Tattoos are an ancient art but the modern day tattoo machine was invented in 1891.

Tattoos were a deviant, taboo act reserved for the lower, working classes of bikers, prisoners, and military personnel until the 1960’s wave of hippies. They found tattoos to be a spiritual way of advocating their underdog beliefs.

Tattoos, like I said, were not ALWAYS hip and young, or even taboo and dirty. The Japanese tattoo artists do their work by hand, and craft client skin into tribal complicated designs like mythically heroic scenes.

Deep, black lines hold in bright colors illustrating samurai, dragons, and other figures all over a person's body.

Many tattooists are known as great artists, making skin do what paper just can’t. In some cases, brilliant art majors in college turn into popular tattoo artists in dingy corner parlors (not as terrible and life-wasting to them as it may sound to you) or even world-renowned shops—and shows! Think “Miami Ink” or “Inked.”

But not all tattoos are done by the average (or extraordinary) artist in the acceptable, sterilized way and are completed with eye-catching eccentricity and wonder. Many tattoos are done in prisons and back-alleys—the “old-fashioned” way. These tattoos can range from gang alliance symbols or religious pleads like this “Only God can Judge Me” tattoo.

Religion and dedication are the most common reasons for getting a tattoo. Most not-so-conservative Christians exhibit crosses, Jesus, or something more extreme on their bodies showing pride in their religion. Less morally, sport teams gather in tattoo shops everywhere waiting for identical tattoos of team’s name, mascot, or jersey number.

Even LESS morally, young gangs members constantly pay for permanent gang pride to be tattooed on their necks, faces, hands, knuckles, and legs. These youths almost always grow up and not just physically—mentally and socially. This causes a desperate want for their hideous reminders of their wrongs to be EXPENSIVELY removed.