🔒Skin in the game

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when tattoos were an identifier principally of bikers (Harley, not ten-speed) and sailors (Navy, not Nantucket).

In the 1990s the ink revolution swept North America, and today the presence of visible ink on one’s epidermis is no longer an automatic disqualifier for a career above the status of, say, dog-catcher.

There remains something of a generational divide between the unblemished and those who are, well, scarred for life. And tattoos remain something of a socioeconomic signifier, too — it’s inarguable that one sees fewer tattoos at the New Haven Lawn Club than at (for example) Dollar Tree.

What’s likewise inarguable is that now that there’s more skin in the game, tattooing has become big business, kind of, in Connecticut.

Tattoo “parlors” (so dainty-sounding!) are licensed and regulated by the state’s Department of Public Health.

A 2004 state law mandated that tattooing must be performed “under the supervision” of a medical professional, which meant in practice that tattoo businesses in the state needed at least an annual inspection by a medical professional to certify cleanliness, safe practices, etc.

In 2013, as tattoo businesses proliferated and expanded services to include more intrusive services such as piercing a body-modification, the state extended its licensing reach to individual technicians, who must complete a minimum number of hours of practical training as well as courses in blood-borne pathogens (eww) and first aid.

In Connecticut one can get a tattoo at age 16 with parental consent (wink, wink); otherwise it’s 18 to get inked.

Also, the next time you spy some ink-stained wretch with ink on his face and wonder, “What was he thinking?” the answer may be: He wasn’t. Fifteen states have laws that make it illegal for intoxicated or “impaired” individuals to be tattooed, pierced or branded (!) — but Connecticut is not one of them.

The oldest tattoo parlor in the state is thought to be Fine Line Tattoo Parlour at 160 Main St. in Deep River (where its shop window proclaims “Kings of Tradition”). Fine Line opened in 1980 after its then-owner, Bill Loika, fought a long and ultimately successful battle to have tattoo shops legalized in Connecticut.

The shop today is owned by Mark Roberts, who bought the business from Loika in 2004 after having worked there since 2000. He says business is steady. Widespread public acceptance of tattoos is a plus, but offset by increased competition.

“There’s been an influx of new shops over the last ten years, and that hasn’t helped,” Roberts says, but business “is still going strong.”

The new generation of tattoo artists “doesn’t have to earn their way in [to the business], the way we used to have to,” Roberts says. Plus, newcomers have access to more efficient, safer and cleaner supplies and equipment than were available when Roberts started in the business in, well, the 20th century.

Tattoos can range in price from $60 or so for a small, simple image to hundreds of dollars for larger, more elaborate images — depending on complexity/accessibility of the body part to be inked (ahem). Roberts says full-back tattoos can take as much as 100 or even 150 hours to design and execute, and cost “tens of thousands of dollars.”

And if you’re prepared to invest the cost of an automobile to pay for indelible images on your body, you can truly be said to have skin in the game.