THROWING YOUR SKIN INTO THE WIND
Sometimes, deciding exactly what you want is the hardest part of getting a tattoo, besides the pain that comes after the decision.
It’s not just the permanence of the decision, but the visual reminder of what could be a whimsical moment of charity.
That’s why today I’m standing next to a taxidermied wolverine named Clarence, holding a yellow dart in my hand and preparing to hurl it at a dartboard covered in traditional tattoo designs.
You can figure out what comes next: Wherever the dart lands is what will be inked into my skin — whether it’s a grimacing frog or a butterfly with eyes on its wings.
The dartboard of fate is hanging on a wall at Battle Royale Tattoo, an East End shop helped by artist Gabriel Massey. But there are some rules to the gimmick. For $100, a customer gets one dart to throw at the board. Wherever the dart lands, the customer gets that tattoo. For $150, they can purchase three darts and pick one of the three designs they landed on.
Battle Royale opened earlier this year right above the popular Barber and Coral Sword coffee and gaming cafe along Telephone Road. Between the clatter of coffee machines, hair clippers buzzing and tattoo machines digging into human flesh, it’s a one-stop shop for guys like the Texican.
“We were thinking how successful it had been at other shops and wanted to bring something fun and competitive to our own customers,” Massey says as I prepare for my fateful throw. “We thought a dartboard would be fun.”
There are three bull’s-eyes on the board, which can unlock other cool designs from legacy artists the shop chooses. Massey says the promotion, which was unveiled a few weeks back, has already yielded a handful of adventurous customers. Patrons can make the call on certain design changes, to a point, per the artists’ discretion.
Jared Green, owner of Richmond Avenue Tattoo, has a similar promotion going on, too. He ordered a set of dice from online tattoo supply company Tattoo Paint Roll. The dice are printed with nebulous words like “skull,” “fire,” “girl,” and “snake” on the sides. He rolls three dice onto his sketch pad and works with whatever is thrown, designing small, palm-size tattoos. Each roll is $150, and he’s only tattooing arms and legs.
“Whenever I have free time, I will draw whatever I roll,” Green says. It seems to also be a good artistic exercise for Green, unlocking the imagination. I’ve seen him roll and draw a panther with snake fangs and tongue behind a spiderweb background.
“I give people three chances, but the other guys at the shop have other rules.”
Last summer, Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas’ Deep Ellum district introduced a similar promotion, where customers could buy a mystery tattoo design out of a coin-operated vending machine for $100 — sight unseen. The tattoos were all traditional Sailor Jerry Collins tattoos. Nothing jokey or offensive, although if the customer already had too many devil head or snake tattoos, they could spend $20 and get another chance on another mystery design.
The first Houstonian to take part in Battle Royale’s promotion
was Liah Crumbley, 32, an avid tattoo collector who works at craft brewers Eureka Heights. She spent $150 for three darts and ended up with a stately, traditional eagle design.
“I am more of a jumpin-head-first-and-findout-if-there-is-water-later type of girl,” Crumbley tells me the week after getting her surprise ink. “It helps I am surrounded by people who support my craziness. The guys at work weren’t surprised I showed up with a random dartboard tattoo.”
It’s time for me to throw my dart.
“I mean if you land on the old-timey ship you can’t ask for the butterfly instead,” Massey jokes. My current, first-world problem is that I already have plenty of flowers, devils, pin-up gals and skulls tattooed on my body.
I take a deep breath, throw and hope my grandkids enjoy this story. The dart lands on the same eagle design that Crumbley received.
Designed by Battle Royale tattoo artist Tommy Basco, it soon finds a forever perch on my right pectoral.
Basco started tattooing in 2004 in Little Rock, Ark. He’s tattooed all around Texas, most recently Corpus Christi, where he made his name at shops like Shipwreck Tattoo Studio and Electric Pony.
“Your eagle came from some reference material I saw from some vintage tattoo designs,” Basco says.
“It’s a really old piece from Sailor Vern.”
He’s talking about Sailor Vern Ingemarson, a tattoo artist who started his career in the 1940s, during one of the art form’s most pivotal periods of visibility. Military men and women were coming home with new tattoos after time spent at war or at sea, mainstreaming tattoos like never before.
Basco likes the dartboard promotion because it gives undecided people a way out of making a choice of their own. Some people want to pull the trigger, he says, but don’t know where to begin.
“They just need to be good at aiming the dart,” Basco says with a laugh. “A little bit of hand-eye coordination goes a long way.”
People always say that tattoos are supposed to mean something. Each design is supposed to tell some inspiring tale for all to see, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes, they can be testaments to throwing caution, or in this case a dart, into the wind.