But at the office Christmas party, an apprehensive Palomino decided to show up with a spaghetti-strap dress that put her chest and arm tattoos on display. The response surprised her, starting with Steve Deacon.
The Northeast Portland company’s middle-aged chief executive officer, who walked up to her. “He said, ‘Well, Aimee, how long have you had those, and why have you been keeping them from us?’” Palomino recalls. “It was like I opened a present in front of everybody.”
It’s largely a generational thing, and Portland is full of young people, but knowledgeable folks both within and outside the body-art industry seem pretty sure that Portland has more tattooed and pierced residents per capita than any city in the country.
And no, you can’t classify this in the Keep Portland Weird category — for those under, say, 40, tattoos have become very mainstream, crossing all sorts of political lines.
For decades, San Francisco was considered the country’s mecca for body art, but that’s changed, says Jeff Johnson, co-owner of Sea Tramp Tattoo Co. in Southeast Portland and author of “Tattoo Machine.”
Johnson says that over the past decade, tattoo artists from up and down California, but especially the Bay Area, have been flooding into Portland. Johnson says the result has been “a weird renaissance” in Portland.
Forest Grove connection
The tattoo-oriented trend also branched out to the suburbs — even the more rural reaches of the tri-county area.
Forest Grove, where 24-year-old Ryan Burke opened Tattoo Asylum in February, is a good example. The western Washington County city of 21,000 has welcomed Burke’s business with open arms — and legs and chests, too.
“I’ve done tattoos for people who just turned 18, and I just tattooed someone who’s 70 the other day,” said Burke, whose tidy shop is located on Pacific Avenue next to a children’s used clothing store. “He wanted a lizard.”
Burke admits that opening his business in the throes of a recession was a bit risky, but so far, he says, there’s no shortage of skin to go under the needle. That’s because he and his partner, Bertrand DeBrug, give people fair deals on quality body art.
“We specialize in doing pretty much any kind of tattoo — any request that walks in the door,” Burke said. “I’d say we’re mostly a custom tattoo shop.”
Burke got his first tattoo — a likeness of cartoon character Johnny the Homicidal Maniac — at 19 and “enjoyed the whole process,” he said. So much that he’s since acquired “13 or 14” more tattoos.
A couple years back he started training to become a licensed tattoo artist, which, in Oregon, means an apprentice must take 360 hours of classes. Burke also completed 150 hours of actual tattooing at Forbidden Body Art in Northeast Portland.
He’s earned his official paperwork from the Oregon Health Licensing Association.
It isn’t Burke’s desire to inflict pain on his tattoo customers, but he tells them up front that some discomfort is just part of the process.
“We basically tell people we’re going to do a small area first and see how they do,” Burke said. “I haven’t had anybody quit because of the pain … but it’s true that it’s a factor.”
If a client wants a larger body part tattooed — such as a “sleeve” on a forearm or a longitudinal design down the side – Burke and DeBrug take things slow. “We’ll ask them to make several appointments,” Burke noted. Most folks adopt a stiff-upper-lip attitude about the sting of tattooing. “It’s fairly tolerable,” said Burke. “In my mind it’s more like an annoyance.”
What tattoo design has Burke been most proud of? “Nos Sertatu, a vampire from an old black-and-white movie,” he said. What’s the most difficult design he’s attempted? “Believe it or not, it’s a circle,” Burke said. “The hardest thing to do is a perfect circle. Remember that it’s on the skin, and the skin is a breathing, moving thing.”