Fashion
A Celebration of New York City in Needles and Ink
With roots stretching back to the mid-19th century, the history of tattooing in New York City is bloodstained and a bit battered. Creativity has often flourished, but even through the 1990s, acceptance of the practice grew slowly, with tattoos seen …
With roots stretching back to the mid-19th century, the history of tattooing in New York City is bloodstained and a bit battered. Creativity has often flourished, but even through the 1990s, acceptance of the practice grew slowly, with tattoos seen by many as a calling card for renegades, criminals, sideshow performers, bikers and punks.
“New York City is the birthplace of modern American tattooing,” said Michelle Myles, 52, a tattoo artist who got her start in New York City in 1991. She is the co-owner, along with Brad Fink, of Daredevil Tattoo on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and she is a licensed New York City tour guide, offering walking history tours about Bowery tattooers.
“The first electric tattoo machine was patented in 1891 on the Bowery,” she said, sharing her love of the city’s ink-stained history at the New York City Tattoo Arts Convention, a new event that was held over the weekend at Terminal 5, a music venue on West 56th Street. “The very first professional tattooer in the United States was in the Fourth Ward, which was a couple blocks east of the Bowery, a little southeast. He was Martin Hildebrandt, listed as tattooing in the New York City directory in 1858.”
Tattooing was outlawed in New York City from 1961 to 1997.
