Tattoo Parlor

Mick Beasley was a good Catholic girl, a young suburban housewife raising five children, when she tried to save her marriage by taking a walk on the wild side.She decided to wear her love on her hip. Taking the advice of a marriage counselor, who suggested displaying heraffection, Beasley headed to the nearest tattoo parlor and had her husband's name and a big pink rose applied to her hip.Two days later, she went back. By the time she finished having another flower tattooed to her chest, Beasley had fallen in love.

Not even getting stabbed repeatedly by a needle could get Danielle Cromb to put down her smartphone Saturday afternoon. "I've been on Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest," said Cromb, of Charleston, S.C., who clutched her iPhone as she was having ink injected into the skin on the back of her neck. "Mostly it's helpful if I'm looking up a picture in the middle of a conversation with an artist. And it can definitely be a distraction. " It is a common sight this weekend inside the Baltimore Convention Center: Semi-dressed, prostrate people playing games, texting and listening to music on their cellphones as tattoo artists work.

Dwight A. King has stuck a stud through his nostril and a pin through his nipple, but until last week never had felt a seven-point needledigging into his skin.King, a 20-year-old who dropped out of college to travel the country, thought about getting a tattoo for several years before making the commitment.Thursday, after Vinnie Myers traced an American Indian on King's back and began outlining the drawing in black ink using a needle, there was no turning back."Try not to move, dude. Try not to flinch if you can help it," Myers said as he bent over with his face close to King's back.

After years in legal limbo, tattoo parlors would be allowed to operate in most Baltimore County business zones, under a proposal county planners are expected to give the planning board today.But the proposal -- called "a good middle ground" by senior planner Hillorie Morrison -- could face a rocky future on its way to becoming law.Two county councilmen think the plan is too lenient. Tattoo parlor advocates view it as too strict. A community activist complains that the plan deals only with the location of tattoo parlors, not their public health implications.

A YOUNG woman walked into a Charles Street bar recently with a tattoo flashing from her calf. I couldn't tell if was a dragon or a triggerfish, though surely a cold-blooded creature of some sort, rendered in that spiky, heavy-metal style favored by graffiti artists. A few years ago I would have been surprised. I would have felt sorry for her. No longer. Tattoos are rife among the young, even women. The author of an article circulated by the venerable Pacific News Service in California described tattoos as "fashion statements for the mainstream."

It's the old-timers who tell you how much the business has changed. The legendary Lyle Tuttle started tattooing professionally on the West Coast in 1949, when it was mostly drunken servicemen demanding screaming eagless. Then came the first wave of hippies, their heads full of acid and idealism. Mr. Tuttle did Janis Joplin ("Gave 'er a bracelet on her wrist and a rose on her [chest]") and Cher and the Allman Brothers, although a lot of good their tattoos did them.Joplin OD'd on heroin and Duane Allman slammed his Harley into a produce truck, and both were gone from this world forever.

Alarmed that tattoo parlors could damage Ocean City's image, officials have outlawed the businesses in Maryland's beach resort -- unless the designs are applied by a doctor.City lawmakers say a last-minute zoning change modeled after a 1960 New York City ordinance should be enough to thwart the plans of two Delaware tattoo artists who want to share space in a body-piercing shop in Ocean City's historic downtown. In a 5-2 vote Monday night, Town Council members voted to change a 15-year-old ordinance that had kept tattoo parlors out by requiring that a physician be present if tattoo artists were applying the designs.

Towson, a once-struggling retail center overcome by malls, is being redefined as a bustling entertainment hub, but some of the recent changes are triggering alarm in the conservative community.Today, ethnic restaurants, espresso bars and Funscape's proposed 10-screen complex of movies and high-tech games lend excitement to Towson's York Road. But the evolution also has brought some gasps of distress among county officials and business owners as billiards parlors, an erotic lingerie shop and not one, but two, tattoo parlors have set their sights on the county seat.

When is a tattoo like a Rembrandt painting?When Baltimore County zoning commissioner Lawrence E. Schmidt says so.In a 1993 decision, Schmidt ruled that tattoo parlors are covered by a zoning provision that permits a residential art salon as an accessory to a residence in a business zone.Such a salon is defined as "a portion of a dwelling unit used for the exhibition and sale of original works of art." It is meant to define an in-house art gallery.This ruling -- and a conclusion by the zoning commissioner that there is no difference between "the work of the great masters" and a tattoo artist "other than a matter of taste and the surface (canvas or skin)"

Venus Easton has a front-row seat at the Catonsville Fourth of July parade every year. Simon and Nathalie King have a spectacular view of the Annapolis City Dock. And John Beck lives next to one of his favorite restaurants in Ellicott City.All of them live in apartments that not only are in the center of town, but above it -- above stores, boutiques and businesses.Once it was common to find shopkeepers and their families living above their businesses. Today, the buildings are usually owned by landlords who live elsewhere, but tenants continue to keep alive the tradition of above-store living.