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Every body tells a story at Tampa Bay Tattoo Fest
By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published March 24, 2006
TAMPA - The Tampa Bay Tattoo Fest is held each year at the Doubletree Hotel, near the airport. Amid the cicada drone of the needle, tattoo artists from across the country illustrate novices and veterans alike.
A steady stream of potential customers wander through two rooms packed with booths and sample art, looking for the perfect image.
Some tattoos are purely decorative. Others have a story.
The samurai has got his back
His father used to take him to see kung fu movies when he was a boy in Cuba. Zatoichi the Blind Samurai fought for justice on the big screen.
Armando Fuster left Cuba and came to New York. Kids beat him up. Fuster remembered Zatoichi. He studied boxing, judo, jujitsu.
His fists learned to talk. He became a threat in a bar fight.
No longer, he says. Too old for that now. He's 44, a Miami travel agent who works in a suit and tie.
But he remembers the darkened movie house, his father's big hand on his.
"I felt protected," he said as tattooist Larry Brogan, of Illinois, touched the needle to his skin.
Fuster will carry the Blind Samurai on his back.
I triple-dog dare you
Jayson and Jason - both 32, from Rockledge - have been friends since high school.
They took turns goading each other, egging each other on. Jason Stephan got the first tattoo. Jayson Jamgochian was the first to jump off a bridge.
Okay, so he was the only one to jump off a bridge. Jason Stephan isn't crazy.
But Jamgochian was the one who talked his friend into becoming a tattoo artist. Now his body is covered with his friend's ink.
"I don't have to make chitchat, I can just get down to work," said Stephan. "We already know everything about each other."
A phoenix, a fairy, a family
When she got her first tattoo, her mother was angry. Not because she got the tattoo. Because she got it alone.
"She wanted to be there," said Alejandra Galletti, 22, of Tampa.
She and her mother, who wouldn't give her name, are sitting with their backs to each other. Two different artists are at work on them.
The phoenix will be Galletti's fourth tattoo. The fairy is her mother's first.
This will be just one more thing they've gone through together, one more memory they share.
[Last modified March 24, 2006, 23:08:03]
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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