Saturday, November 21, 2009

821 Cafe and a Tattoo Tidbit

Despite having had chili for lunch, I was craving 821's black bean nachos; maybe it's the weather. Just as my food arrived, the stools around me filled up with Mike Moses and his fellow tattoo artists. I met Mike about a year and a half ago and was impressed by his abilities outside of being a tattoo artist: musician, gardener, painter and raconteur. I have one of his prints,"Sister Sleep," so I was interested to hear that he just hung a show at Empire which will open December 4th.

I haven't seen it yet, but two things are always guaranteed at Mike's shows: it'll be interesting work and the cost to own one will be minimal. I'd be the first to acknowledge that economic times are tough, but I'd also be the first to say that artists have to eat, too. I'm crazy about having local art all over my walls; I enjoy it on an additional level when I know the artist. It's a reminder of a talented person I know.

But I digress. My nachos arrived, I ate a good three quarters of them and eavesdropped on a conversation about cleaning out the ink wells at a tattoo place. At stake was the issue of whether to use paper stick Q-Tips or plastic stick Q-Tips to clean out the traces of ink. This discussion required a level of expertise I didn't possess, so I stayed out of it, paid the check and was about to walk away when one of the guys finally weighed in.

"Plastic stick's better. Paper sticks get soaked and bent." Now I know.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, Mike! Mike's an old friend of mine, though haven't gotten to see as much of him now that he and my other friend don't live together anymore. 2 degrees of separation, RVA is.

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  2. And you and I seem to usually have only one degree of separation, despite having never met!

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