the christians or the jews? There were some large plots like in the rest of the cemetery, but nothing like what the christians were doing. Instead of mourning mother bronze statues, or granite crucifixes, their statues were all Menorahs. There was one of a Rabbi or something. I’m not too versed in judaism to know for sure.

It was now 1pm and time to grab some lunch then head back to the convention. It opened at 2pm and I wanted to get as much coverage as possible today. I also wanted to give away the rest of my shirts. So after a couple slices of pizza, we jumped back onto the Metro. Dan met back up with his wife to spend the day sight-seeing, and I continued on to the hotel.

First thing’s first, drop off all my crap in the hotel room and put on a tank top. I needed to keep as cool as possible. I was starting to feel *meh* again…

When opened the doors to the convention I was shocked by the amount of people. I didn’t think it was possible, but it looked like there were even more people here today. To make sure all the shirts went, this time I put them up on the table. The crazy pope shirt disappeared almost immediately! I was even getting request for them. Apparently the shirt was a hit with the crowd. Lesson learned, bring more shirts and sell them =)

Almost immediately I ran into [@]Groundstruck[/@] and his friends. We chatted for a minute, but I had to run up to the room real quick, so I told him to come by the Tribulation booth later and we I’ll be available to hang out.

Today I spent trying to cover more of the people that were at the convention than the artists. A lot of the people that came to this convention had great work, and were more than willing to show it off. I also walked around and tried to get a lot of shots of work-in-progress of all the artists. Tim wound up working on a girl from the UK’s chest while I was there, so I grabbed a couple shots of it. The red skull in the center of her chest really screams. Amazing work.

Speaking of works-in-progress and recently finished tattoos, everyone please listen to me. WRAP THAT SHIT UP WHEN YOU’RE DONE! I can’t believe how many people that just finished their tattoo, or were in the middle of one going out for a smoke break were walking around with a completely uncovered blood oozing mess. Not only is that disgusting as all hell, but dangerous to yourself and everyone around you. The same goes for you if you just had your hand tattooed, no, I don’t want to shake your hand. New tattoo = open wound. Treat it like one. Ech!

OK… rant over. Back to the convention. About half way through the day, the first performance took place, it was a couple girls on stage being airbrushed by a few guys. I don’t think there was anyone there that didn’t mind staring at a cute chick on stage in a bikini x2 =).

After a while of watching that, I went around to get some more photos of people at the convention and having a good time with their friends. That’s when I ran into my Slovenian friends from the last convention here in Milan a couple weeks ago! How cool is that? We chatted it up for a while and got to hang out for a bit before they had to go. Turns out, they carpooled and drove here from Slovenia. Took them a little over 5 hours. That didn’t seem too bad to me, but when they put it into perspective for me, it made more sense. To drive from one end of their country to the other it only takes 2 hours. That’s just crazy! To think you can cross a country in a matter of hours is mind-blowing. About six and a half years ago I drove from Colorado to NYC and it took me two days! Attention to all Europeans! This is why most Americans “don’t leave their country”. You guys only have to drive a couple hours, we have to fly across an ocean =).

While I was chilling at the Tribulation booth, Tim finished up a tattoo on a girl that came down to get her chest tattooed. The finished product was amazing. There was some black and grey flora surrounding a very prominent red skull. As amazing as it was, that was nothing to the extremely simplistic tattoo of lettering on the back of her head that read: “SLAYER” !! This has to be one of the coolest girls EVER! Her boyfriend (whom was also there is is as equally cool) is damn lucky =)

A little bit later, the Miss Tattooed Pinup 2009 contest finalist had begun. Turns out that a friend of [@]Groundstruck[/@] was one of the finalists. It was down to the final four contestants and it looked like it was going to be a close close call. There were four judges, one of which was the winner from last year. After a couple presentations by each contestant they began the judging. Please keep in mind that I’m kind of guessing on what was really going on here. I don’t speak too much italian =).

In fourth place, was the girl in the black dress. In third place, was the girl in the white dress. In second place, was the girl i the pink dress. Which leaves, our new Miss Tattooed Pinup 2009 the girl in the blue sailor outfit, Groundstruck’s friend =) Yay!

I wandered around the the rooms some more and checked out a few of the merch stands. I kept coming back to this one both that had some amazing jewelry, Micromutazioni (www.Micromutazioni.com). I bought a bracelet from the during the last convention, and wanted to buy a bunch of other stuff, but alas… i was broke, so I just drooled on the cases for a while =)

I took a few more photos of some interesting people and tattoos around the convention, then headed back up to my room to transfer everything to my computer and to get ready for dinner. I had about ten minutes to meet up everyone in the hotel restaurant. We decided to play it simple tonight.

When I got back downstairs, everyone was already there and was just about to be seated. Tonight dinner was with Tim Kern, Robert Hernandez, Ethan Morgan, Jeremiah Barba, and his girlfriend. We all shared a couple…umm… maybe a few =) bottles of wine and and some appetizers before having to beg to order dinner. Point blank, the service here SUCKED. The food was amazing, and as long as we had wine, we let them keep being dicks. We just made fun of them when they weren’t around =). The choice main course was the Veal Risotto. It was mmmmmmmm….. We all decided that it was best to skip dessert and just head right to the bar to pick up where the wine left off. It was close to midnight when we hit up the bar, and by that point everyone was already having a grand old time. I thankfully got my drink order in before the bartender (if you want to call him that) got his ass handed to him by another guy. I have no idea what the dialog was, but I got my drinks, so I just moseyed on by.

This cold that I’ve been fighting all day seemed to be put on hold from the alcohol, well at least it felt that way. I even got Tim to give me an interview on tape. I’d never “interviewed” anyone and it felt pretty weird. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and a good learning experience for myself. I’m trying to edit and get the thing ready to post that next.

Once the interview was done, I had two options. I could either head back down to the bar and party it up, or be lame and go to sleep and try to overcome this cold. I choose to be lame and pass out early and sleep in late. …. lame!

.: Adam

Friday the 13th, the first day of the tattoo convention.

Tim and I woke up around nine in the morning so that we could hit up the continental breakfast in the hotel. Unlike in American hotels, the continental breakfast in Italy is a full on buffet. I think I had two plates of sausage, eggs, bacon, and fruit. They had a whole other table full of baked goods and other breakfast items, but I was playing it simple and keeping it down to the basics.

Sometime around 10am, we finished up and headed back up to the room. The convention wasn’t to open it’s doors until 2pm, so I had a good four hours to kill and really wanted to go back out and explore the city some more. This time with my good camera. Tim had to work on a drawing for his first customer and prepare the booth so he stayed back.

I grabbed my camera, ipod, sun glasses, my jacket and headed to the metro (subway). It was a little warmer out than the previous day, and not a cloud in the sky. I purchased my ticket and headed back to the city center to re-trace some of my steps from yesterday. I wanted to get a better lock at everything, and get some better photos. The iPhone is nice and all, but will never substitute for a decent camera.

I exited the metro and headed towards the castle. I really didn’t get a good tour of the place, and there were a couple other things around that I wanted to check out that I missed yesterday. This time when I got to the castle I opted to head north a bit first. I cut through the carnival area (yes, there was a traveling carnival surrounding the park next to it), and head to an old arena that is still being used today for races and events. It’s not as big as the colosseum in Rome, but it’s still “ruin” old.

From the arena, I headed back to the castle to check out more inside. Looks like the cops did a fresh sweep of clearing out the irritating panhandling vendors of crap and knockoffs, because I didn’t see a single one this time.

Now that I was more familiar with the city, I knew how to get directly to the Duomo. A couple people told me yesterday that you can get on top of the building and walk around the roof off it, and that the inside was also open for tourists. Man, I hate that word…tourist. To me a tourist is someone that plans out their whole trip down to the hour, carries around a fanny pack, and doesn’t even attempt to think that they’re in someone else’s home. I hate tourists. They have no concept of where they’re going or where they’ve been. I am a traveler. I prefer to show up, strap on my boots, plug in my iPod, and walk around the city until I feel like I can’t walk any more. I want to see what’s down the back alleys. I want to find a local pub and share a pint with the locals. I want to actually experience where I am and appreciate it for what it is to it’s greatest extent.

Sorry… got a little carried away there =).

So, onto the Duomo! On the way there, I took a little detour to see a statue of Leonardo Di Vinci that a friend told me about that was on the way. I thought it was pretty impressive for a city / country to recognize an artist and show such a great tribute to him. Most of the statues I have ever seen are dedicated to war, government, or religion (I guess they’re all synonymous in a way), but to have one dedicated to a man of artistic importance seems times ahead.

After snapping a couple photos of people having their lunch a the feet of this inspiring man, I headed through the mall thing and around the corner to the Duomo. Even though I had already seen it the day before, it was still shocking to come upon it. The marble is such a bright white with the sun shining on it, and all the open space around it just makes it stand out that much more. With all the dull tones surrounding it, the church almost seems to glow.

I took a few photos of the church, then headed towards it to go inside and see if the interior was as impressive as the exterior. As I approached the church, the detail didn’t fade. It actually got even more intricate the closer I got. The massive doors were all cast in solid bronze, and had some of the most ornate detailing that I have ever seen in a piece of that time, or any really. You could put your face right up to the door and see what seemed like an endless amount of detail to each seen being represented in all of the panels that told a story.

There were a couple military men guarding the entrance that gave me a minor pat down and a wave of a metal detector. I’m guessing that it was just a formality, because all the metal I was wear lit that thing up like a christmas tree, and they just waved me past. I guess I don’t look like someone that wants to blow up a church =)

Once I stepped inside, it took my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark lighting inside. Once it did, I stood motionless for a minute in awe just taking in the massiveness of the space inside. I should have anticipated that the inside would be equally extravagant, but I was again caught off guard. I mean, this was impressive as all hell given todays technological and architectural advances, but this place was build somewhere around 500 years ago! This place was standing before Columbus even set foot in North America. That kind of thinking just blows my mind. Her I am all impressed that I can build a bar in my basement with the help of power tools and some planks of wood. I wouldn’t even know where to begin on putting something this massive together with the tools they had then. Just awesome!

There was a sign outside that said photo’s weren’t allowed inside, but I figure that as long as I didn’t use a flash, I wouldn’t be bothering anyone. This place was so huge and vast inside, that a flash would have only made my photos look like crap anyway. I love seeing people take pictures with a flash in huge dark areas. Then they wonder why they can’t see anything in the pictures…hehe. Sorry, I digress…

I took a lot of photos of all the different areas of the inside of the Duomo, and wondered towards the back of the church were I saw a stature that was so creepy. It was a statue of a man carrying his skin. Think Hellraiser. Turns out, it was a statue of a martyr / priest that was flayed alive! Man, you gotta leave it to Christianity… zombies, cannibalism, and methods of torture / execution; they’ve created the best!

Just past the flayed priest was a little stairway downstairs. I wasn’t sure if were were allowed down or not, but I figured it was worth checking out. Glad I did. Turns out to be a tomb of a cardinal from the mid 1500’s! There was another room that had a gold chest locked away in a cage, but there wasn’t a sign, and it was too dark to really see anything else. I’ll have to do some research later and figure it out.

Back upstairs I snapped a couple more photos of the ornate stained glass windows and then exited on the side of the building. Right around the corner was an elevator that takes your to the top of the church for eight euros. Totally worth it.

The entire buildings outside is done with hand-carved marble. There was a little pathway that lead you around the edge of the roof, and stairways the would take you up to the higher levels. This building definitely is a work of are through-and-through. Every piece has something special about it. Pieces of the building that probably only a handful of people would ever see have amazing details carved into it. This type of architecture just doesn’t exist anywhere else that I have ever seen, and given all the money flowing around the world, it’s really sad that all the buildings we’re creating are plain boxes with no artistic value in them whatsoever.

While I was taking photos on the roof, I noticed that the switch on my lens that’s supposed to be on for low-light photography was off. Crap! That means all the photos I just took inside, are going to come out blurry as all hell. Crap, crap crap! Not willing to chance this opportunity, I descended the building and went back into the church to retake all my photos. The only place I wasn’t able to get to was the tomb. They had the gate shut and all the lights off. Dang it.

When I left the building it was nearing 2pm, and I had to get back to the hotel. The convention was starting and I wanted to get there before too many people showed up so that I could get some good pre-convention shots.

When I arrived at the hotel, I got in line to get my pass into the convention. I was told earlier to pick up my press pass at the ticket box office where entrance passes were being sold. I grabbed a couple panini from the sandwich guy and walked to the side of the building and got in line. There seemed to be a lot of people already in line, but I assumed that it would move pretty quick. I had some food to tide me over anyway.

When I finished my food, I realized that I hadn’t moved a foot in line. This was just ridiculous. I didn’t want to wait outside any more, so I figured it was best to play my social engineering card to skip to the front and just get in.

I started walking to what I thought was the front of the line (about 200 people or so in front of me). I say “thought” because it turned out to be just the first corner! When I turned, I saw another 500+ people standing in line! Holy hell! I’ve never seen so many people stand in line for a tattoo convention ever! This was amazing. And I obviously severely underestimated what was about to take place here.

When I reached the front of the line I approached the security guards and told them that I was told to come up here to get my press pass. They looked a little confused and initially tried to tell me to wait in line. That was not going to happen. I reaffirmed that I was to be here by showing them my camera and pulled up an email on my phone. That seemed to do the trick. After finding my name on a list, they gave me my wristband and I was in. Huzzah!

Once I was inside, I headed up to my room to drop off my jacket and pick up a couple shirts that I wanted to give away. For the first day, I just gave them to the few friends that I had there. I spent the next four hours wondering through the four different rooms that were being used by the convention, five if you want to count the hallway area that had a bunch of tattoo-related artwork hanging for passersby to see.

I was in shock by how large this convention was. There were easily over 150 artists 30+ vendor booths. The artists were from all around the world and showing off all different types of styles. Black and grey work, old school color, traditional hand-poke, photo-realism, polynesian tribal, and one guy that seemed to be doing some impressive dark wood cutting style designs. No matter what kind of tattoo style you were into, some of the best in the world were here to show it off.

I checked in with my friends Dan Marshall, Liorcifer, Tim Kern, and Jeremiah Barba of Tribulation Tattoo (NYC) and Barba Studios (CA), and used their booth kind of as my home base. My next stop was to say hi to Robert Hernandez and Ethan Morgan who were sharing a booth an aisle over. As more people showed up it started getting really crowded and hot. It took me about 10 minutes to walk 100 feet. When I arrived at their booth, Robert had already started tattooing on a guys arm. But Ethan wasn’t there. I told Robert that I would keep an eye out for him while I was walking around and headed for the beginning of room 1.

As soon as you enter room 1 from outside, you are given a program of events, and a Tattoo Life magazine (really good international tattoo magazine, and you should check it out if you get the chance!).

The first row was split up between vendors and artists. Along the right side were a couple vendors that were selling art pieces and a few tattoo artists planning their day out. If they hadn’t already begun tattooing, you could see them drawing up their designs for pieces they were about to begin. Along the left side were all vendor. First was a cave of clothing. I say that because it was all black clothing, and covered from the ground to the ceiling in items for sale. There was even a little entrance and exit. Next to them was the Suicide Girls booth. They were there to give away stickers and sell shirts. There were also a couple Suicide Girls behind the booth (clothed) to take pictures of. That was exciting for about a second. Past them were a couple more clothing merchants, one of which was a large “Support 81” booth.

Along the back of the room were a couple more tattoo booths, vendor booths selling tattoo equipment, and the improv bar selling beer, wine, and water. One of the girls behind the counter there kept hooking me up with free bottles of water. Never got her name, but it was much appreciated! Thank you mystery water girl!

The middle two aisles were all tattoo artists. Some of the studios included, Tribulation Tattoo, Barba Studios, Daredevil Tattoo, The Leu Family, Robert Hernandez, East Side Ink, Lowrider Tattoo, Smith Street Tattoo Parlour, Iron Age Tattoo, and a bunch others. I snapped a lot of photos of the artists at work (and some just dicking around…i mean, c’mon, it’s a tattoo convention =).

Onto the second room. This room was about half the size of the first room and was split pretty evenly between tattoo artists and vendors. Some of the artists that were in the studios being represented in the second room were Red Rocket Tattoo, Immortal Ink, LTW, and East Tattoo.

One of the artists at Red Rocket Tattoo had some of the most amazing flash that I have ever seen. It was all Star Wars based, and had a perfect touch of humor and irony too it. His collection of tattoo work that is also Star Wars based is also pretty impressive. Thankfully their based out of NYC, so I’m going to make a trip to their studio when I get home to get more info on this awesomeness.

Included in the merch booths were a couple laser removal booths (one was giving free demos), and another was demonstration a new type of tattoo machine (Monello Tattoo). I’m not sure on the specifics, but it looks like an air compressor powered machine. I don’t know enough about the technical aspect to even begin commenting about machines. But if you’re interested, you can find more info at www.monellotattoosupply.com. There was another artist that was in this room that really caught my eye, Tattoo Alien from Poland. Check out his portfolio at www.tattooalien.com. If I was going to get work done there, it would have been by him. I didn’t get a chance to speak with him, because every time I went by there he was working, so hopefully I will run into him at a future conference.

In the third room, it was split up among vendors, artists, and food. The merch here was mainly clothing and catering towards girls with 5 euro shirt bins. I’ve never seen girls get so fierce over clothing before =). Some of the artists that were here included Hunter Spanks, Vatea Tattoo, Tattoo Moon, Human Fly Tattoo, Boucherie, and Maximo Lutz.

To get to the fourth (Quasar) room, you had to go back through to the first room and then through a hallway (the one with all the art on the walls. The entire place was packed to the walls, and was taking forever to get from one place to another. Patience was something that you had to have here. That and a lack of personal space.

I kinda felt bad for the artists in the fourth room because it was a lot hotter (sauna temperatures) and a lot darker. If the artists didn’t have their own lamps, I don’t know how they would have worked. This room had some of the local Italian artists and studios. These included, Morganic Heart, Electric Tat2ing, Mojo Tattoo, and Marco Lari Tattoo.

Marco Lari is another artist that I liked a lot. He tattoos a very similar style to my likings. Dark art and black and grey work. I have a feeling I will be looking him up in the future.

I had to get out of the room, and I wasn’t feeling too hot, so I headed back to the Tribulation Booth to chill out for a while and get some water i me.

On my way back to the booth, I passed by Robert Hernandez’s booth again and found out that Ethan was super sick and sleeping back in the hotel room. Sucks. From there, I passed by Tin Tin’s booth and saw a lot of nothing. There was just a sign on the table that stated, “Sorry, No Tattoos Today. Our Luggage Is Lost.” That really sucks!

When I returned to the Tribulation booth, Tim Kern was working on a Transformers Decepticon chest panel, Liorcifer was tattooing a skull on a guys hand, and Dan Marshall was tattooing a half-sleeve of the Munsters onto a band member of Lacuna Coil.

I chugged some water, and decided that I was just too exhausted from the jet lag, partying, and the few miles of walking earlier that day. The heat was getting to me, and I didn’t want to be around the crowd any more. I figured, it was only 6pm, so I could go take a nap.

I headed upstairs, dumped all the photos off my camera to my computer and set my alarm for 8:30. That should give me an hour and a half of recuperation time, and leave plenty of time to head back down to do some more coverage.

Tim woke me up when he walked in the room at 10:30. Apparently my alarm did squat, and they shut the convention down at 10pm sharp. Dang it. To top things off, I felt like total shit. Awesome. Looks like I got whatever Ethan’s got. I can’t let this happen. I need to be healthy. It’s only the first day, and I *need* to be out there as much as possible. It’s why I’m here! Arg!

Tim asked if I wanted to go get some dinner. He knew of a pizza place around the corner. I was really hungry and knew I needed food. Also, some fresh air wouldn’t hurt. Turns out, the pizza place is only taking reservations because there are so many people trying to get in there. So, we wound up walking to McDonalds again. I wasn’t too thrilled about this, but we didn’t have any other options. Mickey Dee’s it is!

We ran into Robert there, so we all shared our awesome dinner together. I wound up having pretty much the same thing as last night. I couldn’t not get the curly fries (like the use of the double negative there =), and who doesn’t like bacon?! To top it all off, I got an ice cream sunday this time. Nothing makes you feel like you’re 10 again than an ice cream sunday from McDonalds…hehe.

After we ended our feast of pseudo-food, we walked back to the hotel, and I headed straight up to the room. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I had made plans with Dan to go check out a supposedly amazing cemetery the next morning and I had to be up early. Nothing like celebrating being single on Valentines day than running around a cemetery in a foreign country with your friends!

.: Adam