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Being There

O Come All Ye Fateful

Getting "Thirteen-end" on the "Tattoo Holiday"

    It’s Friday the 13th. Don’t walk under a ladder. Don’t break a mirror. Do get a bargain tattoo. At least that’s the directive acted upon by several hundred of our ink-starved citizens, who all descended on the         Tattoo 13 shop in North Oakland on that inauspicious day last April.
    The concept at Tattoo 13 is simple: $13 tattoos all day, every Friday the 13th. You get to choose from a handful of designs. The classic: Anchor, Skull, Ace of Spades, Flaming Heart or Cross. The indelible edibles: Easter Egg, Cupcake or Beer Mug. Or the conceptual: 13 hatch marks (think: jail cell walls). They are small and quick to execute; most importantly, they all feature “13” prominently.
    Paying homage to this unholy number seems to be irresistible. “On a normal day we see between four and 12 people,” marvels Tattoo 13 owner Freddy Corbin, as clientele spill out the door and down the block waiting to meet the needle. “The line began forming at 9:30 a.m., an hour and a half before we opened.” Two hours into the workday, there are already 204 people on the waiting list. Although he and three other artists will be working nonstop until midnight (13 hours total), Freddy is already concerned that they won’t get to everybody.
    Inside, AC/DC blasts appropriately, and the tattoo machines are whirring. Artist Chummy Alexanian is about to get busy on a UC Berkeley journalism student who has selected the Cupcake. She leans over a chair exposing her left flank, where a picnic is already underway. “I want it here,” she tells Chummy, pointing to an available spot next to a cluster of strawberries and the banana Andy Warhol put on the first Velvet Underground album.
    Chummy, resembling an ultra-hip incarnation of Howdy Doody in red-checked shirt and slicked-back hair, introduced the $13 tattoo a few years ago. “I heard about a place in Texas doing it and wanted to try it here,” he says. “I never expected it to get this big.”
    Though the appeal may have something to do with the bargain rate—on a regular day the minimum price is $50—there is definitely something else going on. “I think it’s the renegade number,” says Freddy. “Elevators don’t go to the 13th floor. Some cities won’t name a street ‘13th Street’.”
    Fear of Friday the 13th is apparently a genuine phobia stretching back centuries. It even has a big, scary name: paraskavedekatriaphobia. According to the Phobia Institute in Asheville, N.C., the afflicted sometimes can’t leave their homes and tend to avoid air travel and big purchases, causing lost revenue every F13. This is not the case today on the 4900 block of Telegraph, where Tattoo 13’s minor economic miracle is spreading to businesses down the street. Bigum’s Silver Lion Bar and Lanesplitter Pizza & Pub have become de facto waiting rooms, and both are jammed.
    Hovering over the design choices is Jason, 31, one of the few ink-virgins in line. He is not sure what he wants or where it’s going. “It doesn’t even matter what it looks like. I just want to do it. Maybe I’ll get the Beer Mug on the back of my calf, I don’t know. Right now I’m kind of nervous because needles sometimes make me pass out. My friend was supposed to come with me, but he flaked.”
    Eight months into disability leave after an accident on the job with UPS, Jason sees the tattoo as marking a new beginning. “In a way, this accident was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says, exposing a nasty scar on his shoulder. “I’m finally finishing college after 10 years, majoring in international business.”
    Freddy steers Jason away from the Beer Mug and toward the far cooler Skull, to go on his bicep just below the scar. As Freddy begins to draw, Jason tries to distract himself with a game of Monopoly on his cell phone. “It’s nothing more than a cat scratch, man!” offers an artist working at the next station. A few minutes later Jason is admiring the still-dripping Skull. “This is the new me. I can follow through. I can finish college. I can get my degree.”
    With an hour to go, fresh skin is still walking in the door, while others slumped around the studio show signs of burnout. Yelps erupt as the opening chords of “Gimme Shelter” snake through the space. “It’s the crazy hour,” says Tattoo 13 assistant Alicia with a roll of her eyes, as a woman wearing torn fishnet, bones and black dreads pilots a staggering male friend out the door.
    By 11:59 p.m., 150 people have been “thirteen-ed,” and the last tattoo of the day begins. This time it’s Chummy’s turn in the chair for an elegant 13 applied on the knuckle of his right middle finger. Sixty seconds later the buzzing ends. “We’re through!” beams Chummy. “Now it’s just a party.”

    Tattoo 13, 4917 Telegraph Ave., (510) 655-1313, www.tattoo13oakland.com. Parlor plans to be open for 24 hours on Friday, July 13th. E-mail Matt Dibble at beingthere@ oaklandmagazine.com.