Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos (Haworth Series in Gay & Lesbian Studies)

If you are interested in the history of modern tattooing, this book will intrduce you to Phil Sparrow a renowned Chicago tattoo artist. His real name is Sammual Steward, Phd., former professor of English at many universities.Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a gritty work that lifts the underbelly of the tattoo craft and is great insight as to the personalities of whom are tattooed by Mr. Sparrow.Phil Sparrow rendered three tattoos to me, a young sailor, in the mid-50's in his shop on south State Street in Chicago. He was a close friend of Gertrude Stein and Alic B. Toklas. He was also very helpful to Alfred Kinsey in his publishing his epic study of human sexuality. A good and quick read.A complete biography of Sammual Steward aka Phil Sparrow was recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, written by Justin Spring, entitled; Secret Historian.

Having 4 tattoo's applied last year at the ripe young age of 50, I was fascinated by this book. Tattoo's in the 50's & 60's apparently were taboo except for the underbelly of life. Looking at how they are accepted today as opposed to then is astounding. The syndicate was even involved in the 50's. The book actually had me laughing out loud at some of the situations this highly educated man faced when he gave up teaching English at a major university and took up tattooing. If you have any interest in tattoo's be sure to purchas this one.

Incredibly informative and hilarious account of the life of the 20th century's greatest tattoo artist

I met Sam Steward around 1983 when he was quite elderly and I wonder what his friends would have to say about these reviews. I think most of the reviews are kind to him and the only real negativity I see are those in which the authors came to the book expecting a strictly scholarly work. Sam Steward wasn't a researcher in the classic social science sense. He was an energetic scholar, but his greatest interest was in the creation of literature, not in sifting through haystacks of facts to find new scientific insights.I read this book shortly after I met Sam. I was actually more familiar with him as a writer of gay erotica, but this book tells you more about the kind of man Sam was. He had deep curiosities about the underlying psychological motivations of people and that's really the area in which he spent most of his time. That curiosity it typical of people who enjoy writing and his look into this subculture, one could speculate, is like one the instances any writer takes in which they journey into an objective investigation, knowing they are mining information and insights that will later inform their true love, writing fiction.There's no doubt Sam took this investigation seriously, but it was never his intention to apply the level or scientific rigor one would expect of someone of the status of Alfred Kinsey. What he did at Kinsey's request was to describe a world, a microcosm, that would give Kinsey enough information to determine if a larger and more serious study was warranted. There weren't focus groups walking into Sam's tattoo parlor responding to a call for papers. They were rough and alienated men, drunks with their defenses down, kids in rebellions, frustrated people acting out. It takes an entertaining personality to get these people to say what they say and Sam Steward, if anything, was a decidely entertaining man; a storyteller who could keep a roomful of people enthralled with his vivid, if not naughty, descriptions of the extremes in society that are right under our very noses; extremes most people cannot see.I've thought about this book a many, many times; practically every time I see a tattoo. Getting inked has never appealed to me but Sam's understanding of it most certainly does appeal to me. Even two decades after reading it, some things I remember from it make me smile and laugh out loud. There's a kind of deep-seated validation of humanness here that I think will serve many who read this. This isn't a book for everyone, but one thing that can be said is that there's more to it than the average person knows. It's art that goes deeper than the skin.

Wow-- no words were spared in the making of this great read! The words have swagger, spunk, sensation -- the descriptions take me there, back to that period, which was when I was a little kid in a great big, grey biiig city, (NY) wondering about the world around me, and holding a special fascination for that world's "underside" (yes, even 5 yrs old kids think certain things are cool) . , I always recommend this book my friends in the tattoo business. The price should go down-- a second printing would not be a bad idea, IMHO.

This interesting book comes from an era that is now far gone. As a child, just after WWII, I saw men with, primarily, service tattoos and wanted one. It was carefully explained to me that "nice men" did not get tattooed and that the service tattoos weren't truly tattoos but the equivalent of service stripes. As a six year old child I found this confusing.What Dr. Steward has done is gathered impressions of what it was like to be a tattooist circa 1950 on to about 1970. His portraits of sleazy interior malls and the persons who frequented them are chillingly real as are the sad impressions of his clientele.For me, still un-inked, the larger story here is the conversion from the groves of Academe to the existence of a journeyman tattoo artist. We have his intellectual observations, as well his intimate relationship with the Kinsey Institute,to provide not only a look at the deductive logic behind getting a tattoo, at least at a certain socio-economic level then, are revelatory but perhaps only to then.The wide spread acceptance of tattooing today (the last statistic I read said over 35% of men today have one)make this interesting reading if not germane to lifestyles today. Yet it has substance and to those with a taste for not only tattooing but the sexual implications, this will confirm much of what may have been thought. Dr. Steward's open acknowledgment of his sexual preferences de-fuses any leering speculation as to what might really have been his motives.Still, for those who want an atmospheric, well constructed picture of an era, this book will fill in your urge to return to the "greaser" age. And for those of us who wanted one, but were denied, perhaps liberate our minds to, now, go get what we wanted then. If I had the hair, give me a flat top with a D.A. And that knife piercing the bicep just below the pack of Camels rolled in the sleeve of my black T-shirt.

The somewhat generic title doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence - but don't let that put you off. This is an excellent book. No dry academic text, the author was a Literature professor who became enamoured with street life and tattooing and became an inker himself, keeping his double life a secret until the pull in one direction became to strong. As such, Mr Steward was ideally placed to record his observations in crisp, intelligent, detailed prose. There is no dry detachment or distance from the subject matter. This is very much memoir as well as document. A fascinating pleasure to read, I devoured it in one sitting.