Girl with the Anime Ink (Helloooo Kitty!)

Malina Huang
Occupation: Hair stylist
Preoccupations: Japanese style tattoos, Israeli style martial arts

When you say someone has Japanese style tattoos, you don't usually mean Hello Kitty -- unless you're talking about Venice, California's Malina Huang.

"Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, My Melody, Chococat, Keroppi, Monkichi and Sailor Moon," says Huang, pointing out brightly colored cartoon creatures -- pop cats, bunnies, frogs, monkeys and space girls -- tattooed up and down her left arm. "They're all characters I loved growing up."

Read on...


Photograph of Malina Huang © Mitzi Valenzuela (all rights reserved).

Labels: anime, anime tattoos, chris brand, Dogtown Ink, hello kitty tattoos, lenore, malina huang, mitzi valenzuela, monkichi, nightmare before christmas, roman dirge, tattoo art, tattoos, tim burton

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Buff Monster Uber Alleys

VENICE, CA - Can't keep a good Buff Monster down.

Despite the best efforts and baser inclinations of passing taggers, Buff Monster again reigns supreme at the intersection of Hampton and Indiana.

As with so many neighborhood alley productions and back street murals, Buff Monster's are subject to local forces of entropy, also known as taggers. Buff Monster's last big production at the Oakwood site was largely defaced by the time, in recent days, he got around to getting up again.

This piece - which may include untouched parts of the previous production, don't quote me on that - features a throng of frowning faces with hooded eyes who may or may not be some sort of admonition to future taggers: We look unkindly on hater vandals they could be saying.

More likely they mean something else entirely. Or nothing at all.

MORE STREET ART @ DOGTOWN INK

Labels: buff monster, buffmonsta, ca street art, los angeles street art, venice, venice beach murals

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PAN & INK

STEVE CHRISTENSEN
Home: Venice, CA
For cash: Mac Whisperer.
For life: Surfer, Spiritualist, Dirt Bike Rider.

Steve Christensen — whose tattoo "sleeve" features a horned-and-hooved Pan, Japanese wood-block style waves and five-petaled cherry blossoms — is into some serious esoterica.

"I'm a medium," Christensen says, "A channel."

We talk over beers at Venice's venerable Hinano Cafe.

Twenty years ago, in channeling practice-sessions, Christensen connected with a most excellent spirit guide. According to Christensen, in almost every session, Greek goat-god Pan would turn up with advice for him.

"His presence was powerful," Christensen says, "With a lot of humor...and very connected to nature."

(I don't know about you, but if a randy, flute-playing goat-satyr-of-a-fertility-God ever shows up with advice for me, I'm all ears.)

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Labels: Dogtown Ink, dogtownink.com, japanese tattoo art. japanese style tattoos, John Watkis, Kevin Quinn, Pan tattoo, steve christensen, tattoos

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C's For Cybele With Her Gorey Tattoo

VENICE, CA -- A tattoo of two children hitting each other over the head with croquet mallets graces Cybele O'Brien's left shoulder. It's an illustration by that master of morbid, Edward Gorey, from his book The Epiplectic Bicycle.

"It's a made-up word," O'Brien says, producing a copy of the macabre little paperback.

We sit together on the indoor porch of her grandfather's home, a sun-bleached beach cottage, the likes of which are becoming scarcer and scarcer in Venice, Calif. Out the windows, beyond poisonous calla lilies and thorny branches of heirloom rose bushes, beyond a narrow walk bisecting the tranquil block, lies a field of fetching wildflowers upon which Cybele was shot (for this Gorey story).

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Labels: cybele o'brien, Dogtown Ink, edward gorey tattoo, gorey tattoo, ink story, new orleans tattoo, tattoo article, tattoo story, the epiplectic bicycle

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Among the Swingers

VENICE, CA -- Never have I witnessed the depravity I witnessed among the swingers...

That was going to be my opener. But then I didn't really witness any depravity among the swingers and thought to reconsider. (I did. I'm sticking with my gut.)

As it turns out, the swingers I met all seemed surprisingly normal for sex maniacs. I felt right at home among them.

Although, I gotta say, trying to suck up to my ex-wife with a line like, “I've probably been with six thousand women in my life, but every time I look at (you), I fall in love again,” would probably have ended badly. Like, searching-for-my-severed- johnson-by-the-side-of-the-road badly.

Actually, the swinger who floated that one—John Lynch of the San Fernando Valley's Velvet Swing club—has maybe as little to do with normal as anyone I’ve ever met. (And I mean that in a good way.)

But he was the exception. The rest of the swingers I met, scattered across SoCal, were downright ordinary by comparison. But damn were they neurotic.

Swingers: Will you please decide what to call what it is you do and then call it swinging? Because, I mean, Marriage with benefits? The lifestyle? This hard-on everyone has for reframing has gone far enough...

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Labels: Dogtown Ink, dogtownink.com, Dr. Robert McGinley, John Lynch, Lifestyles.org, orange county, swingers, swinging, thebradmiskell, velvetswing.com

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School of Rock'er

Though there have always been female surfers and there are more now than ever, surfing remains a dude-dominated bro-fest. Surf shops, too. An exception is Mar Vista, California's Rock'er Board Shop, owned and operated by forty-something California native, Alison Copeland. After a long and successful career in fashion, Copeland opened Rock'er only to learn that the gig, like surfing, came with its share of indignities...

School of Rock'er
Lesson 1: Beware the Surfalo

The term surfalo may conjure images of the smoke-breathing beasts at your local surf break. But the Colberty-ish word was in fact coined by Copeland to describe a new variation on an age-old occupation.

"They're gigolos who want to surf," says Copeland: "Surfalos."

"I have a stream of young men who come into the shop," she says.

Copeland proudly proclaims her penchant for dating younger guys.

"I'm a cougar," she laughs, laughing more at the idea she'd ever prey on anyone. On the contrary: At Rock'er, she learned the hard way that not all the young dudes had the purest motives for dating her.

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE

Labels: alison copeland, christina andropolis, cougars, Dogtown Ink, dogtownink.com, female surf shop, rocker board shop, surfalos, surfing

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Is This Man Flipping the Bird?

VENICE, CA -- Attention anyone who has ever seen those colorful, cartoon-cut-out doves that dangle from power lines over busy intersections from here to San Francisco, NYC and even London: Could Browne, the enigmatic, young street artist behind the berds (his werd), be using them to basically flip the bird?

"They have a pretty obvious meaning," Browne says. "But I won't tell anyone what it is."

Fine. Mystery is fun...ish. Though insisting the meaning is obvious is an obvious attempt to tempt suckers with nothing better to do into wasting time playing guessing games.

So my guess is "flipping the bird" is the meaning.

For one thing, he sort of "flips" the "berds" up onto the power lines (see video). For another, flipping the bird is what street art, on some level, is generally about: It's generally illegal, generally vandalism and generally subversive social commentary aimed at the man.

Therefore, flipping the bird is my final answer for what Browne means.

Unless it's "bird on a wire"...

READ ON @ www.dogtownink.com

Labels: berd, berd gallery, david browne, Dogtown Ink, dogtownink.com, flat art, intersection birds, robbie connell, street art, thebradmiskell, yahoo news underground

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