You've finally decided to join the counter-culture and get yourself a wicked-looking tat, but you don't know where to go? Or perhaps you've already got a tattoo or two, but you can't figure out why it looks faded and blotchy and you're saying to yourself "But that fat guy at the biker convention seemed so competent and reliable!" Either way, we're sure there are things you'd like to know before you get large quantities of ink permanently injected into your flesh. What follows is intended for the thoughtful tattoo-seeker; if your plan involves a drunken stupor and a rusty razor, we think you'll find this article a little too conscious about safety. However, if you think about things before you do them, even when you're trying to look like a bad-ass, this will give you much food for thought.

And yes, it hurts. But not that much, wimp.

1. BE SAFE

The first thing you've got to think about when you consider getting a tattoo is that it involves someone sticking needles into you. Now who do you trust to have enough respect for hygiene to stick needles in you? Your doctor, probably, but who else? Some greasy, leering guy in a tent at an outdoor concert? Your friend's buddy, who works out of his basement? No and no. You trust people who act very much like doctors, when it comes to hygiene, and no one else.

Sure, a lot of tattoo studios look pretty Goth, with black and purple paint and vampiric-looking staff, but if it's clean black and purple paint you shouldn't let that part worry you. However, if you get the impression that there's anything dingy or unkempt about the place, you should take that as insufficient concern about cleanliness and find somewhere else to go. Choosing a tattoo artist is a serious decision, for a lot of reasons (see 2. Choose a tattoo artist and 5. Get rid of that foul thing below), and you should feel comfortable asking your tattoo artist about safety, cleanliness, his or her experience, and anything else which is important to you. If you don't feel comfortable talking to your prospective artist, look elsewhere. Be picky. The basic idea is that you want to find a place that is as clean as your doctor's office, even though it might not have posters of amiable-looking goats or other farm animals on the walls and mobiles hanging from the ceilings.

Specific things for which you must watch are:

  1. Most importantly, a brand new sterile needle must be used every time.

  2. All other tools that are involved in the tattooing process must be either sterilized or disposable (and, of course, they must be either sterilized or disposed of after each customer).

  3. Everything should be personally laid-out for your tattoo. You don't want to share in a big communal bottle of ink with your fellow tattoo-lovers; you want little individual disposable containers of ink just for you. Latex gloves. Vaseline should be dispensed with disposable instruments – not by hand. You get the idea.

  4. Non-disposable equipment should be sterilized with an autoclave (an apparatus which uses superheated steam under high pressure to sterilize instruments), not an ultra-sonic cleaner or a dunk in a tub of rubbing alcohol. Ask the tattoo artist if his/her autoclave is FDA-regulated. Wiping with a greasy rag, Windex, and spit-shining are also, while quaint, unacceptable.

Don't allow the foregoing advice to leave you with a bad impression of tattoo artists in general. There are many, many tattoo artists who maintain spotlessly clean and scrupulously hygienic studios. We just want to ensure that you realize how important it is to find one of them. Of course, a commitment to cleanliness is not all you want. The following section tells you how to find a tattoo artist who will ink you with the kind of artistry you deserve. Let's just assume you deserve something really fabulous.

2. CHOOSE A TATTOO ARTIST

There are three main concerns when choosing a tattoo artist:
  1. Is he or she any good?
  2. Do you feel comfortable talking to him or her?
  3. Can you afford it?

Is he or she any good?

The only way to tell whether or not an artist is good is to see examples of his or her work. Recommendations are helpful, of course, but the recommendations should carry infinitely more weight if the recommender is proffering a tattooed example of the artist's work. There are plenty of awesome artists out there who, though you wouldn't deny their skills, just don't appeal to you with the style of tats they do. So don't take anyone else's word for it – get a look at the artist's work yourself. Furthermore, and don't start thinking we're paranoid, but it's best to see actual examples of the work on a live person who can tell you who did the work. Anyone can put up a bunch of pictures and claim authorship.

You can meet people and talk to them about their tattoos at tattoo conventions, in the tattoo studios you visit and on the street or at a club, so long as you're not an idiot about it. People are usually proud of their tattoos, and if you seem genuinely interested a lot of people will be happy to tell you about their ink. Tattoo magazines are also a good source for information. The photo-essays they publish about various artists are likely to be well-researched and legitimate examples of the artists' work. There are also websites, such as tattoofinder.com, which show examples of artists' work. The key is to shop around and find someone really capable, because the quality of your tattoo depends so much on the talent of the tattoo artist.

Do you feel comfortable talking to him or her?

This is important for safety reasons, of course, but it's also important because you have to communicate what you want in a tattoo. If you don't feel comfortable talking to your tattoo artist, it's not likely that you'll get what you want. You don't have to be best buddies with the artist, but you need to be able to talk to him or her without reserve and with some certainty that your desires will be met.

Can you afford it?

As you shop around for a good tattoo artist, you are likely to find several whose work really appeals to you. Whether you can afford them is another matter, but something you must take into account. They will not necessarily live in the same city as you, and even if they do, they might charge a lot of money for their work. Before you get too far into it, you should figure out if it's really feasible for you to work with a certain artist. You might want to call an artist to get a general idea of what your tattoo would cost -- some artists will give you a rough idea over the phone, but some won't. If the artist lives far away, you're likely to have to pay for plane fare, a hotel and the cost of the tattoo. Don't bother getting all worked up about being tattooed by a certain person, and don't waste either of your time, if you can't afford to pay all the necessary costs.

The cost of getting a tattoo varies from artist to artist. Popular artists can charge more, while incompetent or inexperienced artists will be cheaper. Artists will usually charge a flat rate for their flash designs, and this will depend on the size and color of the design. You can expect to pay approximately $50 to $100 for a "flash" (a stock piece; see "Styles of tattoos" in section 3) piece of about two square inches. For custom work, artists will usually charge by the hour, but they might negotiate prices with you ahead of time based on how difficult the design is and how long they think it will take. The hourly rate for custom work ranges from $50 to $300. Don't go for bargains. A cheap tattoo will look cheap. You should try to find an artist who charges between $100 and $150 per hour. If money is no object and you simply must have a popular, expensive artist work on you, then go ahead and spend more.

3. CHOOSE A DESIGN

The classic mistake is, of course, tattooing yourself with the name of your main squeeze. You go ahead and do it if you feel you must, but imagine finding yourself in a quandary about whether to stay in a relationship and finding that one of the considerations is that you must keep your skin art contemporary. Beside that, there are so many other interesting meaningful designs which you can choose that can't take off with all your NoMeansNo albums.

The most important thing to consider is the permanence of tattoos. You have to choose something which will always be meaningful to you, and that's hard to know. How many things did you think were really cool five years ago which make you cringe now? You have to think carefully about what sort of image or design has the kind of lasting significance to you that you cannot imagine being erased by time. The tattoo ain't going anywhere unless you put in more money and a few more hours in the chair, and even then it's not going to look perfect (see 5. Get rid of that foul thing).

Styles of tattoos

The basic distinction in tattoos is between "flash" or stock tattoos and custom tattoos. Flash tattoos are the ones pictured on the walls which range from standard old favorites like anchors, hearts, skulls, and dragons to the artist's custom designs that he or she is willing to do for a flat rate. Custom tattoos are designed or requested by you, and then worked out with the tattoo artist. You can draw your tattoo yourself, get a friend to draw it, or tell the artist what you want and get him or her to draw it. The artist will have to do some work with it anyway, to create an outline, and when he or she is finished adapting your drawing or idea you should check and make sure it is what you wanted.

There are as many styles of tattoos as there are people…and body parts. If you want to see a couple, then Tao of Tattoos is for you.

4. CARE FOR YOUR TATTOO

Your new tattoo is an open wound. Let's make sure it doesn't turn into a festering open wound. Leave the bandage on for at least twelve hours, and when you take it off, be nice. If it won't come off right away, use warm water to help it off. Let it dry for about an hour, then wash the crud off (don't ask us to go into detail, but it'll be there) with a gentle soap. Then apply a thin coat of Polysporin or another antibiotic cream. For the next four or five days you'll want to wash it gently and reapply the cream twice per day. Do so in the shower, not the bath, as the new tattoo should not be submerged in water for any great length of time. That means no swimming, no hot tubs, no baths and no sex in the shower for about two weeks after you get tattooed. After four or five days you should switch to a water-based cream such as Moisturel until your tattoo is completely healed. As with any open wound, you must not allow it to get dirty and you should keep your damn hands off it. No picking, scratching, or other dorking around until it's healed. It will scab over a bit while it's healing, but that's natural and you should not feel compelled to try to remove the scab.

For those of you who are too hardcore to worry about your health, this is not just about health. You can think of it as primarily about making sure your tattoo looks its best, because if you mess with it while it's healing, the colors can run together, it can fade and if it gets infected the resulting wound could cause enough scar tissue to mar your work of art seriously.

5. GET RID OF THAT FOUL THING

So the erstwhile love of your life has run off with your best friend, and now you want both of their worthless-ass names off of your body. Maybe, on the other hand, you've finally realized that Trent Reznor is just a big whiner and you don't want that huge NIN symbol on your forehead anymore. Well, the first thing you need to know is that none of the available methods of tattoo removal is perfect. You should have listened to us when we told you not to get your pooky's name tattooed on you, or to get a tattoo you weren't certain about. Here are your four options for getting rid of the tattoo you now hate:
  1. Cover up tattoo
  2. Excision
  3. Dermabrasion
  4. Lasers

Cover up tattoo

If you still want to have a tattoo, just not that one, you should consider covering it with a bigger, gnarlier tattoo. The obvious problem is that you have to think of one that will cover the old one and that you will like better so that you don't have to get rid of it five years down the road. Therefore, this decision is even more difficult than your first tattoo was, because you have to choose something that either incorporates or blocks out the old tattoo. Them's some parameters. Your tattoo artist should be of help here, if you've found a good one by now.

Cover-ups are about the same cost as getting a new tattoo (see Can you afford it? in section 2) except that it will almost always be custom work. It will probably take longer, too, as the work must be done very carefully.

Excision

Cut that sucker right out of there. You get a physician to remove the skin with the tattoo and suture the sides together. It's relatively cheap, but it won't work on really large tattoos and it will definitely leave a noticeable scar. There are two ways to remove a tattoo through excision. First, a physician can place a small balloon under the skin which is inflated so that the tattooed skin gradually stretches. When it has stretched out enough, the physician cuts the skin and stitches it up, leaving a thin scar. Second, the physician can simply cut out the skin in small patches and sew it together, which can create significant scarring.

Dermabrasion

This is fairly nasty. The skin is scraped or "sandpapered" off or, alternatively but no more appealingly, chemicals are applied, after which the skin is peeled off. This is time-consuming, but it scars less than excision and it costs less than lasers.

Lasers

This is probably the best method, as laser technology has improved significantly. It doesn't hurt and it has a pretty good success rate. However, it costs a lot and it can still cause scarring or discoloration of the skin. A laser removal session usually costs about $300 and it can take five or more sessions to remove a tattoo. Lasers are less effective at removing lighter colors such as green or yellow, so if your tattoo contains those you could be looking at a lot of money and a lot of hours in the chair. Most laser removal specialists will provide you with a free initial consultation, in which they will tell you how much the removal is likely to cost.

Peace be with you, friends, as you select, get, and remove your very own tattoo. And if, after reading this article, our sage advice has led to your decision not to get a tattoo, peace be with you too. Get a nose ring instead.