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Jun 29, 2023

Throwing your skin into the wind: Houston tattoo shop plays with fate and a tattoo dartboard

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You run right to the Tropical Chill in Deer Park because it finally got hot enough for them to open.

You try and fail at describing any Jandek set you have ever seen. When you see him at the grocery store you giggle like he's Harry Styles.

You're still full from the last time you visited Star Pizza two months back and you can't wait to go back.

You've seen Rusted Shut accidentally at least three times and each time was completely different.

You laugh when a Newstonian tells you that Boondocks is the most divey bar in Montrose when you slept in the Lola's Depot backyard one Halloween.

You have ended up at Andy's Home Cafe because you felt like having a low key 3 a.m. date with just yourself and some Colombian Enchiladas.

The only thing keeping you alive on a Saturday morning (or heck a Tuesday night) is Tacos Tierra Caliente and a Lone Star.

You discovered at La Carafe one night last fall that you can make the same bad decisions after drinking four glasses of wine as you can after doing four shots of Jameson.

You finally realized that ordering a double at Warren's Inn was a rookie mistake. Good thing that all the club people haven't invaded it yet.

When it comes time to have that low key, cheap date night with your new fling you opt for Dot Coffee Shop just to see how they order their eggs.

On any given morning at the Tel-Wink on Telephone Road you can see a dozen local entrepreneurs planning their next moves.

The first time you saw "Rocky Horror" at River Oaks Theatre you swore that next time you were coming in costume.

If you can tell the difference between each Taqueria Arandas location you've done Houston right.

When it came time to buy your first "adult" furniture (i.e. not from IKEA or Craigslist) you finally met Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale at Gallery Furniture and even got a selfie.

You finally visited Nouveau Antique Art Bar in Midtown and didn't break an expensive lamp but you did managed to break someone's heart.

When its time to impress your co-workers you hit up Brothers Taco House for breakfast tacos.

It only takes hearing the Thunderbolt Transmission once to get it stuck in your head for the rest of the week....

...until you walk into Cactus Music and hear Archie Bell's "Tighten Up" blaring from store's sound system.

Seeing a Kiki Maroon burlesque show at House of Blues is basically a monthly ritual at this point. Seeing her fully-clothed in public seems odd to you.

You once waited in line at the Breakfast Klub for nearly an hour in the summer sun and made six new friends.

The best buffalo burger you have ever had was at Bubba's Texas Burger Shack.

You know how to get inside Last Concert Cafe.

You have unfriended someone in real life for not liking the chicken fried steak at Barbecue Inn.

You took your own father to Lankford Grocery & Market one weekend and he asked why you were hiding the place from him.

You tell people that your first concert was deadhorse upstairs at Fitzgerald's but your parents know that it was Clint Black at RodeoHouston in 1990.

Hearing KPFT for the first time, you realized there was a whole world of opinion away from your family's kitchen table.

You always hoped that if you ever got into a bad accident the first face you would see would be that of Dr. Red Duke looking at you disapprovingly.

The drive to Gilhooley's in San Leon for oysters roasted with garlic butter and Parmesan is worth it.

The best nights at Numbers are Friday nights, where you can see your best friend make out with a cougar while you nurse a Long Island Iced Tea in the corner.

You have always wondered what House of Pies looks like in the daylight.

A cold Antone's Famous Po'Boy and a cold Topo Chico makes you feel like a human again after a long weekend.

You have a plate on the wall at Flying Saucer Draught Emporium downtown...

....and a spare tire from eating too much pie from the Flying Saucer Pie Company.

You have a secret banh mi place that you would never tell anyone else about. Even your significant other.

Being a native Houstonian means you have a favorite drag queen at TC's Bar that you also happen to be in a fantasy football league with.

Driving to the Original Kolache Shoppe on a Saturday morning in sweat pants is your happy place.

You know the drill at James Coney Island.

Before you could drink coffee, Shipley do-nut holes were your morning pick-me-up.

You've hidden inside Notsuoh until the sun came up and walked to your car as your co-workers walked into the office down the street.

You hate how The Reverend Butter makes ice sculpting look so easy. Don't try this at home.

You have submitted your most mortifying personal story to the Grown-up Storytime people.

When you need supplies to cast that spell against Tom Brady or the Texas Rangers your first stop is the Magick Cauldron.

You take visitors to The Original Ninfa's on Navigation and sit back and listen for the sensual noises they make while they eat.

This is the only Houston Rockets uniform that you will accept.

...and the only Houston Astros uniform you will ever accept.

The Houston Texans now have our hearts, but the Houston Oilers were our first love.

Sometimes, deciding exactly what you want is the hardest part of getting a tattoo, besides the pain that comes after the decision.

It's not just the permanence of the decision, but the visual reminder of what could be a whimsical moment of charity.

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That's why today I’m standing next to a taxidermied wolverine named Clarence, holding a yellow dart in my hand and preparing to hurl it at a dartboard covered in traditional tattoo designs.

You can figure out what comes next: Wherever the dart lands is what will be inked into my skin — whether it's a grimacing frog or a butterfly with eyes on its wings.

The dartboard of fate is hanging on a wall at Battle Royale, an East End tattoo shop helped by artist Gabriel Massey. But there are some rules to the gimmick. For $100, a customer gets one dart to throw at the board. Wherever the dart lands, the customer gets that tattoo. For $150, they can purchase three darts and pick one of the three designs they landed on.

Battle Royale opened earlier this year right above the popular Barber and Coral Sword coffee and gaming cafe along Telephone Road. Between the clatter of coffee machines, hair clippers buzzing and tattoo machines digging into human flesh, it's a one-stop shop for guys like me. Yes, they can do beard trims.

Meet Clarence, Battle Royale's taxidermy mascot.

"We were thinking how successful it had been at other shops and wanted to bring something fun and competitive to our own customers," Massey says as I prepare for my fateful throw. "We thought a dartboard would be fun."

There are three bull's-eyes on the board, which can unlock other cool designs from legacy artists the shop chooses. Massey says the promotion, which was unveiled a few weeks back, has already yielded a handful of adventurous customers. Patrons can make the call on certain design changes, to a point, per the artists’ discretion.

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Jared Green, owner of Richmond Avenue Tattoo, has a similar promotion going on, too. He ordered a set of dice from online tattoo supply company Tattoo Paint Roll. The dice are printed with nebulous words like "skull," "fire," "girl," and "snake" on the sides. He rolls three dice onto his sketch pad and works with whatever is thrown, designing small, palm-size tattoos. Each roll is $150, and he's only tattooing arms and legs.

"Whenever I have free time, I will draw whatever I roll," Green says. It seems to also be a good artistic exercise for Green, unlocking the imagination. I’ve seen him roll and draw a panther with snake fangs and tongue behind a spiderweb background.

"I give people three chances, but the other guys at the shop have other rules."

Last summer, Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas’ Deep Ellum district introduced a similar promotion, where customers could buy a mystery tattoo design out of a coin-operated vending machine for $100 — sight unseen. The tattoos were all traditional Sailor Jerry Collins tattoos. Nothing jokey or offensive, although if the customer already had too many devil head or snake tattoos, they could spend $20 and get another chance on another mystery design.

The first Houstonian to take part in Battle Royale's promotion was Liah Crumbley, 32, an avid tattoo collector who works at craft brewers Eureka Heights. She spent $150 for three darts and ended up with a stately, traditional eagle design.

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"I am more of a jump-in-head-first-and-find-out-if-there-is-water-later type of girl," Crumbley tells me the week after getting her surprise ink. "It helps I am surrounded by people who support my craziness. The guys at work weren't surprised I showed up with a random dart board tattoo."

It's time for me to throw my dart.

"I mean if you land on the old-timey ship you can't ask for the butterfly instead," Massey jokes. My current, first-world problem is that I already have plenty of flowers, devils, pin-up gals and skulls tattooed on my body.

I take a deep breath, throw and hope my grandkids enjoy this story. The dart lands on the same eagle design that Crumbley received.

Designed by Battle Royale tattoo artist Tommy Basco, it soon finds a forever perch on my right pectoral.

Basco started tattooing in 2004 in Little Rock, Ark. He's tattooed all around Texas, most recently Corpus Christi, where he made his name at shops like Shipwreck Tattoo Studio and Electric Pony.

"Your eagle came from some reference material I saw from some vintage tattoo designs," Basco says.

"It's a really old piece from Sailor Vern."

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He's talking about Sailor Vern Ingemarson, a tattoo artist who started his career in the 1940s, during one of the art form's most pivotal periods of visibility. Military men and women were coming home with new tattoos after time spent at war or at sea, mainstreaming tattoos like never before.

Basco likes the dartboard promotion because it gives undecided people a way out of making a choice of their own. Some people want to pull the trigger, he says, but don't know where to begin.

"They just need to be good at aiming the dart," Basco says with a laugh. "A little bit of hand-eye coordination goes a long way."

People always say that tattoos are supposed to mean something. Each design is supposed to tell some inspiring tale for all to see, but that's not always the case. Sometimes, they can be testaments to throwing caution, or in this case a dart, into the wind.

Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com.