Summary: A behind-the-scenes tour of the fabled tattoo industry on the arm of a swashbuckling insider and natural-born storyteller.
Booklist Reviews
Fans of the TV show Miami Ink should gravitate toward this memoir written by a veteran tattoo artist. It's a fascinating book, especially for a reader unfamiliar with the whole tattoo scene, somebody who imagines a tattoo shop to be the clichéd (and, these days, largely nonexistent) dark, smoky, unsanitary little hole in the wall. Tattooing, author Johnson explains, is an art form, and its practitioners are dedicated experts. Yes, some of the old-school butchers and scam artists still exist, and we learn all about them, but mostly Johnson is interested in explaining how a formerly disreputable profession has achieved not just reputability but also respect and pop-culture status. Still, he reminds us, tattoo artists are people who turn living human bodies into works of art; it follows that there are bound to be some seriously offbeat characters in the mix. Not to mention, of course, the customers, who run a wide gamut from straitlaced to way strange. This book is an engaging look not just at the tattoo artist's profession but also at the artists themselves. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.
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