Happy Bloggiversary to Me!

Happy Bloggiversary to Me!

Three years ago today, Tattoosday was born.

On July 31, 2007, I put up a post on BillyBlog, featuring a tattoo on a co-worker named Sephora.

The idea was to post a weekly tattoo on Tuesday, and use this is a vehicle to expand my horizons a bit; meet interesting people and learn about tattoos.

There was one problem. I enjoyed it too much. There weren't enough Tuesdays in the week. I was impatient and wanted to post right away, not wait until Tuesday. And so, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, it goes....

So a month later I threw the previous months post up on the stand-alone blog, Tattoosday. And BillyBlog faded.

It's still there, but Tattoosday is my passion and I couldn't have even imagined, back in 2007, how easy it would become for me to talk to strangers about their ink.

The once-a-week project produced forty-five separate interactions in July, we have a 30-day backlog of material, and this past week we registered our 650,000th hit. Not too shabby.

Go see the original post here to see how far we've come.

And a hearty thanks to all our contributors, all our fans, and all the tattooists out there creating wonderful, interesting, portable art. Without all of you, Tattoosday would have been a blip of an idea, and nothing more.

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Hoot! Hoot! Thanks for Your Support!!

Hoot! Hoot! Thanks for Your Support!!

Last night at 11:37 P.M., someone in Fairfield, California googled "owl tattoos".

Seventh on the list of results was the link to this tattoo:

(the post here)

This visitor registered Tattoosday's half a millionth hit, a number that seemed impossible when we first started out as a spin-off from BillyBlog 2 1/2 years ago (almost to the day). And although we're no Huffington Post (or I Can Has Cheeseburger, for that matter), which tosses off 500k in a day, or a week, or a month, or whatever, this little tattoo blog is very happy to celebrate this milestone.

Thanks to everyone who visits regularly, stops by occasionally, or just pops in from time to time. And, of course, a hearty thank you to all those tattooed folks who have volunteered their body art over the last 30 months!

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A Word of Thanks.....

A Word of Thanks.....

With the onset of Fall, I compose this note as the month of September is coming to an end.

I look around sadly at the long pants, long sleeves, and covered frames that, just a few weeks ago, were so much more interesting to behold.

I am filled with sadness.

The past month has been a record-breaker for Tattoosday. When we first spun off from BillyBlog, we garnered 120 hits in the first three weeks of our infancy.

Last year, I was amazed by my progress, in September '08 we racked up 13,351 hits.

And this September, when I anticipated a drop off from a record August, Tattoosday soared into uncharted territory, on pace to top 38, 000 hits on the last day of the month. This may not seem like a big deal, but blogging is often lonely, and the number of hits is often the only measure of recognition we receive.

So, the summer ink is running dry, but despair not, I will continue to spot tattoos, although perhaps not at the dizzying rate of the past few months.

I have a backlog of posts and a head full of ideas to keep us entertained as the leaner months loom.

I thank you all for your continued readership and participation. I am very appreciative of your support!

Bill Cohen

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Two Years Ago Today......

Two Years Ago Today......

"So, there you have it. The inaugural tattoo on Tattoosday here at
BillyBlog. It should be interesting to see what else I can come up with
from strangers, or if I have to revert to friends to help me in this
project."

That's what I wrote two years ago today on my original site BillyBlog.

Little did I know how much this once weekly feature would turn into such a significant aspect of my life. In little over a month, I had spun Tattoosday off of BillyBlog, from a recurring character to a site of its own.

And we have grown! This month we will have our biggest visitor load of our short career here, reaching just under 30,000 hits. This month also marked a quarter of a million hits since Tattoosday stood alone in September 2007.

And we have our sights set even higher.

I once again want to thank everyone who has contributed to the success of the blog, from the occasional visitors, to the rabid fans, from the enthusiastic tourists and New Yorkers who have contributed their work, to the talented tattoo artists who created that work.

And most of all, I want to thank my friends and family, who have seen my passion for tattoo writing, and have supported me whole-heartedly. And to my beautiful wife Melanie, who is my biggest cheerleader, most avid supporter, and one of the most understanding women I know. Not may wives would be keen on their husbands taking pictures of tattoos of strange women
(and men) they've met on the street. But she is my number one fan. And I love her all the more for it.

A week from tomorrow my oldest daughter Jolee, who inspired this, my first tattoo, will be celebrating her bat mitzvah. The week ahead will be filled with planning and visits from family, so I am taking a week off in posting, so I can focus my energies on this landmark event.

Rest assured, I have two dozen tattoo posts in the queue and will likely be unable to restrain myself from collecting more photos and stories in the week to come.

I will resume posting on August 9th or 10th.

I thank everyone for their continued support and words of encouragement.

Bill Cohen

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An Interlude

An Interlude

The previous post featured our recent adventures at Dare Devil Tattoo on Friday the 13th.

I wrote specifically about my wife Melanie getting her lucky 13 tattoo on her birthday. People who know me and know Tattoosday were excited not just for her, but for me as well. They knew I'd be surrounded by tattoos, and that I would therefore be busy talking to people about Tattoosday, and collecting stories and photos that would last me through summer.

Not quite.

Certainly the cold weather helped (or hindered, depending on your perspective), but the concept behind Tattoosday has always been about the random spotting of tattoos on the streets of New York. The expression "shooting fish in a barrel" comes to mind. There is no "sport," if you will, in going to a tattoo shop, or convention, and collecting blogfodder.

I could certainly do it, but the randomness and surprise element that one finds on the street are what really help propel the blog along.

So, by the end of our Dare Devil adventure, I had material for the post on Melanie's tattoo, nothing more. I did pass my card to the two young ladies behind us with whom we had a mutual friend, but I did not request their participation, although I could have. I did not identify myself to shop employees as an ink- blogger, although I could have.

Not to mention, it was Melanie's birthday, not mine. I was there for her, not me. No lucky 13 tattoo for me, although I would have loved one.

I was rewarded later in the day by two other tattoo encounters, which I did document, and which will appear in the days to come. I am hoping to receive emails from the participants to fill in the blanks that time and necessity left incomplete.

So, stay tuned.

Thanks for visiting.

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