Her boyfriend at the time got the complete instructions for making a folded paper airplane on his arm. Ip’s first tattoo was a Chinese symbol for her family name. “Some people like to paint memories on their bodies.” Just make sure you choose wisely.

Such old-fashioned ideals can be a shame because tattoos are in their heyday artistically. “They won’t take you seriously if you have them.” “Older doctors frown upon tattoos pretty heavily,” she says. “The Chinese artists are really expensive,” she explains, which she chocks up to a “gangster” stigma tattoos have in that country and an overwhelmingly conservative attitude, which she also found evident in the American medical field. She also follows Hong Kong and Korean artists on Instagram, noting how much easier it is to find great artists, though many have insane waiting lists. She is also a fan of Steven Compton at Red Dagger.īefore getting a tattoo, Ip does extensive research on the Internet.

Her koi fish represents a playful quality. Her arm is bedecked in a large peony, which in the Chinese tradition symbolizes loneliness or a longing for another half. She gets her work done at Assassin on Westheimer (behind Uchi) because she prefers that studio’s Chinese-style tattoos, which represent her heritage, featuring warm tones and a propensity for nature. It’s one that her parents don’t yet know she’s making. Beautiful, traditional Chinese renderings and watercolors splash across her upper arm in a bold statement. Having racked up more than 16 hours of ink at around $200 an hour, Ip’s $3,000-plus worth of tattoos are investment pieces. She was in nursing school before she found herself switching things up and jumping behind the bar - she’s been with Ninja Ramen for two years - and it’s a mind-set that carries over to her body art. “I’m actually really quiet and reserved, so this is just a gift for myself, to say that I’m also a baby badass,” Sarah Ip says. For the six Houston favorites we spoke with, their body art represents meaningful life moments, hobbies, good and bad memories, and, well, sometimes nothing at all. Whatever the case, bartenders these days walk around with some of the finest body art you can imagine. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that everybody knows that Dolly Parton secretly has a bunch of tattoos. Perhaps, though, for bartenders, a carefree lifestyle and easy access to disposable income play a major factor in getting inked, along with a laid-back attitude among industry leaders and business that allows for freedom of expression when it comes to appearances. No surprise, then, that there are more than 1,200 tattoo studios in Texas, with 20 awesome ones making the Houston Press best list last year. Plus, let’s not even talk about how many people gobble up tat pics on Instagram with the voracity of food-porn lovers. “All of a sudden, everybody stopped giving me weird looks,” he jokes. Tattoos have also become much more mainstream in the past decade, an occurrence that Hay Merchant manager Dusty Brittain pegs on the rise of reality television shows about the subject. That’s one in four people under the age of 36. Back in 2010 a Pew poll revealed that 38 percent of Millennials (in this case, those born after 1980) had tattoos. So why exactly has the service industry embraced tattoos seemingly more than any other occupational sector in America? It probably has a little bit to do with demographics. I’m pretty sure that non-tattooed bartenders only make up like 10 percent of us.” Three of his staff members, he noted, had just gotten new tattoos in the previous two weeks alone. When asked if he had suggestions for local bartenders with tats, Christopher Huang at Ninja Ramen joked, “It would be 25,000 images long. So it’s not just Houston, then, that has its fair share of tattooed bartenders, or chefs for that matter. By 2012, even though the speakeasy look had primarily died out, Tales seemed more like a tattoo convention than an actual tattoo convention, and it has stayed that way ever since. By 2009 a noticeable jump in the Brooklynesque bartender, complete with tattoos, suspenders and funny mustaches, was taking over nationally. I know this because I actually worked for the event that year and again in 2008, when the Sasha Petraske-driven Gatsby style had started infiltrating the booze scenes of New York City and San Francisco. Back at Tales of the Cocktail in 2007, the largest spirits industry conference in the world, held each July in New Orleans, tattooed bartenders weren’t in the majority.

Bartender mom dip