Ink bleeding into social fabric

By Mike Trask

Friday, Jan. 30, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The tattoo guns buzz like dentists’ drills and the smell of vitamin D ointment adds a medicinal quality to the few hundred painted arms holding aluminum bottles of Bud Light.

In a second-floor convention room at South Point, a casino known more for equestrian events, the first Art-N-Ink Tattoo Festival was held last weekend.

A generation or two ago this would have been a scene fit only for sailors and outlaws. But how times have changed.

As the tattooed aging rocker Ozzy Osbourne remarked: “To be unique, don’t get a tattoo because everybody else has tattoos.”

A 2006 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that nearly a quarter of Americans had at least one tattoo. Thirty-six percent of Americans ages 18 to 25 have been tattooed, according to a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center.

About when reality TV programing about tattoo parlors became a staple of A&E and The Learning Channel, tattoos stopped being about rebellion.

In Las Vegas tattoo parlors have moved from seedy neighborhoods into some prime locations.

Hart & Huntington, the basis for A&E’s “Inked,” is inside the Palms, just off the casino floor near an Asian restaurant and a nightclub entrance. It will move to the Hard Rock in March.

Starlight Tattoo has a shop in Mandalay Bay as part of the House of Blues, and Vince Neil Ink is next to a $2 beer stand at O’Sheas on the Strip.

Las Vegan Chris Neilson paid $12 to enter the tattoo festival on Saturday, his thick tattoo-sleeved arms jutting out of a leather vest. Neilson, 58, got his first tattoo in 1970. He doesn’t know how many he has because they’ve turned into one, covering his chest, back, arms and neck.

Back in the day, it made him look mean.

Now the stares are rare. The bank teller hardly notices the spider crawling up his neck. He wishes it was still an off-putting symbol of the anti-establishment but he’s resigned to the fact that it’s not. “That’s life, I guess.”

About 50 vendors participated in the festival. They sold the staples of the tattoo business — the ink, needles and gauze pads — while others sold paintings that mimicked tattoo designs.

Tattoo artists came from as far as Southern California to show their skills, entering contests for the best tribal design, best portrait or best back piece.

Sure, the stereotypical skulls and naked ladies can still be found. But those won’t win many awards in this crowd of human canvasses sporting lifelike portraits of daughters and car headlights.

They look original for a moment. But hundreds together all start to blend, and none of them looks very original anymore.

“I tell my kids if they are going to get one, that’s fine,” said Heidi Phillips, 31, a mother of two, her arm adorned with Betty Boop. “But it isn’t really that bad anymore. It’s probably less unique than a school uniform.”