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Explore the dark subculture of 1950s tattoos!In the early 1950s, when tattoos were the indelible mark of a lowlife, an erudite professor of English--a friend of Gertrude Stein, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, and Thornton Wilder--abandoned his job to become a tattoo artist (and incidentally a researcher for Alfred Kinsey). Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos tells the story of his years working in a squalid arcade on Chicago’s tough State Street. During that time he left his mark on a hundred thousand people, from youthful sailors who flaunted their tattoos as a rite of manhood to executives who had to hide their passion for well-ornamented flesh. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is anything but politically correct. The gritty, film-noir details of Skid Row life are rendered with unflinching honesty and furtive tenderness. His lascivious relish for the young sailors swaggering or staggering in for a new tattoo does not blind him to the sordidness of the world they inhabited. From studly nineteen-year-olds who traded blow jobs for tattoos to hard-bitten dykes who scared the sailors out of the shop, the clientele was seedy at best: sailors, con men, drunks, hustlers, and Hells Angels. These days, when tattoo art is sported by millionaires and the middle class as well as by gang members and punk rockers, the sheer squalor of Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a revelation. However much tattoo culture has changed, the advice and information is still sound:
- how to select a good tattoo artist
- what to expect during a tattooing session
- how to ensure the artist uses sterile needles and other safety precautions
- how to care for a new tattoo
- why people get tattoos--25 sexual motivations for body artMore than a history of the art or a roster of famous--and infamous--tattoo customers and artists, Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a raunchy, provocative look at a forgotten subculture.
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By M. Foster (Southern California)
I met Sam Steward around 1983 when he was quite elderly and I wonder what his friends would have to say about these reviews. I think most of the reviews are kind to him and the only real negativity I see are those in which the authors came to the book expecting a strictly scholarly work. Sam Steward wasn't a researcher in the classic social science sense. He was an energetic scholar, but his greatest interest was in the creation of literature, not in sifting through haystacks of facts to find new scientific insights.
I read this book shortly after I met Sam. I was actually more familiar with him as a writer of gay erotica, but this book tells you more about the kind of man Sam was. He had deep curiosities about the underlying psychological motivations of people and that's really the area in which he spent most of his time. That curiosity it typical of people who enjoy writing and his look into this subculture, one could speculate, is like one the instances any writer takes in which they journey into an objective investigation, knowing they are mining information and insights that will later inform their true love, writing fiction.
There's no doubt Sam took this investigation seriously, but it was never his intention to apply the level or scientific rigor one would expect of someone of the status of Alfred Kinsey. What he did at Kinsey's request was to describe a world, a microcosm, that would give Kinsey enough information to determine if a larger and more serious study was warranted. There weren't focus groups walking into Sam's tattoo parlor responding to a call for papers. They were rough and alienated men, drunks with their defenses down, kids in rebellions, frustrated people acting out. It takes an entertaining personality to get these people to say what they say and Sam Steward, if anything, was a decidely entertaining man; a storyteller who could keep a roomful of people enthralled with his vivid, if not naughty, descriptions of the extremes in society that are right under our very noses; extremes most people cannot see.
I've thought about this book a many, many times; practically every time I see a tattoo. Getting inked has never appealed to me but Sam's understanding of it most certainly does appeal to me. Even two decades after reading it, some things I remember from it make me smile and laugh out loud. There's a kind of deep-seated validation of humanness here that I think will serve many who read this. This isn't a book for everyone, but one thing that can be said is that there's more to it than the average person knows. It's art that goes deeper than the skin.
By Lew Troop (Kansas)
This interesting book comes from an era that is now far gone. As a child, just after WWII, I saw men with, primarily, service tattoos and wanted one. It was carefully explained to me that "nice men" did not get tattooed and that the service tattoos weren't truly tattoos but the equivalent of service stripes. As a six year old child I found this confusing.
What Dr. Steward has done is gathered impressions of what it was like to be a tattooist circa 1950 on to about 1970. His portraits of sleazy interior malls and the persons who frequented them are chillingly real as are the sad impressions of his clientele.
For me, still un-inked, the larger story here is the conversion from the groves of Academe to the existence of a journeyman tattoo artist. We have his intellectual observations, as well his intimate relationship with the Kinsey Institute,to provide not only a look at the deductive logic behind getting a tattoo, at least at a certain socio-economic level then, are revelatory but perhaps only to then.
The wide spread acceptance of tattooing today (the last statistic I read said over 35% of men today have one)make this interesting reading if not germane to lifestyles today. Yet it has substance and to those with a taste for not only tattooing but the sexual implications, this will confirm much of what may have been thought. Dr. Steward's open acknowledgment of his sexual preferences de-fuses any leering speculation as to what might really have been his motives.
Still, for those who want an atmospheric, well constructed picture of an era, this book will fill in your urge to return to the "greaser" age. And for those of us who wanted one, but were denied, perhaps liberate our minds to, now, go get what we wanted then. If I had the hair, give me a flat top with a D.A. And that knife piercing the bicep just below the pack of Camels rolled in the sleeve of my black T-shirt.
By TammyJo Eckhart (Bloomington, Indiana United States)
Academics get tired too but most don't do a 180 turn and join subcultures that seem completely opposed to their previous community. Samuel Steward became a tattoo artist but kept his scholarly mind working as he did so upon the urging of Kinsey, yes, that Alfred Kinsey. The result many years later is this book. Part history, part personal recollection, and part social sciences, this is an interesting and easy to read book. If you don't except detailed interviews with people or rigorous research protocols you won't be disappointed. I think the first half of the book which focuses on what he observed is much better than the second more "historical" half. It could use photos and a better spine to hold the book together.
By Quickhappy (Big city, big country)
As a scholar of what might be called outsiders, I was eager to read this work on tatooing. But the scholarship here is hackneyed and unprofessional. His sources are scattered and incomplete and his discussion is of similar quality. Given the excellent quality of research being done on this topic, this book falls into a dont-bother-with category.
By steve blair (santa ana, ca USA)
Having 4 tattoo's applied last year at the ripe young age of 50, I was fascinated by this book. Tattoo's in the 50's & 60's apparently were taboo except for the underbelly of life. Looking at how they are accepted today as opposed to then is astounding. The syndicate was even involved in the 50's. The book actually had me laughing out loud at some of the situations this highly educated man faced when he gave up teaching English at a major university and took up tattooing. If you have any interest in tattoo's be sure to purchas this one.
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