While having lunch today, I got talking to this lovely young lady.
Turned out she had an appointment a couple of hours later to get her very first tattoo from a local (Bangkok / Thailand) artist.
Within two minutes of chatting to her I knew that she knew nothing about tattooing, hygiene, transmission of viruses, etc. etc. etc.
I volunteered to go have a look at the studio and tell her whether the standard of their hygiene is up to Western standards. You might already know the answer… Of course it was not.
I strongly suggested to her to cancel the appointment, pay the guy some money for the work he had put into the design (about three hours), and then do further (= proper!) research when she arrives back in her own country. (She was from Switzerland, so she has the opportunity of getting work from the likes of Mick from Zurich, Filip Leu, Sabine Gaffron, Wido de Marval, etc. etc. etc.)
Of course I got an earful of “Oh, but they charge a lot more than this guy”, “This local guy is really nice and sweet”, blah blah blah.
Yeah, the likes of Filip Leu or Mick (in Switzerland) or Luke Atkinson (in Germany) do charge more than other tattooists in their respective countries, but: have you ever actually seen those guys work? They are so fast… Maybe you will find a guy who charges half the price of what they charge - but it is going to take him three times as long to finish the piece, so you will end up paying *more* and the quality of the work is not as great as what you could have had!
The other thing that bothered me about this beautiful girl: appointment to get tattooed today, off to the sunny beaches of Thailand for a holiday tomorrow… Fresh tattoo = no sunbathing, no swimming in the sea - and generally being careful and looking after the tattoo as well as possible.
As soon as I have more time, I will write a more in-depth article on the main site about this issue, since it really bothers me how little common sense so many people have when it comes to getting tattooed. The main site, btw is Tattoo-Source.com.
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