“I am the good shepherd; I
know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father;
and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
St. John 10:14-15
“It may well be the only tattoo that
pays for itself” read the boldly colored sign.
Last Sunday my family and I were down in North Carolina for my college
reunion. We met up with some friends for
lunch at Bull City Burger and Brew, one of Durham’s many new hipster
eateries. The poster on the bathroom
wall was advertising the restaurant’s latest marketing campaign, a partnership
with a neighboring tattoo parlor. A Bull
City Burger logo tattooed on your body (in one of the authorized forms,
measuring at least three inches in diameter) would get you a 25% discount on
all burger orders, for the rest of your life.
A new frontier in advertising, perhaps—certainly more staying power than
a Facebook ad. I walked out of the
bathroom, scanning the biceps of my fellow patrons, to see if any had decided
to take the plunge.
Of course, when you begin looking
around at any establishment that serves a mostly younger crowd, you will see
plenty of tattoos. The most recent stats
I discovered indicate that 21% of American adult admit to having a tattoo and
the totals for people my age, in their thirties, go up to 38%, nearly 2 in 5.[1] Tattoo parlors show more growth than nearly
any other kind of retail establishment.
Long gone are the days when only bikers and sailors got inked, and
increasing numbers of women, professionals and celebrities have gone under the
needle in recent years.
