Long Time No Post

Rocking past weekend here in NYC. It was Design Week, so we hit a bunch of open houses, demos and presentations. The craziest one was a YMCA that was converted into an apartment. 7500 square feet of living, working and playing space. Crazy. Could entertain 300 people easily. Slick sound system, theater and more. Really insane. I have some phonecam and phone video stuff I'll try to post soon.

We hit the NYC Tattoo Convention where I saw some old friends (some very old) and picked up some books. Bruce Bart autographed my Rides of Passage with a touching inscription. Rides is a killer photobook of snowboards painted by tattoo artists.

Best part of the con? Seeing the chest and rib design Dan at Calypso Tattoo is laying on me. It's exactly what I wanted with the added depth of a personal story intertwined into the work. In keeping with the fact that all of my tattoos are incredibly meaningfull to me, this one weaves a martial arts theme into the Marquesas-styled blackwork. I was thinking about just doing work on my chest, pulling down the pre-existing work into something larger, but Dan's design goes all the way down to my hip bone. Almost groin. We're doing this on Sunday. I'm jazzed. Thanks to IAM:Free for facilitating this.

And as is my yearly ritual, we watched (and drank at) the Norwegian Independance Day parade in Brooklyn. Pictures here. The parade gets smaller every year, but this year there were a hell of a lot more children. Hopefully that bodes well for the future.

Spring cleaning at Dojo Alexander in full f*cking effect. Radically hosed down the kitchen, stocked the wine rack, laided out some really nice dishtowels... Tossed massive amounts of old tech, paperwork, piercing supplies, guitar shit. Laid down new area rugs. Cool sisal shit that looks like the tatami mats they replaced only thicker. Nice and rough underfoot. New linens for the bed, nice floormat for the bathroom (Paul Reed kinda stripy.) I'm mostly a ivory, black, natural color kindaguy but I've been experimenting with some splashes of color. Added an orange laquered tray to the kitchenwares with matching pillar candles. Fresh peonies on the Noguchi...