Location: River City Tattoo on the Boulevard

Max is the man to see if you ever want ink.  I know, many readers of the TD probably are saying “want ink? Are you nuts?“ Well, yes and yes, but Max is still the man. He’s the sort of artist who’ll show the door to pretty girls who pull down their waistbands and say “dolphin or flaming skull?  What do you think?“  Max will answer “you’ll wear it a lifetime.  Go home and come back when you are sure.“

A few years ago, Max did a tattoo for me that is strategically hidden on my upper right arm.  I made the design myself, and Max is doing a re-ink now because I stupidly got sunburned about two weeks after he did the work.  But that’s all a prelude to how I connect tattooing and Second Life.

In both tattoo parlors and the metaverse, people lay claim to something virtual: a way to enhance their day-to-day existence. Don’t believe me? Ask the lawyer with the Harley and the dragon tattoo you’ll never see on the job.  Ask the waitress whose SL avatar is a dragon or an exotic dancer or a Star Fleet Captain.

In grad school a linguistics teacher once gave his theory for why individuals fight so hard to retain languages that are fading from the world or, say, in the case of Welsh, revive one that was in trouble: we all need a tribe in scary times.  Ours is certainly an age of dislocation, of global problems, and of a numbing sameness that keeps this writer from going to suburbia any more than I ever have to do.  In SL, you’ll not find Iggy in the bland casinos or clubs, either. He’ll be chilling somewhere with the really unique avatars who throw houses at each other, or getting plastered in Pappy Enoch’s camp, or maybe even doing research in an academic space.

It’s a new tribe, and it’s fun to be a member.  In SL one’s ink, by the way, can vanish in a right-click.  Dolphin? Flaming Skull? I’ll take both, Max.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

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