The Park Slope Ink Stink: Roger

images via Park Slope Lens

Making a big stink over Park Slope ink one dirty needle at a time, we're giving upstanding citizens the opportunity to brag about their tattoos so they can shut the fuck up about them already!

This week's victim willing participant: Roger DelaCruz

Tattoos discovered: at the shitty Xavier High school gym aka Park Slope's illustrious "indoor soccer field."

When Roger isn't busy being a ball hog at Xavier on Tuesday nights, he can usually be found perched at one of Bierkraft's picnic tables dining on his two favorite things: sandwiches and beer.

He has 3 tats: a dragon on his left shoulder, a coat of arms with some llama looking thing on his right arm and some Chinese scrawl in an extremely risqué location that I assure you is just as feminine and unoriginal as the tattoo is itself.

As you can see from the pictures, I obviously didn't seek out these specific tats for their sheer artistic qualities (sorry Rog), but more so for the stories behind them.

Roger got his first tat at the tender age of 15 while on a school field trip on the Island of Crete, Greece (daym, where the hell did this kid go to HS? Don't most high schools take trips to the local museum or like..the egg carton factory or some shit?). Anyway, Roger and his 5 best bros (whom he fondly refers to as 'the 6 Pak') somehow escaped the clutches of their teacher just long enough to hit up the local tattoo parlor. The '6 Pak' had just near an hour, so they sat side by side getting inked up as the distraught tattoo artists quickly scribbled the Chinese symbols for 'friend' on their bodies. What a unique and completely unheard of idea guys!

Roger's second and third tattoos were given to him as presents from both of his grandmothers. I don't know if like, it was a jealousy thing and one gram heard about his other gram's getting him a tat so she felt the need to one up her game and beat out the competition or something, but somehow this is how his tats came to be. Roger delved into the whole story but I drifted off at some point. So as far as I'm concerned, all you need to take from this is that grams #1 was obviously an avid Mortal Kombat supporter seeing as she sprung at the chance to permanently place a dragon tattoo on her grandson's shoulder; and grams #2 took the more traditional route with a llama coat of arms. Duh.

I'm sure there are many readers that share my love for Brooklyn and tattoos. So, Park Slopers I offer you this challenge: If you get the phrase "fucked in park slope" tattooed somewhere on your body, perhaps I will pay for it (!) AND give you a high-five.

What a deal!

Oh and if you would like to be featured in The Ink Stink and your tattoos/story behind them don't totally blow, let us know by sending an email to effedinparkslope at gmail dot com!