AJ Eubanks didn’t think it was strange when a 76-year-old woman approached him last summer in his tattoo shop, AJ Tattoo, asking for a full back tattoo before she left for Costa Rica.
He also wasn’t fazed—only busy—when an entire family, in town for a funeral, came in for tattoos on Father’s Day weekend to honor the loved one who had died.
Since its opening almost three years ago, AJ Tattoo has been the only tattoo parlor in Lawrence, located on Business U.S. 1 near the Brunswick Circle.
Eubanks, who co-owns the shop with Ken Senf, has seen a lot of changes in the tattoo business since he started working as an artist in the mid-1990s.
The industry has come a long way in the past few decades, slowly shedding its reputation as a symbol for gang members and bikers and spreading into the general population. In the late 1990s, tattoos started showing up everywhere: on TV commercials, popular shows and on friends and family of all ages.
Though it may be surprising, it’s not uncommon to see high school students — and teachers and staff members — sporting body art at graduation or prom. Kids as young as 16 can get inked with parental consent, and AJ’s customer base extends all the way to people in their 80s.
“We never had a grandma that had sleeves, whereas this generation of kids now, when they get older, their grandmother’s gonna have backpieces and sleeves,” Eubanks said. “It’s unheard of.”
At age 27, Hamilton resident Matt Panaro views his tattoos as his link to the art world.
“I’m not a real big art guy, so to me this is my art,” he said.
With about seven tattoos that vary in size, the Hamilton school district head custodian said it’s not an issue for him to have his tattoos exposed on school grounds. In fact, Panaro said, students and a handful of teachers have tattoos displayed in prominent places.
For the past five years, Eubanks has been working on a sleeve on Panaro’s left arm that starts at his wrist and spills over onto his chest. The blend of shapes that snakes its way up his arm was customized and drawn freehand by Eubanks, who’s logged in more than 50 hours making the permanent “biomechanics” — best described as robotic muscle — design.
“Sometimes I forget it’s an actual tattoo,” Panaro said. “I’ve had it so long, to me it’s just like another part of me now.”
His arms also bear the names of his parents and grandparents, all of whom are still living, as a way to show how much he cares for them.
“I got it mainly for the shock factor for them, because my grandmother’s not a huge fan, but she loved it when [I] got it,” Panaro said. “But she still busts my chops. She actually offered to pay AJ not to tattoo me.”
Fellow AJ Tattoo customer Greg Konopka, also a Hamilton resident, estimated he’d gotten at least 30 tattoos since his first one at age 16. He plans to honor a relative with his next one.
“My father-in-law just recently passed away, so I’m gonna get one in honor of him,” Konopka said. “It revolves around a story he used to tell me, about a broken pistol. So I’m gonna get that tattooed, probably with his initials in the handle.”
While tattooing is a way for people to honor living or deceased relatives, people also use them to express themselves, seek attention and more. Pet owners even have the option to have a cremated pet’s ashes mixed in with the tattoo ink to have an image literally made of their pet.
The reasons are limitless and personal, but they’re actually a new trend themselves.
“Now people are actually getting [tattoos] for a reason, where before they would get them just to look cool or fit in … people used to just get tattooed just to get tattooed,” Eubanks said.
AJ Tattoo is a 100 percent disposable tattoo studio. The shop is located at 1871 Brunswick Pike in Lawrence. Phone: (609) 826-9100.
AJ Tattoo co-owner AJ Eubanks
