It’s been almost 10 years since I got some of the greatest advice I’ve ever been lucky enough to receive. I was getting tattooed in Pensacola, Florida at a beautiful shop called Hula Moon. Famous Gabe, a name he received from Bob Montagna, was tattooing me, a little skinny 19-year-old. I had just received news that I was going to start my apprenticeship at Aerochild Tattoos, and was so excited that it was all I could talk about…

Read the rest of Sean Herman’s write-up on Gabe Smith on the Tattoo Artist Magazine blog.

Tattoo by Sean Herman at Royal Street Tattoo in Mobile, AL

Post from: TattooSnob.com Sean Herman on Gabe Smith

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Tattoo by: Sean Herman at Royal Street Tattoo in Daphne, AL

Post from: TattooSnob.com Sean Herman is now on Twitter!

Other posts on TattooSnob you may enjoy:

1. Sean Herman on Gabe Smith
2. Sean Herman is really great
3. Shark Day: Sharks on acid

Tattoo by: Sean Herman at Royal Street Tattoo in Daphne, AL

Post from: TattooSnob.com Three wise monkeys

Other posts on TattooSnob you may enjoy:

1. Anarchy and art
2. Royal Street Tattoo’s philosophy on tattooing
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Tattoo by: Sean Herman at Royal Street Tattoo in Daphne, AL

Post from: TattooSnob.com Pit monster

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Did that sentence make anyone else sick to their stomach? Yeah…

I’m having a hard time understanding why Rebel Ink insists on idolizing these two. It’s not like Michael Lohan or Michelle McGee are known for their good deeds, their contribution to the tattoo industry, or their inspirational messages to the kids. Instead both are known for despicable behavior, and generally considered embarrassments to everyone they’re associated with.

I’m confident if you’re still reading this, you don’t plan to buy this magazine. I’m willing to bet you’ve never purchased an issue of Rebel Ink, nor really thought twice about it. If you see it however, don’t be afraid to pick it up. I encourage you to form your own opinion, and at least read the piece about Royal Street Tattoo. Those guys are a tattooed family we can be proud of.

Post from: TattooSnob.com Rebel Ink defines the “New Inked American Family”

No related posts.

Tattoo by: Sean Herman at Royal Street Tattoo in Daphne, AL

Post from: TattooSnob.com Speaks for itself

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2. Royal Street Tattoo’s philosophy on tattooing
3. Sean Herman is now on Twitter!

A huge part of our economy is the fishing industry. Everyone fishes here, the shoulder of the causeway going across the bay is filled with people fishing, fishing to make a living, and fishing to eat that night. You see, where we live, a majority of people are blue collar and working to survive. When this oil pushed the fish to the shore, to be eaten by the sharks, it did the same to our economy and our workers. It pushed the fisherman toward the shore, to then be eaten by the BP execs offering to give them a job. Their “jobs” only lasted so long, and put them in harm’s way, causing many to get sick. But that’s ok, they are just little fish that have to be sacrificed, right? It is sickening to watch.

In very anti-climactic moments over the past few months, the well has been capped, and the beaches have been “cleaned.” The Oil Spill becomes something we hear less and less about, and there is almost a sense of normalcy, until the brown tar disbursement goo washes ashore every few weeks or so to remind us that this is never over. It reminds us that everything is different now; nothing will ever be the same.

Before the Deep Water Horizon, we (Mobile) were slated to be the first city to completely bounce back from the recession. We were the Great Hope. We had new contracts at the shipyards, new businesses coming downtown, everything was hopeful.  Now, five months later, the well is supposedly capped and everything is back to normal, right? But what is normal? We were lucky in my town, because the oil didn’t get into our bay, I can’t tell you why it didn’t but by some act of the universe, we were spared and we are thankful forever, but our lives are forever changed. Our economy is based off of our bay and our Gulf, how do fishermen make money off of oily carcasses? They don’t. And so the Great Hope was destroyed. Our economy, the economy of the entire Gulf Coast, has suffered more than they want to tell you. Our environment has suffered more than they want to tell you. They don’t want to tell you any of these things, because the worst is over and now for the next “headline.” This is what remains and is standing strong: Our Will. Our will to live, and to try to take care of our home is something that no BP exec can take away, or try to buy from us.

I’ve always said the same thing, I’m not one of those tattooers who is tattooing to pay for my fancy car and huge mansion. I’m not tattooing to help fund one of my many other business ventures (not that there is anything wrong with any of that) for everyone has a path that is theirs, that is just not mine. I have always been a working tattooer, never making money hand over fist. I tattoo because I have to, it’s a spirit I have to exercise, it’s something I have to do, like breathing.  So you may ask, “Sean, that’s all well and good, but why are you telling me this?  We were talking about the oil spill.” I tell you this because this is the mentality where I live, I don’t think I am out of the ordinary here. We do what we love because that is what we want to do and where we want to be. As our economy sinks, our wills grow stronger. I have never been more proud to be from where I am. Through all of this, I look at the people around me and find inspiration from everything and everyone… the farmers markets, the artists, and the resilience to never give up, and never back down. The small town I live in, Fairhope, is an artist community, founded as a utopia on the bay. And I feel it is still that, and will always be that because of the people here. Our lives were forever changed the day the birds started dying, but hopefully we will be able to change that to something that will mark a new beginning, an awakening, to the world around us, our connection to it, and everything around us, and our responsibility to make a change.

We are all connected, every one of us, with the world around us—the environment and the people.  I look around me here and now I see more gardens being planted in my neighborhood, more people buying from the local farmer’s market, more people supporting local, and it gives hope. Watching more people getting around on bicycles, more people watching where they spend their money, what they contribute to, it gives hope. The price that was paid was horrible, something that can never be really truly be understood, but hopefully everyone realizes this and will live more ethically, responsibly and recognize the connection that is really so key to our lives. Hopefully all those deaths, all those senseless killings, were not in vain. We may be one small town in Alabama, but maybe the awakening can start here, can start now.

In the end I remembered this: death is nothing but a fear, and the end is never the end, this is all a ride. Going back to the beginning, and talking about watching a terminally ill family member die. The reason why that is so hard is because we are selfish, and we don’t want to see them go, we don’t want them to leave us. No matter how prepared for death they may be, we always want one more minute with them. Death is not the end, and it’s just the beginning of a new ride, one where if we remember how the last one went, we can anticipate the next drop, and enjoy it that much more. There is nothing to fear in life, there is nothing to control you, you can change the world, and will, as long as you remember and look forward to the next drop in the ride, and enjoy it.

________________

If you are interested in helping in the recovery of Sean’s beautiful home, here are a few links to help:

http://loveyourcoast.com/

http://www.zazzle.com/artvsoilspill

Post from: TattooSnob.com More than a spill: the BP disaster according to Sean Herman – Part 2

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1. More than a spill: the BP disaster according to Sean Herman – Part 1

Pete and I were looking out from the front of the new shop, the bay glistening in our sights, and he looked over at me and said, “It’s like watching a terminally ill family member die before you. It’s looming, impending, and there is nothing you can do about it, everyday you watch them fade before you.” Pete was talking about the bay that we had both grown up on.  I grew up on the Eastern shore of it, and he grew up on the other side, in Mobile. This was a few days after the oil spill in April that forever changed our lives. I worked with him a lot at that point, trying to do the build out for the second shop we were opening on the eastern shore.  Our conversations went in every direction, but always seemed to come back to the spill, time and time again.

I think we have all turned on the television and watched some sort of horrific sight happening before our eyes. Floods, earthquakes, war… all of these visuals are constantly brought to our eyes, but we can change the channel. We see them, and change the channel; it’s a natural reaction, because it’s not happening to us.  The events from the Deep Water Horizon were real, more real than anything I had experienced. We had all lived through hurricanes, but this was something different.  Hurricanes come and leave, and then you clean up.  They are devastating, but when they are gone, they are gone—they don’t sneak up behind you and say, “Just kidding, I’m back.”  This spill (if you want to call it that) was different; it was, and still is, a looming giant. Every day we watched in horror, watching the projected path get closer and closer to us, knowing that if it reached our bay, it would potentially destroy our fragile ecosystem. For a month or so we waited, talking about everything from “oil rain” to whether or not we could eat veggies from our gardens, hoping something would happen to change this. Then dead seagulls starting washing ashore, and we all knew where we were.

I got a text message when the oil started washing up on the shore in Gulf Shores. I grew up skateboarding, spending my endless days of summer down at the gulf. My memories are of skateboarding all day and swimming all night, every teenage kid’s dream. As an adult, I spent countless moonlit nights walking down the beach, a beach riddled with pilings and bits of piers left over from hurricanes, figuring out what I was going to do with my life. This beach gave me more answers than college ever could. Now those beautiful white sands had started to turn black. Before the oil was the dead birds, signaling the impending oil on the horizon.  Normally, birds are a signal of land for the weary sailor, but for us, it became a different signal, an all-together too real, frightening one. One by one the birds turned up on shore, covered in black goop, choking, dying or already dead. These dead birds signified our future in our eyes.

The oil started washing ashore as tar balls, little black and brown-ish balls that riddled our shoreline like buckshot on a hunting ground. I couldn’t bear to see it, so I stayed away from the beach. It was selfish, but it broke my heart and I wanted to act like it wasn’t really there, just like everyone else did and would. I wanted to act like my loved one wasn’t dying. Once the oil started washing up in sheets, you could no longer ignore it, it was there, and it was making its presence known, choking the life out of everything under it. It was like watching the water make a deathbed, telling us that this is where our ways have gotten us. This is when I decided to go down to the beach, to see what was happening with my eyes, not through the eyes of the ever-changing media.

The oil clean up was definitely quick and good at making everything look “clean.” As I walked down the main beach, it was hard to see if there was even any oil in sight. They worked day and night, sucking up oil so that things looked “ok.”  The problem with oil and sand is that it sinks through the sand, seeping into every pore, further and further down.  The image of children digging on our supposed “clean” beaches, and pulling up handfuls of oil was striking. I suppose it was fitting, really, in the sense of how we try to clean up most problems in our world, usually just working with the surface, never going deeper.  As I walked down the beach, and glanced in small holes, all I saw staring back at me were brown globs, below the surface everyone saw.

After seeing the main beach, I headed down to the main pier at the Gulf State Park, a very familiar beautiful place. I pulled up, shaking and terrified, scared of what I was going to see. I felt like I was visiting my grandmother right before she passed away, scared to look into her eyes and know that this was the last time I would ever see her in this way. Which is selfish, in the end, because in death we are angry that we will never see that person again, in our eyes, even if they have made their peace and are ready, we are not always ready. We walked up the pier and started to look over the waterfront. Everything was immediately different. Normally you had 50 or so feet of wading area where everyone would swim and then the deep water much further out where the fish were, where all the fishermen were spending there days. Now, when I looked out onto the water, all I could see in the wading area were fish, thousands of them, swimming in tight circles. Stingrays lined the bottom of the floor, with mullet and other fish swimming over them in huge schools. Charging through these were sharks, cutting through the schools of mullet, devouring all they could. It was like a huge aquarium, something you would see in a glass cage, but this was reality. It was the most surreal event of my life. Everyone watched in amazement, staring, jaws dropped at the sight of every fish that would be out in deep water, here in front of us, on top of each other, grasping for oxygen. The Oil had pushed them there, pushed them inward, away from their home and into an area that will slowly choke and kill them, just like it did the fishermen and the economy where we live.

________________

Check out Part 2 of this special guest post from Sean Herman.

If you are interested in helping in the recovery of Sean’s beautiful home, here are a few links to help:

http://loveyourcoast.com/

http://www.zazzle.com/artvsoilspill

Post from: TattooSnob.com More than a spill: the BP disaster according to Sean Herman – Part 1

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1. More than a spill: the BP disaster according to Sean Herman – Part 2

Tattoo by: Sean Herman at Royal Street Tattoo in Daphne, AL.

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Being the people-watcher that I am, hearing folks off the street voicing their thoughts on visible tattoos was a pretty serious bonus. Obviously this remains a topic that can get people talking, especially given their comfort with expressing a wide variety of opinions about the subject.

Live Free from Alek Rost on Vimeo.

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