39 What'S The Atmosphere?
Description
This article is from the Tattoo FAQ, by Stan Schwarz with numerous contributions by others.
39 What'S The Atmosphere?
Conventions are always pretty congenial and relaxed during the sessions
that are open only to registrants. Welcome receptions usually allow time
for a lot of socializing, where friends can catch up on old news and
share their new tattoos with others. Quite a few people take their
cameras along, snapping shots of tattoos and people. This period is also
the time to see the real serious tattoo enthusiasts and artists, since
these are the ones who usually register for the entire convention. This
means that you are likely to see people with very serious pieces of
custom work on their bodies.
The exhibit floor, when it is still closed to the public (usually on
Fridays during a four-day convention) are not too crowded. If you want
to get some work done from an artist who has rented a booth, Fridays are
a good time to get it done. This would be a good opportunity to visit
various booths and actually talk to people.
Once the weekend hits and the doors are opened to the public, the
atmosphere will change greatly. You will see a lot of "gawkers" and
various curiosity-seekers, who may or may not have any tattoos (or if
they do, they might be some mediocre flash). The convention floor takes
on somewhat of a carnival environment.
Attendance seems to depend largely on where the convention is being
held. No tattoo convention is so large as to take up a city's major
convention center--most conventions occur in hotel ballrooms. Thus if
the hotel is in a rural section of town, or the convention is not
appropriately advertised, you will not get a very high local turnout. On
the other hand, well-advertised events will be so popular that they will
have to limit the number of bodies in the room.
Note that the National Tattoo Association has a policy (which some
regard as archaic) that bans facial and visible body piercings (outside
of the ears) because it believes that these promote the side-show-freak
atmosphere, which is not condusive to the mainstreaming of tattooing.
While I will not condone the purposeful breaking of any policy, I can
state that I have seen enough various body piercings at NTA conventions,
that it seems if you keep it low key they will not bother you. With the
current popularity of body piercing, I would like to counter that some
pierces (eyebrows, navel, nipple) have entered into the mainstream, and
are now actually used in advertisements. I don't know why NTA still
maintains this policy, when many tattooists have their own in-house
piercers and the tattooists themselves often sport body pierces
themselves.
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