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Sunday I attended the St. Louis Old School Tattoo Expo.  The event occurred Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Holiday Inn in Downtown St. Louis.  Over 100 tattoo artists were present.  Tattoo shops from across the country had booths at the expo and local tattoo shops including All Star Tattoos, Trader Bob’s, and Iron Age had booths too.

I was completely intimidated by the beautiful tattooed and pierced people who surrounded me.  I felt as if I stood out a bit, but I am sure they often feel the same in society – I did look “vanilla” and have only one piercing and only two tattoos, after all.  It was interesting to watch the artists work and I enjoyed viewing their work in the albums they shared at their booths.

Throughout the expo competitions were held for various types of tattoos, including black and grey, best back piece, best color, most realistic, most unusual, best arm sleeve, portrait, and many others as well.  Three winners were chosen in each category.  Seth won in two competitions – best back piece and best large black and grey.

I do hope that they find a better venue for next year’s expo.  The Downtown St. Louis Holiday Inn is a hole in the wall hotel made up of rooms, a too-smoky bar, crappy cafeteria, and a few sofas.  Last year’s expo was held at the City Museum and I wish I had gotten to attend it in a more fitting venue.

I took many shots during the expo on Sunday.  All of them are found here.  I hope to have attachment lenses for my S3 next year for the expo and will pay for the weekend pass so I can get more shots, of all of the competitions especially.  I provided my card to one of the competition judges, so that they can have access to my expo shots.  Hopefully the expo folks will like some of the shots I got.

If you have a tattoo, want a tattoo, or are otherwise appreciative of tattoos, you should consider coming to next year’s St. Louis Old School Tattoo Expo.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Art, Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.