On Friday the 13th, I wandered the streets of New York’s Lower East Side, searching for a tattoo shop. My destination was Cherry Bomb Studio, a tattoo parlour whose doors would remain open unusually late into the night. Cherry Bomb was celebrating Friday the 13th with one of the tattoo world’s biggest traditions: an all-day marathon of affordable work for anyone with a few extra dollars, time to wait in line, and the boldness to permanently memorialise our unluckiest date.
Now in its 40th year, the tradition comes with a few rules: you can’t make an appointment (walk-ins only), and you can’t request custom designs. The special price was originally a symbolic $13 (plus a seven-dollar tip), but that rate has gone slightly up at many parlours due to inflation, another US tradition. “Tattoos have become the American symbol for a day that is otherwise associated with bad omens,” said USA Today. I was trying to find out why.
Cherry Bomb already had a line of clients spilling out onto Edlridge Street when I arrived. As much a social event as it is a sale (Cherry Bomb brought in a cotton candy machine for the occasion), I snaked my way inside, nudging through excited customers idling by a Tarot card reader, flicking cigarettes smudged with black lipstick. Inside, I struck up a conversation with Cole, 27, from across the river. Cole was getting a tattoo of a pigeon. “I think they’re an unappreciated bird,” was his reasoning.
Cherry Bomb, like most shops that night, had designed a special flash sheet. Artwork often features the numeral “13”, alongside other symbols of bad luck, such as black cats and ladders. Other times, however, the 13th is just an opportunity for artists to offer work that on a typical day doesn’t see much love. As Cole said of the bird now immortalised on his body, pigeons “get a lot of hate, but they’re interesting.”
At Cherry Bomb, some 30 years later, I approached Ro Batalle, the studio’s owner. In between coordinating artists and managing a growing crowd of walk-ins, Batalle explains how the fast-paced demands of the night influence the artwork. “The strategy changes,” they say. “You don’t want to have perfect circles, for example, because we’re going for speed here, and you want to have a lot of breaks, so you can have a rest of the needle.”
Batalle says it’s “hard” doing so many clients in one night, “but then there’s something to getting back to basics and just doing repeat designs over and over.” Veterans tattooed from head to toe use the occasion to “fill in” remaining uncovered spots, while the value and novelty of the celebration gives nervous neophytes the push they need to walk through the door.
Before I left Cherry Bomb, exhausted and ready for Saturday the 14th, I noticed a young woman with a conspicuously large, bright suitcase. Her name was Dan. The suitcase? Dan had just landed from San Jose. She had no plans to get a tattoo on her trip, let alone before even dropping off her luggage. “My baby cousins brought me,” she said. “I really didn’t expect to visit. Everything is just unexpected.” Dan showed me her new tattoo: a pair of stars (representing those twin cousins). The way she viewed it, the randomness of her decision didn’t diminish their meaning. If anything, randomness was the meaning. “It’s very special to find something to do on Friday the 13th that you don’t normally do, when the stars align,” she said. “I don’t think it’s unlucky. It’s what you make of it.”
It’s not what you get; it’s the fact that you were bold enough to get it. The people I spoke with on Friday the 13th mostly agreed with Dan, and with those original sailors. They reject the date’s legacy of bad luck. “I think turning that idea on its head is kind of punk, and a little irreverent,” said Batalle. In fact, simply ending the night with a new tattoo is, for some, good fortune enough. As Kelsey told me before we parted: “It’s a secret club that we're all kind of a part of, and it's something to bond over with other people.”