FRESH INK
No More Tears (or Tattoos) for Ozzy
The Prince of Darkness is going soft on tattoos — or maybe he’s just getting more sensitive with age. At 71, Ozzy Osbourne — whose tattoos include “OZZY” on his knuckles, a Chinese dragon and vampiric skull on his chest, “Sharon” on his right arm — still hasn’t inked his face and never plans on doing so.
“Anything above the collar should be stopped. To be honest it makes you look dirty,” the Black Sabath frontman said on his Sirius XM Radio show Ozzy’s Boneyard.
“They reckon that as you get older it hurts more,” he continued. “When I started getting this fucking sleeve I was like, ‘I am too old, stop’. I was 50 something and I was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ When he got my elbows I was like, ‘What are you doing? What are you paying this fucking asshole to do?'”
Covid Creating New Mindset About Tattoos
While some tattoo studios may still be closed due to pandemic restrictions, there’s actually a silver lining to the dark cloud. According to an MSN Lifestyle story, people are ready to show the world that they are virus survivors. Searches for “tattoos” are up 48% according to Google Trends, and in some cities where tattooing is allowed, bookings have doubled and even quadrupled.
Shawn Brown, owner of Whistlestop Tattoo in Hyattsville, Maryland said in an interview with WIJA that he attributes the boost in business to a pandemic mindset, people wanting to take advantage of something they’ve always wanted to do but never did, and are capitalizing on the moment, not knowing what tomorrow might bring.
This nagging itch to get inked isn’t something that surprises Dr. Vinita Mehta, a DC-based psychologist who specializes in treating depression, anxiety, and life transitions. “I think we would expect some kind of spike in tattooing just because so many people are going through something stressful right now,” she told MSN.
What Did We Just Say?
After spending months in isolation during the pandemic, when 103-year-old Dorothy Pollack was allowed to leave her nursing home she had a few things on her to-do list.She got her first tattoo, a frog, to celebrate her birthday. After being in isolation for so long, she said out of nowhere she decided she wanted a tattoo.
Why a frog? Pollack says it’s the one thing she loves more than beer and burgers.
Opening a Studio Near Campus is a Smart Move
Looking to open a new tattoo studio? You might think about going back to school. According to a study published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, 69% of college students polled obtain a tattoo and/or body piercing between the ages of 18 and 22. Opening a tattoo studio in close proximity to campus will expose the business to college students and ensure a steady stream of walk-in traffic. Locating the studio near bus or tram lines is also important to make sure students without vehicles have convenient access to the location.
Should Athletes Sweat Tattoos?
Tattoos are almost part of the uniform for athletes, and to some represent an expression of strength and power. To a physiologist, however, that tattoo might represent an impediment to the sweat glands working properly.
Researchers at Alma College in Michigan applied reactive patches to tattooed and untattooed skin and found that the tattooed area sweats half as much as the untattooed side. The composition of the sweat was also different, with perspiration from the tattooed skin containing nearly twice as much sodium as sweat from the un-inked side.
In med-speak, researchers said, “Lingering inflammatory cells [from the initial tattoo itself change the chemical environment within that area of the skin, in ways that slow the response of the glands and affect how much sodium is incorporated from nearby cells into the sweat.”
The study concluded it is “unlikely” that small tattoos would impede perspiration enough to contribute to overheating. But the case may be different for heavily tattooed athletes, and may be a reason that various studies have shown that players suffer a 3-5% loss in performance after getting tattooed.