The tattoo parlor on St. Marks Place had a neon sign that said TATTOO and inside it smelled like rubbing alcohol and cigarette smoke and the buzzing sound of the needle was the only music they played. Tattoos were illegal in New York City from 1961 to 1997. Thirty-six years. You could buy a gun but you could not get a butterfly on your ankle. That is the city telling you which skin is yours.

The tattoo artists on the Lower East Side were surgeons who dropped out of the program. Steady hands. No anesthesia. You sat in a barber chair and a man with a cigarette behind his ear drew on you with a machine that sounded like a sewing machine and you bled a little and it hurt a lot and when it was done you had a picture on your body that would be there when they buried you. Permanent. In a city where nothing else is.

Sailors got tattoos. Bikers got tattoos. Punks got tattoos. I got a tattoo on Avenue A in 1974 from a man who did not ask my name and I did not ask his and we never spoke again and his work is still on my arm and my money is long gone from his pocket. That is the purest transaction. You give somebody money. They give you art. The art stays. The money leaves. Every other business in New York works the opposite way.

When they legalized tattoos in 1997 the parlors moved from the basement to the storefront. The chairs got comfortable. The artists got degrees. The flash on the wall went from skulls and anchors to custom designs on iPads. A tattoo used to cost twenty dollars and you picked it off the wall and the man put it on your body and you left. Now a tattoo costs three hundred dollars and you have a consultation and the artist does a sketch and you approve the sketch and they schedule you for next Thursday. You used to walk in with skin and walk out with a story. Now you walk in with an appointment.

St. Marks Place has eight tattoo parlors on one block. Eight. In 1970 it had zero because it was illegal and the ones that existed were hidden behind a curtain in the back of a barber shop. Eight parlors on one block and every one of them is clean and legal and licensed and insured and none of them smell like cigarette smoke and none of them will tattoo you while you are drunk. The outlaw became the establishment. That is what happens to everything interesting in New York. They make it legal and they make it expensive and they take away the cigarette and the danger and the story. The tattoo is still permanent. The neighborhood is not.

See also: Penny Arcade, Razor Strop