The VanNess Vagabonds

Where do I begin? I’m going to pass on explaining a couple of things. Jessica has been great, a solid rock in keeping you guys up with us while I am off tattooing.

I arrived at the tattoo shop where I was working in Buenos Aires, Argentina on our 3rd day in Argentina. I went to the shop, said in the best spanglish I could, “Hola ,Mi llamo es Marcos. “Turko” (who I will explain in this posting later) said “hello, how can I help you?” and WHAAAMO!!! I’m lost because of the BA Argentinian dialect of Spanish. It’s a mixture of accents like spanish, italian, and even some french. I think it’s called LUNFARDO.

Anyway the shop is called Welldone Tattoo. A great guy named Mariano Castiglioni is the owner. See what I mean about the dialect; all the names are either Spanish or Italian in origin. He is a good boss and I can tell that his employees respect and love him almost like a father. Just like every shop I have ever been, most turn out to be almost always the same. They have an awesome shop girl named Valeria pronounced Ba-LA-re-a, she does a great job. She sets up your station, breaks down your station, sets your appts, gets you what ever you need and pretty much was my Spanish tutor for about 8 hours a day (poor Valeria).

Next in line, the tattoist: “Turko” was Mariano’s apprentice and is now an awesome tattooist and rad guy. Sebas pronounced Seva,s amazing versatile tattoo artist ( works 2 days in a shop and 4 in an apt studio with 3 other guys and his boss doesn’t care, would never happen at Blue Flame). Last but not least, Piranha the artsyist of the guys in the shop. Real great painter and tattooer, he used to design clothing 5 years ago and now is just a bad ass. I was covering his shift’s cause he was on vacation for 3 weeks at his house. Yep that’s right, VACATION AT HIS HOUSE FOR 3 WEEKS.

So now that you know about the guys I worked with, I will tell you some things about being a traveling tattooist. Everything is the same except for everything. It didn’t take me long to pack for this trip because I just brought the essentials, you know ink, needles, machines, tubes, a small repair kit, and a new small power supply (that exploded and caught on fire) no biggie. I plugged it in to the socket with my plug adapter, not converter. I didn’t realize that most of the world, other than the USA, uses 220w power and not 110w. So it hummed, then popped, then caught fire. I didn’t even use it once in this country before it blew. It doesn’t matter, you know why? Because they are all awesome, they said “Hey man, don’t worry use this one or that one or mine, no worries we don’t care. Make a tattoo and we will get you another one.” How cool is that? You don’t even know me and you let me make money here by using your stuff. COOL! That’s still not all of the first day. I broke my box, broke their arm rest and spilled rinse cup after rinse cup. Stupido Gringo!!!
I ran Valeria around the shop like a madman. I messed up so much that I was behind an hour, which if you are a client reading this you know, is pretty normal for me. But, this is not normal in a new shop on the 1st day. I was nervous for the 1st time in like 10 years. I started sweating so much it was dripping on my clients leg and rinsing the drawing off. Oh and don’t let me forget that they don’t do stencils with a machine, it’s by hand (the way I learned 13 years ago). I haven’t made a machine made stencil in forever, normally I would just freehand it on, but because FREEHAND scares the shit out of Argentinian’s when you don’t speak spanish, i had to make stencils for everyone. How can I forget I didn’t eat for the whole day because I was playing catch up. Does this sound familiar?

Yeah everything is the same. Not really, but all in all, it is and was and still will be when I get back. Incredibly Awesome. The guys make me feel comfortable, like I am a part of the shop, not just a guest. Turko has been Jess and my personal tour guide for Buenos Aires. So much so that his legs are killing him walking with us everywhere. Turko took us to an Artist Market, Traditional Argentine BBQ, Tango Show, Carnival and a bunch of other things.

Jess bought a STEP-O-METER, we walked an average of 6 miles a day. Can you believe my fat ass is walking 5-6 miles a day? Much less sometimes more than 6 miles “WHAT?” My legs feel like rocks. So I might be skinny again one day or just less fat even with eating ducle de leche for every meal (sweet Carmel they put in everything). We went to The Recoleta Cemetery together FREE (you know me-I’m a romantic and very cheap individual). We ate, we laughed, then we packed to head down south.

I’m going to be write more soon, probably in the next 2 days or tonight. I have to tell you about where Superman lives.

By the way…Did I tell you that I make about $100 bucks a day working my ass off and I love my life right now. If not, I want to tell you that I LOVE THIS LIFE AND THIS COUNTRY….more to come.