Tattoos

Look around, you may not know it but the people you can see are likely to have tattoos. Somehow tattoos have become the norm in today's society and not left solely to adorn the arm of a gypsy boxer or naval seaman. They are easily concealable, but damn telling; when you look at someone's 'tat' you can tell alot about them. Lets have a quick go below:

 

Classic Tramp

Drug Addict

Someone you don't want to meet in an alleyway

So as you can see, not only are tattoos common, but getting the right design is something you must ensure. The last thing that we here at TTC want to give off is a trampy drug riddled persona that doesn't reflect our trendy ways. Therefore before this night could go ahead, there was significant planning and research into what the current celebs are inking their bodies with.

The first place to look was on the body of a below average basketball player, but more importantly a fiendish tattoo collector; Chris Andersen. You'll be very impressed at his life choices when you look at the picture below. 

This man is richer than we'll ever be

I think we'd call him an inspiration, there must be some tattoo on this body that we could copy?

Kanji symbols seem to be on everybody and we can see why; small and subtle when needing to attend the job interviews of the 21st Century, yet profound and meaningful if you happen to tell someone what it says in English (drum is particularly erudite).

Get this on your chin and you're set

Tribal designs weren't so high on our list of trendy tats so they were out. Animals seemed to be a big theme. Rita Ora, one of Trend The Consequences fashion favourites, has a pooping bird on her neck. This was all the guidance we needed.

Some sort of shape below the ear as well

James was very keen to get involved in the Koi Carp scene, luckily for him this is something that has been sported by one of today's most credible stars. Armed with this knowledge, a suitably awesome koi was needed and the internet certainly delivered.

Yes please

I, on the other hand, was particularly fond of a manly horse.

A Majestic Beast

The dilemma was how to get the tattoos onto our bodies for the night out, and then be able to remove them the day after ready for work, as we wouldn't want to alienate our un-tattooed co-workers. Unfortunately I am not man enough to get a bunch of real tattoos, only to have them lasered off the following day.

So the solution was found from Amazon: printable tattoos! They arrived the day of the night out, and without time to test the transfers on our skin, we dived into the deep end and went for it, regardless of the rash-riddled consequences. We decided to meet at James' flat for 19:30 to print and apply the tattoos before heading into town, giving us around an hour and a half to do the job. Unfortunately I got caught up doing stuff in the flat and turned up 15mins late, only to chill out on the sofa with a gin and juice as we thought we had plenty of time. Oh how we were wrong. The printing went fine, however I could not peel the damn tattoos from the backing paper. The job was fiddly, and every time I got the images off I managed to tear the paper. We had visions of tattoo sleeves made up of koi, horses, vampires and trees. However the more tattoos I tore up, the more this dream faded away.

Eventually managing to get a couple of the tattoos to stick (taking about an hour and a half) we called it a day and got ourselves to the Gatekeeper to meet some of our friends. When entering the pub, something happened that had never occurred before. The doorman gave as a double take and looked us up and down in a shifty "don't cause trouble in my establishment" kind of way. He had clearly seen the tattoos we were sporting and thought, "these boys are a couple of hard nuts, better keep an eye on them". Not thinking twice about it, we walked on through and to the bar.

Woah, lifelike

You could tell from the outset that our friends were instantly jealous of our tats, hatred was strewn across their faces as though they were suddenly inflicted with a Napoleon Complex. However others in the Gatekeeper did not seem to notice our ink, probably thinking that we are the sort of guys to be layered in gang tattoos and not ones to make eye contact with. Feeling that the Gatekeeper had done its job (i.e. offered cheap drinks to get us started) James and I decided to move on. Our friends, powered by their own jealousy, decided not to join us in our next trendy venue, and went their own way whilst we started walking to Floyds.

We have touched on Floyds before, and it is certainly the sort of venue that would welcome a nifty tattoo or two. As we were walking up to the club, one of the doormen rushed up to us (having spotted the array of tats) and urged us to come to Floyds. Before we could even answer the poor chap, he offered us a free round if we were to come in. Not one to turn up a free drink, or a free anything at that rate, we accepted his kind offer. Whilst walking up the stairs, due to the plain and simple fact that the venue is a single upstairs floor, we noticed a lot of females walking down (all noticing our tats of course). Once upstairs the dancefloor was looking fairly bare and it occurred to the two of us that the doorman outside was ushering us in because he needed two handsome looking bad boys to not only get the ladies in, but get the ladies that had been there a second ago to stay. Luckily for him the trick had worked, because as soon as we had received our round of free drinks, the ladies then re-appeared with what seemed like a load of their mates. Clearly the word had spread about the two tattooed chaps that had just arrived.

There would be no negatives to getting this tattoo

When on the dancefloor, we were busting some shapes and one of the barmen came up to us, handed us shot glasses and proceeded to pour us each a shot of some raspberry drink. Clearly we were getting so many people into the club through word of mouth, that they were willing to give us freebies to ensure we stayed. Unfortunately for them, we have to ensure that we keep the same final venue for all our posts to provide the reader with the assurance of complete comparability. So even though we were having the time of our lives, and I have to say it has been the best time we have both had whilst putting the summer edition of TTC together, we had to leave and get ourselves to Live Lounge. A quick round of JagerBombs (6 for a tenner) later and we got out.

Cheap and disgustingly tasty. The perfect combo

Having spent longer in Floyds than expected, we missed the band in Live Lounge, which was a shame as live music and tattoos tend to complement one another. Once again, our tattoos were kind of blending into the background on the crowded dancefloor, and some of my tats were peeling of due to the bending of my arms wrinkling the skin (just another reason to go for the real thing). However the night was still a success with the people who were noticing the tattoos clearly liking their 'bad-boy' connotations.

You'll notice, koi t shirt!

Before the night ended we were approached by a forward fellow who immediately told us we were tattoo frauds. Denying at first then instantly crumbling when he said we were lying, we got discussing our goals and then were informed he was opening many bars in Cardiff and maybe buying the probably doomed Buffalo Bar (he only suggested this after we said it was good). Somehow from this we got onto selling salad pots in Cathays and how we could be a big part of his beautiful plan. Further to this he offered £10,000 for, well, nothing. Given we haven't heard from him since, I am willing to guess our money is in the post. 

At the very least this goes to show that even noticeably fake tattoos have the ability to get you places your useless bare arm wouldn't.

Tattoos; Scarey, business, cool but a right pain if going temporary.