Spontaneous Tattoo

I was in NYC in early August for a quick 24 hours before heading other places on the east coast for a friend's engagement party & to visit family. I have another story from those same 24 hours but this is about the tattoo I got as a walk in at a shop in the East Village.

This idea could seem impulsive to some, but for years I wanted to have something to link back to my NYC experience (more on that at a future point) & the perfect thing came along where I was able to execute rather quickly on it. AND it was my 16th tattoo, so the decision making process for something permanent on my body has definitely become easier.

We need more context here & I’m going to tell it in two short stories that ended up colliding in this one moment.

I’ve lived in SF for about 6.5 years now, but in the fall of 2023 I took a 4.5 month sabbatical to NYC. I was going through a lot in life & really needed a change. Luckily it worked out with my job since we had an office there. In a cheesy way, that time changed my life. I had space to myself in this city of opportunity where I could explore, both the city & who I was. It felt like a real reset. I really debated moving there, but ultimately came back to SF but with a new perspective. So profound of me.

I’ve been in a deep rabbit hole of learning about SF music history recently. I live in North Beach & am just sitting in the middle of a lot of it. In SF, you hear the name Bill Graham everywhere, but I don't think most people actually know his story. You know the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, but that's about it.

Bill Graham revolutionized how we experience live music. Starting in 1966, he opened the Fillmore in SF, which became the place for a lot of music history. We can talk about people coming out of SF: The Grateful Dead, Carlos Santana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix but it also drew so many famous artists from all over the world. I won’t list them all. It feels like he was the wizard behind the curtain of the Summer of Love.

This man had his hands in everything: Woodstock, Live Aid, Rolling Stones tours, Monterey Pop. You fucking name it & Bill Graham was a part of it. Then he expanded to the East Coast, opening Fillmore East in the East Village in 1968 & continued to make music history outside of SF.

So now, I am in NYC for these 24 hours & I decided I wanted to go see where the Fillmore East was. It is vacant now but I go & see it & someone had written on the outside of the building “Fillmore East” then “Where It Began”.

In that moment, I knew that was the tattoo. It wasn’t just about my NYC experience. It wasn’t just about my passion for SF music history. It wasn’t just about Bill Graham. It was the collision of all those things, in that exact moment, captured in a simple phrase on the wall. So I called my best friend, for a quick sanity check, & then I walked into the tattoo shop.