Tattooing inks rich Chicago history

 

     Large portraits of tattoo icons Tatts Thomas and Ralph Johnstone watch over Nick Colella as he works.
     "Both of those guys tattooed on the 400 block of South State Street where the Harold Washington Library is," said Colella, owner of Great Lakes Tattoo on Grand Avenue.
     Tattoos go way back. The oldest known tattoos are on Ötzi the Iceman, a body preserved in the Alps for over 5,000 years. Tattooing was common in ancient Egypt and is found on mummies, mostly women, who often etched fertility signs onto their bodies.
     Chicago is part of that history.
     "Chicago plays a vital role in tattooing in the country," Colella said. "That area of State Street, you had all the sailors come from Great Lakes Naval Base. That's why this place is called Great Lakes Tattoo. You had this naval training base here where all these sailors in wartime came to train, then went down to State Street to see girls and get tattoos. All the arcades had tattooers. All the burlesque shows had tattooers. This stuff on the walls is all from those arcades."
     The walls of Great Lakes Tattoo are jammed with framed selections of classic art: swooping eagles and beribboned daggers, grinning skulls and flaming hearts. Like any fashion, tattooing goes through phases. Polynesian tribal tattoos were popular in the 1990s, then strands of barbed wire on the upper arm.
     But the snarling panthers and cheesecake ladies are always in style.
     "That's pretty much what I do: traditional American tattooing," Colella said. "That's what Danni's doing: repainting in the same tradition they repainted 80 years ago."
     Danni Nievera, at the next stall — 10 artists work at Great Lakes — carefully dabbed red onto a dragon on a sheet of paper.
     "I'm just using gouache, adding color," she said.
     I was not there to get tattooed — I have a hard enough time picking out a new pair of glasses — but to visit World Tattoo Gallery, a small exhibit space downstairs, and see a show of Tony Fitzpatrick's colorful paintings. Tony was heavily tattooed himself, and his art was influenced by tattoo art. Popping in, eyeballing his pictures, then leaving seemed a lost opportunity. So I asked to talk about tattooing while there.
     Besides aesthetics, the old designs carry the spirit of their originators.
     "I like tattooing off these old designs because that's what keeps those guys alive," Colella said. "That's what the history of it is. That's the tradition of it. I'm doing their designs in the current manner with better tools and nicer inks."
     What does Nievera, 30, like about tattooing?

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Danni Nievera

Flashback 2003: Lumbering fears not all that bad

     For a guy who likes to loaf, I hate being sick. I suppose most people do. That drained, feverish feeling. Gobbling Tums to settle the stomach. Hours sprawled in bed, flipping through a book — P.G. Wodehouse, not as funny as I recall — or the random hodgepodge of Facebook videos. I looked at a table saw on the Home Depot yesterday, and today half the videos are woodworking porn. I can't figure out how to make it stop,
     At 4 p.m. I ventured into my office to figure out something for tomorrow. Maybe Robert Louis Stevenson, the bard of being sick at home. "When I was sick and lay abed, I had two pillows at my head..."
     Nah, too much effort. Into the archive, looking for columns that take place in bed. I found this, too fun not to share. This was part of the "Hammered and Nailed" series of columns I wrote about repair in our home section. You might recall, I outlined the Fort last November.  Too soon for another installment, but I really feel as if someone hit me behind the ear with a sock of nickels, so this will have to do. If you decide to read it, strap in: it's twice as along as my usual column. Back in the day when we had time on our hands and newsprint to fill.

     Night. Bed. Sleep. A crash and then the tumble of lumber. Unmistakably. I was on my feet in an instant, moving fast toward the door, thinking, "The Fort has fallen over." I stopped, went back, got my pants, started to leave, then checked the clock: 3:19 a.m.
     Hurrying through the darkened house, I braced myself for the sight. Timbers lying in a shattered heap. All that work and money for nothing. My wife would laugh at me about it for the rest of my life. The Fort has fallen over.
     Still, somewhere deep down I was relieved. Cart the ruins away, I told myself. Be done with it. My own fault. My folly. I had haughtily rejected the premade forts as beneath my fever dreams of fatherhood, instead designing my own Taj Mahal Fort, 15 feet high with a 90-square-foot floor plan. The lumber alone cost $1,700.
     When I began work, on Father's Day, at 5:30 a.m., I was energetic, excited. I had marked with four little red flags on metal rods where the concrete supports would go. Concrete a yard deep. I would do it right. I had carefully dug around the 10-inch cardboard concrete form, removed the circle of sod, and then dug down. And down.
     If you've never dug a hole, it's hard work. Not so much the first foot, or even the second foot. But that third foot. Each hole took about 90 minutes to dig. Still, the process was very satisfying. It's hard to mess up a hole. Sometime that morning my wife and boys came out with a glass of lemonade and sang "Happy Father's Day," and that was nice.
     After digging the first two holes, I poured the concrete. Also a backbreaking-yet-satisfying experience. I mixed the concrete with a shovel in a big plastic trough, then spooned it into the holes. Before it set, I positioned the big metal brackets for the 6-by-6 beams. I carefully checked them with a level, ensuring a solid foundation.
     At the end of the day, I cleaned up, hosed out the trough, looked at these two little 10-inch circles of concrete, with their metal brackets sticking out. It seemed a lot of work for two holes.
     The second day I did it again, for the other two holes. The work seemed to go easier. There was one truly frightening moment — I thought I had put the brackets in too soon for the first holes, so I waited until I had filled the fourth hole with concrete before I tried to sink the bracket in the third. Big mistake. I went to shove the metal into the wet cement. It went down halfway and then stopped. Sick with fear, I contemplated having to dig up the entire mess of drying concrete and repour it.
     At that moment my wife wandered over. She can smell panic, and has a genius for happening by at the pinnacle of crisis. She stood smiling at me, her Mister Handy.
     Sweating like a pig, I fixed a false grin on my face and gave the metal bracket a mighty push. It went in, barely, but was skewed hard to the left.
     "You know honey," I grunted, through gritted teeth, trying to muscle the bracket upright, "this is not ... the best moment."
     That was a weekend's work. The next weekend, I bolted in the legs of the Fort — huge honking 6-by-6ers. I was a little concerned that the cut was not exactly flush, but went halfway across the broad end of the beam and then jumped up 1/16th of an inch. The lumber place must not have had a saw big enough to do it in a single cut. A few of the beams also had cracks in them.
     Not terrible cracks, I decided. Normal, probably. I couldn't imagine dragging those beams back to Craftwood. So I pressed on. Across the top of the upright 6-by-6 beams, two 4-by-4 horizontals then a series of 2-by-6 joists, to hold up the floor, nearly 6 feet in the air (this was before the deadly porch collapse; I'd use 2-by-12 joists now. Instead, I will just have to hope that genetic Steinberg unpopularity prevents my boys from having too many friends over).
     As I began contemplating putting the floor down atop the joists, I ran into a problem. The Fort is basically a little house sitting on a 9-by-10-foot platform, with a little railed porch in front. The little house is framed by 4-by-4 beams, and I knew that if I merely screwed the beams to the floor, they wouldn't be as sturdy as if I put them through the floor and bolted them to the joists. But doing that meant making complicated cuts in the flooring, cuts my fancy new DeWalt chop saw couldn't do.
     I pondered: easy and unstable or difficult and locked in? The thing was wiggly as it was. The beams seemed to sway on the concrete footings. I was standing there, trying to figure out how to proceed, my stomach in a knot, when wife happened by — "Howzit going?" she said breezily. I started trying to explain the dilemma.
     "Do I bolt the post to the floor or have it go through the floor and bolt it to the beam?" She just looked at me. I said it several more times, in several ways, and she still didn't understand, and then I did something that scared both of us: I slammed my head against the joist, deliberately, out of frustration, a quick dip to the side and then a thud. I've never done something like that before in my life. She remembered something she had to do in the house.
     Things actually got worse from there. Taking the tough road — always the tough road — I fished a jig saw out of the basement and made the cuts in the first floorboard to accommodate the Fort beams, a laborious process, but mismeasured, and put one cut in the wrong place, so that the beam couldn't pass through. I thought of taking the jigsaw to my throat but, collecting myself, grabbed a new $14 cedar board and measured again, more carefully this time, measured twice in fact. The new board was an even better job — the cuts neat and precise — and I joyfully went to put the board in place. I was on the ladder, moving it into position when my wife came by, smiling.
     "I don't believe it!" I said, aghast. "I've done it again."
     "Done what?" my wife asked.
     "Cut the board wrong. I screwed up the measurement again!" She had a bright idea, but I just didn't want to hear it.
     "Can I suggest ..." she began.
     "No!" I shouted. "No you can't suggest! Leave me alone. I can't believe it. I did it again."
     "Can I share an idea with you ..." she said quickly.
     "No!" I snapped angrily. "No ideas. This is a disaster. I can't understand it." I raved on in this vein for a bit, until my wife said,
     "Flip the board over."
     Flip. The. Board. Over. Hope dawned. I wasn't as stupid as I thought, not at least in this instance. I flipped the board over. It fit. I had measured correctly, but then turned the board around.
     At that point I had decided to call it a day. Now 12 hours had passed. It was 3:19 a.m. and I was at the back door, hurrying to see my collapsed Fort. I flipped on the floodlights. The Fort was there, intact. I couldn't understand it. I had heard a crash then a tumble of lumber. It was not a dream. I walked out into the cool night, walked all around the Fort in the darkness, looking for a shattered timber, something, touching it lightly with my hand as if I couldn't believe it was still there. But it seemed fine. Eventually I went to bed, mystified.
     Later that morning, when the sun was out, I went back to look at the Fort. I walked around the Fort once, twice, then I noticed something in the driveway. The garbage can, where I had piled some wood scraps, was knocked over, probably by hungry raccoons. The lumber scraps had tumbled out — that was the crash and tumble I had heard. Not the Fort. At that exact moment my wife walked over and I unwisely told her what had happened. It took her five minutes to stop laughing.
        — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 10, 2003

In Chicago and across a polarized America, old and young join 'No Kings' protest

Victoria Eason, left, and her mother Jennifer.

     "The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches ... but always most in the common people," Walt Whitman wrote in his preface to "Leave of Grass," lauding "... their deathless attachment to freedom."
     As satisfying as it is to offer such quotes at face value, as eternal truths — Walt Whitman said it, he's famous, so it must be true — this one might merit a little picking apart.
     First, the line was written in 1855. Meaning the American public's attachment to freedom wasn't so deathless that the country wouldn't soon be ripped apart in civil war over whether fellow human beings should be kept as slaves.
     Who were these common people, anyway? Who are they now? The millions who turned out Saturday for massive "No Kings" rallies across the country? Or the millions more who voted for the president three times? Who support him now, and who will continue to do so no matter what. Even if he runs for a third term in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution?
     We were divided then. We are divided now. In 2024, 49.8% of voters cast a ballot for Donald Trump. And 48.3% voted for Kamala Harris. Almost an even split.
     Once, a tight election might have led to efforts toward bridge building, reconciliation. Now Trump is implementing radical change by executive fiat, without congressional approval or concern for public reaction, which was in full cry Saturday.
     I slid over to the "No Kings" protest in Highland Park and was immediately struck by just how old everybody seemed. Gray hair, walkers, wheelchairs.
     Why is that?
     "It's an older crowd because we remember the way America was, and we want to get it back," said Betty Kleinberg, 83, of Deerfield. "It wasn't perfect, but it was better than it is now. We're doing this for our grandchildren."
     "I'm a very active member of our community and am so appalled by everything going on," said Joanne Hoffman, 92. "As long as I still have my wits about me, I'm going to keep doing this."
     You must really want to be here, I told Phil Reinstein, 87, tapping his rollator.
     "I do," he said. "To try to save this country."

Grace Goodrich

     But as I looked around, I realized something — the impression of an elderly crowd was premature, formed by noticing other cautious seniors such as myself who showed up half an hour early. A self-selected group. As the event unfolded, I realized there were plenty of families and children, too.
     "We need more young people," said Grace Goodrich, 25, of Northbrook, there with her father, Paul. "It's going to eventually affect us more. We need to stand up for what makes this country great."
      Jennifer Eason came with her 9-year-old daughter, Victoria.
     "I'm here because Donald Trump is doing bad things," the 4th grader said.
     Betsy and Curtis Porter of Glencoe brought their 6-year-old son, Ethan, already at his second protest — he also went to the first "No Kings" protest in June. I asked him why he was there.
     "America is free," said the 2nd grader.
     And what does being free mean?
     "We make our own choices," Ethan said.
     Sometimes those choices conflict. Several came to protest but didn't want their own voices cited. A woman holding a sign reading "I'M A 77 YEAR OLD GRANNY FOR FREEDOM" quailed at the prospect of having her photo in the newspaper.
     "I want to live," she explained, fleeing.

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Betty Kleinberg, 83, right, and Paulette Vainstock, 81

Censorship is stupid

"Mexican News," by Alfred Jones, after Richard Caton Woodville (National Gallery of Art)

   
 

     Face the music. Accept the news, good or bad. Move on.
     That seems so simple. Though it requires a spine, which so many folk just don't have. And brains. Also often in short supply. 
     I'm thinking about the mess at Indiana University. Last week the administration abruptly fired the student media director and cancelled all future editions of the Indiana Daily Student, pretending it was a regular business decision to "align with industry trends."

     The fired adviser told The New York Times that the move was taken because the college wants the newspaper to stop printing news, and only feature be-true-to-your-school boostry fluff. 
     Student journalists suspect they were angry that the newspaper wasn't chirping loudly enough about Homecoming weekend, and if they had to spike the 158-year old newspaper to amp up school spirit, so be it. It's only the students. It's not like something important. Like donors.
     So what happens? The issue, that would have burned for a few hours on campus in Bloomington, is fanned into a national wildfire that goes on, day after day, in stories such as this one in the Washington Post.
     And in one of those moments of selflessness that seal a story forever in the public mind, the  Exponent, the paper at rival Purdue, two hours north and living in a different century, apparently, printed a special edition outlining the Indiana dust-up, then "crossed enemy lines" from West Lafayette and filled Indiana Daily Student boxes around the Bloomington campus with a special edition outlining the situation.
     "WE STUDENT JOURNALISTS MUST STAND TOGETHER," the front page headline reads, according to a story in the Herald-Times.

    You have to love that, right? Another ham-handed college administration ballyhooing their own inadequacy. Yes, it's all taking place in Indiana, the Mississippi of the Midwest, and so can be lumped together as matters beneath notice. But with truth under attack on a daily basis across our country, even a victory in a minor skirmish in an overlooked place is worthy of notice. 

The threat of an American king

Reception of the Grand Condé at Versailles by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Musée d'Orsay)

     A regular reader in Norway writes:
     "I’m trying to understand the phrase 'no kings' in modern discourse. Given that constitutional monarchs in Europe today hold no real political power and function largely as symbolic figures within democratic systems, it’s unclear to me why monarchy is still viewed as a threat. Could you clarify this perspective?"

     It is not monarchy itself that is a threat — nobody is worried that Donald Trump will start wearing a crown and an ermine robe; though, at this point, I wouldn't put anything past him. Nor are we talking about quaint modern European royalty. We aren't worried about Queen Beatrix on a bicycle. Rather it is the absolute power, unquestioned obedience, mandatory worship and grotesque abuses once associated with kings that are a growing concern for many Americans.

     Better late than never.

     We are used to a government that tries to address the needs of its citizens. Or at least pretends to. Remember why our nation was created. If we read the Declaration of Independence, the very first thing it declares — with considerable hypocrisy, given that slavery would be legal for most of the next century — that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
     Respecting those rights is the purpose of having a government in the first place.

     "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men," it continues, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." 

     Kings don't derive their power from the consent of the governed — it is given by God. It cannot be taken away, in their own estimation. 

     Sound familiar?
     Look at the actions of the second Trump administration. Immediately stripping away the government, diverting money that once went to help citizens to his rich pals. Elon Musk basically bought unfettered access to the United State government for a $278 million bribe to the Trump campaign, and his minions raged through the government, firing workers and mining our data.
     Trump's central values seem to be revenge — the Justice Department, purged of its ethical employees, now pursues sham cases among all who opposed Trump. Who tried and — alas — failed to bring him to account for his continual crimes. Democratic states get budget cuts and masked thugs plucking brown people off the street. Red states get factories spurred by Trump's random and autocratic tariffs.
     This is where the "No Kings" phrase comes from. There is no government anymore, just Trump. He makes the decisions, or his handpicked lackeys and lick-splittles. We were a nation founded on division of power — Congress had an important role, passing laws, approving budgets, a role it has abandoned. It took an extended summer recess and, with the government shut down, barely functions and when it did was busy salaaming before Trump, treating the bare Republican majority as a mandate from God.
     The courts, meanwhile, are a funnel up to the Supreme Court, which Trump managed to pack with three partisan toadies during his first term, and now has a solid MAGA majority whose primary function is to clap like seals at whatever he does.
      Thus we find ourselves with a king, in all practical terms, if not in name. Trump has turned the Oval Office into a gilded horror, reflecting his own tin-plated superficiality and lack of substance. He has unveiled plans to deform the White House with an enormous ballroom, and to construct an enormous imperial triumphal Roman arch worthy of Hadrian to mark the 250th birthday of the United States and its transition into an oligarchy. 

     But it feels trivial to focus on aesthetic lapses when the structural, fundamental damage he does is so great. The hornet's nest of conspiracy theories, lies and calumnies buzzing in his brain has become national policy. Truly, had the Russians conquered us militarily, and set out to dismantle and cripple the country, they could hardly have struck upon a campaign as destructive as the one we've seen over the past nine months.

     The public who aren't dancing around the Golden Calf of Trump have few options at this point. We can pine for the 2026 election to restore a Democratic majority in Congress, but Republican gerrymandering has decreased the odds of that, and the election might not happen anyway or, if it does, the government might not respect the results. Kings don't have to, and Trump has been very clear that the only elections he recognizes are those that go his way.
     Thus the "No Kings" protests, the desperate act of desperate people who see the country they love slipping away or, more accurately, being handed on a platter to a would-be tyrant who encompasses literally every negative quality that can be found in a person. It's a very sad, dangerous state of affairs.

     Does that answer your question?

Do 'No Kings' protesters hate America? Or love it?

No Kings rally, Des Plaines, June 14, 2025

     Protest is as American as apple pie and baseball. Our nation began with colonists decrying an oppressive tyranny from across the sea. As soon as our Founding Fathers broke away and formed a government, they protected protest in the First Amendment. A nod to freedom of religion, speech and the press, then boom: Congress will make no law prohibiting "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
     That doesn't mean our current leaders aren't blasting contempt at this most enshrined of American traditions.
     Saturday, Oct. 18 is the second "No Kings" protest, which has been receiving volleys of condemnation. House Speaker Mike Johnson, doing his special mind-reading trick, looked into the hearts of millions of people, many who haven't yet decided whether to go or not, and called it a "hate America rally" sponsored by the hidden hand of terrorists.
     "They have a 'hate America' rally that's scheduled for Oct. 18," Johnson told Fox News. "It's all the pro-Hamas wing and the Antifa people."
     And he knows that ... how?
     Oh right. He doesn't. He's just making stuff up. There's a lot of that going around.
     "This will be a Soros paid-for protest where his professional protesters show up," said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas).
     George Soros is a 95-year-old Hungarian-American philanthropist whose name has become a dog whistle for "Jewish money."
     The "No Kings" organizers deny they are in the grip of the flailing tentacles of octopoid globalists.
     "I am a volunteer," said Kathy Tholin, on the board of Indivisible Chicago and an organizer of the local protest. "We are all volunteers. Every single individual; none of us are paid by anybody."
     Why would people venture out for a "No Kings" protest?
     "One of the clear goals of the Trump regime is to isolate and depress us," said Tholin [begin italicsMission accomplished!end italics I thought], "and make us think there is nothing we can do to make a difference. It is incredibly energizing to spend time with the many, many people who refuse to submit quietly and are willing to speak out. That kind of solidarity, that kind of working together with friends and neighbors, is what is going to save us from this authoritarian suppression."
     While I haven't attended a protest, as a protester, since the Northwestern University anti-draft registration protest in the spring of 1979, I can vouch for the accuracy of that statement. Rather like Mike Johnson, I also tend to take a dim view of demonstrations. Maybe because, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, there were so many of them. For civil rights. Against the war. Some of them were stupid — yippies trying to levitate the Pentagon.
     And what did they accomplish? Really?
     Sixty-two years after Dr. King's March on Washington, civil rights have been rebranded "wokeness" and are in full retreat.
     But I blundered onto the first "No Kings" last June 14. We were driving through Des Plaines, saw hundreds of people gathered on street corners, and pulled over. I donned my figurative reporter's hat, grabbed a pen and notebook and went to investigate.
     Maybe because it was in Des Plaines. Regular, open, salt-of-the-earth people. No pretense, no showing off. Des Plaines is home to the Choo Choo Restaurant. They bring your basket of a cheeseburger and fries aboard a little model train. How can you not love the community supporting that?

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'Solace in time of woes'

 

     The interview at the Pittsfield Building on Wednesday ran a little over 90 minutes, from 9:30 a.m to just after 11. I didn't have to be at Siena Tavern for lunch until noon. That gave me almost an hour. 
       I walked a couple blocks south to Iwan Ries at 19 S. Wabash, on the second floor of the Adler & Sullivan-designed Jeweler's Building. Run by the fifth generation to own the company since its founding in 1857, Ries is the second oldest family-owned business in Chicago (the first being, surprisingly, Baird & Warner, founded in 1855).
      Iwan Ries has a fancy BYOB cigar lounge, but that costs money to use. As it was, the stogie put me back $16 and change. It also has a little side room with a few chairs and ashtrays. That was good enough for me to sit and relax and read the newspaper for 20 minutes. They didn't have my go-to smoke, a Rocky Patel 1990 Vintage toro, so I took the recommendation of the clerk, Harry, and tried the Rocky Patel Number Six, which was delightfully smooth, so much so I bought a second for another day. I'm a creature of habit, so it's good to have an occasional reminder that being forced out of your rut sometimes has advantages.
     The place is exactly as it always was. I tried to remember when I first came here, and couldn't. Over 30 years ago. As I left, I told Harry that it was nice to come across something that hasn't been ruined, yet. 
     "We never change," he said.    

The title is line from the Rudyard Kipling poem, "The Betrothed."