And really, this place had warning signs written all over it, and that's why it was the perfect place for me and my best friend. on Canal Street, to be exact.Īt right, the sign on the Tattoo Ya bathroom. We later realized that he had a gun in his back pocket, which I think made me feel safer about the whole thing? In any case, the tattoo conversation on The Fly got taken a little bit too far. Pictured here (along with my ass) a man named Black Wolf that claimed to be a Native-American and had only one hand that was fully functional.
![enjoy every sandwich tattoo enjoy every sandwich tattoo](https://cdn.shopclues.com/images1/thumbnails/108093/280/1/150185697-108093771-1592907344.jpg)
The following day, while we drank at someplace called "The Fly," on the banks of a muddy Mississippi River, the tattoo conversation came up again. A place with great food, practically no rules, and all the real-life characters that John Kennedy O'Toole wrote about in A Confederacy of Dunces. I remember this vividly, because it came after the Lil Wayne concert, before a night out on Bourbon Street, and it was the exact moment I decided New Orleans was my favorite place in the world.
![enjoy every sandwich tattoo enjoy every sandwich tattoo](http://t07.deviantart.net/kkzTDdAu1Wdg7OADtVjlCX48KOo=/300x200/filters:fixed_height(100,100):origin()/pre01/a6f2/th/pre/f/2013/175/a/a/aa55b1904eac2e4fcaaa9d4e73a83b07-d4g7tpz.jpg)
"Y'all need Jesus in your life," said the woman in fishnet stockings selling shots to underage kids on the street. New Orleans is the sort of place where you can buy a shot on the street from a woman in nothing more than a bra and panties, then have that same woman try to rip you off, and lecture you on religion and honesty after you balk. My friends and I had arranged a weekend rendezvous around (what else?) a Lil Wayne concert that Friday night. Like, no matter what tattoo you're getting, it's going to look completely ridiculous to 99% of the general public, so we thought, why not remove any pretense of "meaning"?įast forward to New Orleans, circa 2007. What's the most impossibly inane tattoo you could ever come up with? Flaming skulls and tribal tats here, barbed wire and Chinese tramp stamps there. It all popped off the beach landscape like a blinding horizon of douchebaggery, but nothing was worse than the tattoos. The sunglasses, the waxed chests, the blowout hair. You'd have thought we were on the Jersey Shore. We're talking stereotypes here, but these particular stereotypes were in the flesh, pumping their fists, and had us completely surrounded. It was a weekend with a couple friends, that was completely unremarkable except for the legions of greased up meatheads that besieged us when we hit the beach every day. What you're reading now is the result of a lengthy process, but it starts back on the Eastern Shore in like 2006.
![enjoy every sandwich tattoo enjoy every sandwich tattoo](https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/richlandsource.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/a/37/a3740a4c-7ba1-11eb-bf8e-d7e404d63b2a/603eb3b4af7aa.image.jpg)
It's all fun and games until you wake up facedown on a living room couch and your ass feels like it's on fire.