Thugs and Punks – Trinidad and Tobago

Airbrushed wall Art of a thug and whore - Trends in culture, Trinidad and Tobago

At the age of 18, to have a tattoo is a rite of passage, and at the “Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing,” San Juan, Trinidad, you enter a small red room is filled with several posters of a variety of symbols and iconography to choose from. We were told that the average person wants what they see on television and what they have seen on Gangsta Rappers or images that can help them look hard and dangerous. Our Tattoo guide sounded many years beyond his age (despite his plethora of tattoos), he said that he could see the slipping away of morals in Trinidad and Tobago because all that people want are images of Guns and Girls.


Ghandi airbrushed on a tee-shirt. (Upper right)

I had been looking at the tee-shirts that they also do and I saw two that struck me. A very well rendered image of Mahatma Ghandi and his wife next to an image of a lit marijuana cigarette. In the vein of the conversation I said to the tattooest, “More Ganja than Ghandi” He said that that was unfortunately the case.


"Gun" courtesy of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing

There was a guy who came in and wanted a gun with bullets, but could only afford the image of the gun. Again we lamented that we hoped that that was true in life as well for that misguided person. However, lets face it, these tattoo guys who started their parlour two years ago and also work on the bodies of cars, are not going to say no to someone who wants Fifty Cents or M&M’s images all over their back.


"Spad" of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing


Courtesy of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing

These things are not cheap, and they get to see what is going on in the minds of the young and the fast in Trinidad and Tobago every day. Tattoos have always been about bucking the norm. Sailors got them and women who wore them were considered prostitutes. It is in our nature to want to be conservative on the one hand, yet subversive on the other.


The detail of a tattoo on a young man's back. Courtesy of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing

Today a tattoo goes a long way in playing it safe while presenting an element of danger. So maybe the guy who could not afford the bullets gets to live another day because he manages to appear mad, bad and dangerous to know in his neighbourhood. It may not be right, but it is life as it is on the street today. - Adele
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I want a tattoo of a woman’s lip just above my vagina with her tongue protruding and licking at my clitoris.......a female client



You have it or you don’t. Style, panache or just being Robert Seales, a tattoo artist advertising his work and that of two other tattooists, Troy Ford of Barbados and Roger Actwell on his biceps, arms, chest and shins. The owner of Tattoo 4 life works from a small room with all the amenities for getting a tattoo. And as he prepares his clients on what they should expect, the hum of needle on occasions have made people faint during the Session. Clients who are came in drunk or asked for an absurd tattoo are generally declined.


Tattoo 4 life