The Best is Yet to Come...

Yesterday, we took a ride down to Sinful Art Tattoo in NJ to get some fantastic and unique ink done by Amy Nicoletto. She's on the TV show LA Ink as a member of the "other" shop, American Electric, for those of you playing along.

It was well worth the 2.5 hour (each way) trip: the tattoos are the perfect blend of badass and beautiful, and the staff was super friendly. As a bonus, they have Wawa stores in that area so we had some great coffee to boot.

My piece is very sore and ruddy, so I'm not going to post photos yet. It's also in a difficult-to-photograph area as it wraps around the curvier part of my calf (yeah, it's bigger than I was thinking it would be). So stay tuned...

But I will post a few snapshots of the surrounding sights so you can soak in the Sinful Art ambient experience. Here we go!

The shop was formerly a garage. They no longer service cars (this may seem obvious, but someone actually asked one of the artists if they could fix her windshield). Oddly, they do sell propane, as evidenced by the flammables cage on the right. This is in contrast to just regular "pain" -- for which I opted.

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If you need a breather from your tattoo, you can always take a walk accross the street to the "Kashmir Gentlemen's Club." (Side note: the "i" in "Kashmir" is comprised of the silhouette of a naked lady. God, I love great design!)

Judging from the shitbox central that doubled as their parking lot, I surmised either: A) no gentlemen were in attendance; or B) they were all so discrete that they rented rust-buckets to pose incognito. I imagine scenario "B" works well in such situations. I mean, who wants to attract a stripper who is only interested in money or cars? Good thinking, gentlemen.

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Oh, and this Airstream-ish thing drove by. No significance; I just don't see shit like this often.

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Anyway. When the day was done (we started at 1 PM and finished somewhere in the 7 PM hour), I figured I'd ask for a photo with Amy. As she'd been working all day and I was experiencing some level of what I can best describe as "pain-induced body shock," we really couldn't get a great photo going. Thus, we agreed on this one and I promised to publish in black and white.

And, like the title of this post reads...the best is yet to come. Once this sucker heals up, I'll throw some photos up here.