1983 was an outstanding year for me.  I owned a Hutch BMX bike, a pink Trickstar with purple components, a work of inanimate cool that today would get my ass kicked from St. Paul to San Gabriel.  I had mastered the Moonwalk—not quite on the same level as the late Jacko, but arguably better than Alfonso Ribeiro and Webster Emmanuel Lewis.

As due respect for my checkered Vans gliding backwards across the third grade classroom floors, I was rewarded with my elementary school’s “Entertainer of the Year” trophy.  Additionally, my uncanny nerdy ability to recite every single US President in chronological order had the teachers debating whether I should just go ahead and skip the forth grade and move straight into the prestigious fifth!

But to top it all off, I was given permission to bring my album of choice to third grade music class—Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil, which my closet headbanger music teacher turned off with a look of mock-outrage after just twenty or so seconds, but I’d gotten the otherwise reserved Midwestern class to bang their heads (at this point I’d watched Footloose 853 times, because I identified with Kevin Bacon’s character’s awkward transition from city boy to townie):  mission accomplished.

So when I was in Las Vegas a few years back, I had to pay homage to both my impressive third grade accomplishments and an inspiration behind them—Motley Crue, whose front-man Vince Neil had opened up a tattoo parlor on the Vegas Strip.  I turned to my wife, who already (eyes rolling) sensed what I was thinking, and without saying a single word to one another, we walked into the shop.

I had lived a wild life up to this point—up to marriage, anyway—and how I possessed completely inkless skin was suddenly beyond me.  Hell, all my friends were inked to varying degrees, some way more than others, like a Los Angeles acquaintance who worked as an occasional bodyguard for outlaw country star David Allen Coe, the country star’s full name emblazoned across the inked out canvas that was his massive back; his face was even tatted up to the point that it appeared likely to many a passerby that he’d fallen to earth from the same planet as Mike Tyson (a quick note from Captain Obvious:  never walk into the tattoo parlor while loaded up on ergot rye fungus).

The way my rather obsessive and addictive behavior tended to manifest and at times punk my judgment completely out of whack, I had a valid fear that my first tattoo would eventually take me to the brink of leaving no visible trace of my former virgin skin, that I’d perhaps be hanging upside down in the buff in all my full-body tattooed glory, a rusty set of meat hooks keeping me suspended on the traveling circus circuit, or featured as the central object of some installation exhibit inside an enormous glass cube at the Museum of Modern Art.

But potentially life-changing and definitely compromising prospects aside, I decided to take the plunge and initiate the process at Vince Neil Ink in Las Vegas, where I actually was put on a red-light district display of sorts, my entire tattoo experience unfolding behind the large voyeuristically geared window-pane that faced the adjoining casino (at least it wasn’t the even larger one facing the Strip).

The artist, hand picked by tat-connoisseur Vince Neil himself, began the small body of work on the area of skin just a few inches below the hairline of my neck.  I supposed that even if the artist turned out to be something of a butcher, the odds were slim that he’d fumble up the simplicity of just a single letter—M at roughly 3X2 inches—that oh so cleverly symbolized my lovely wife, Maya.  A single letter in the case our marriage, God forbid, ever went south:  my last name is Myers (whoa!), one of my favorite films is the 1931 Fritz Lang German classic M, and certainly many other explanatory possibilities were highly possible with just a minimal amount of creativity (I thought about how Johnny Depp turned his Winona tattoo into Wino by zapping off the last two letter’s of Ryder’s first name; nice work, Officer Hanson, very nice indeed).

The entire process took not much longer than a half hour and the final bill was over 200 dollars.  Holy shit, man, did you just say 200 dollars!  But I played it off high-roller cool (no, probably not, but that sounds kind of cool) and forked over the dough and immediately justified the price by what a nice, clean job he’d done; and indeed it was fine craftsmanship, which is certainly at least in part what one pays for; yet I was fully aware that I’d also paid for the Vince Neil/Motley Crue cache (a bit of a stretch, maybe, but it’s totally way cooler to say I got my tat at Vince Neil’s joint in Vegas rather than pinned down on the shower floor at Pelican Bay).

For my next tat—and only other one to date—I randomly chose The Ink House on Main Street in Maya’s birthplace of Ventura.  I didn’t know much about the joint, and I was basing my choice on the indefinable feeling one gets when a mysterious chemistry is in the air and flips a certain switch in the mind, the sort of deja vu that puts one at ease rather than eliciting the more typical jarring sensation of fight or flight.

I hadn’t made the appointment that I didn’t have the slightest clue was usually necessary; yet my casual walk-in nonetheless turned out to be quite fortuitous for both the artist and his new clueless customer.

The artist, Dave Barton (aka Evil Dave), had some time to kill before his next appointment, and he immediately struck me as the sort of dude who loved to ink it up all day long, became restless when he was away from the ritual for too long.  So with a much appreciated enthusiastic interest (vs. the detached deadpan cool of Vince’s guy, whose first name I’m not sure I ever caught) he asked me what type of work I wanted done, as I followed him into his unassuming wood-walled anti-cubicle to which voyeurs had limited access at best.  I explained to him that I wanted my 3 month old son’s first name and middle initial tattooed across the inside of my left forearm; and I admitted that I was still fairly uncertain about which font I thought would look best, although I also let him know that I wasn’t particularly picky either, as long Old English (gangland’s font of choice) or Fraktur (a German font used in Third Reich propaganda publications) were kept as far away from me as possible.

Once again, I didn’t ask about price, since the service is rather intimate in nature and really much less of a concern to me than overall quality.  However, upon completion of the very deft—and def, if you will—cursive rendering across the length of my inner left forearm, each letter nearly the same size as the letter M tatted at Vince Neil’s Vegas joint, I was in such utter disbelief when he asked for just one C-note that I forked over one-hundred and thirty bucks without a second thought, and I immediately scanned and uploaded his business card to my Myspace page when I returned back home.

Assessing both tattoo experiences, Vince Neil Ink in Vegas and The Ink House in Ventura rendered the sort of top-notch quality I’ll be happy to care for in the coming years and proudly display until my parachute doesn’t open or I finally have an opportunity to test drive a McLaren F1.

Nevertheless, I have to say that I am more committed to the comparatively low-key but ultimately similar high-tattoo art experience of The Ink House vs. Vince Neil Ink.  And while I’m not necessarily making a case that The Ink House is superior to Vince Neil Ink, the experience at The Ink House was like slipping into a custom made suit whereas the experience at Vince Neil Ink was rather like the thrill of hopping on stage at an intimate Crue show without being entirely able to allow the thrill to kill the self-consciousness that was totally absent in that whole Ink House groove into which I immediately identified something that is distinctly me.

Final Note:  Some will feel indifferent about the matter; others will more strongly sway to one shop over the other for reasons that are likely personal in nature rather than viewing one shop as substantially superior to the other—so I would encourage you to check out both, if you haven’t already, beginning by clicking the following links:

www.myspace.com/vinceneilink

www.myspace.com/inkhousetattoos

Also check The Ink House’s Evil Dave Barton’s own website at:

www.tracesofdave.com

In addition to inking your precious skin with an obvious mastery, Dave also specializes in the delicate art of tattoo removal, so c’mon ladies, don’t you think it’s finally time to get rid of those ill-advised declarations of lust on your inner thighs and butt cheeks?  Dave can help!