Jonas Vail

My first two were on my wrists.I got the stars on my left wrist in January 1995 at Sunset Strip Tattoo http://www.sunsetstriptattoo.com/info.html in LA. My mom died when I was 18. The green parts of the stars form her initials like a monogram EVB. I got the X underneath on the 10 year anniversary of her death, April 7, 2003 at Mom’s Body Shop on Haight Street in San Francisco http://www.momsbodyshop.com/index.html

My right wrist is Kanji, designed by a Japanese art director friend of mine. The bigger bottom character is “Mother”. Though you would probably use Katakana to spell out her name, the two smaller Kanji characters above represent my mother’s name: Eileen. The left character is “ai”, the right is “leen”. “Ai” means love, and “leen” means pride. I got it at Black Wave Tattoo on La Brea in LA http://blackwavetattoo.com/ in August 1997.

My third one is totally meaningless. I was jonesing for a new tattoo. I made the star in Powerpoint! It was for people who sat behind me on the bus to have something to look at (stupid). I didn’t realize how faded it was until I took this picture. I got it in December 2000, at Everlasting in San Francisco, but at their old location on McAllister, before they moved to where they are now on Divis. http://www.everlastingtattoo.com/


My next one was a long time in the making – about 9 years. I am a Capricorn, and a fellow Capricorn friend and I had it drawn by a Hungarian artist called Rita Ackermann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Ackermann She also designed the cover of Thurston Moore’s 1995 solo album Psychic Hearts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_Hearts I also got it at Everlasting, this time on Divis, in March 2004.

Lastly, El Tigre, designed by my good friend Abel Macias http://www.abelmacias.net/ Also a few years in the making. I had him draw me a tiger because I was born in the year of the tiger (1974). I got it done by Duncan – aka Mr. X http://www.duncanx.com/ at Into You Tattoo http://www.into-you.co.uk/index2.php on St. John Street in Clerkenwell in London. I got him done February 17, 2007.

Don’t know what’s next, but looking forward to it.