TBT: How you end up getting a tattoo in Bogotá, Colombia. It started with a walk home from dinner late one night with Eder, Jerita, Rebecca and Goga.
We were in Duitama, staying at the Best Western for @TourColombiaUCI, and were walking past the multitude of tiny street-level shops that pack each side of the narrow urban roads
Every kind of merchant you can imagine fit their wares into the small spaces. Among them was a wisp of a tattoo shop. An idea took hold.
I shall return, I vowed, and made my way back to that shop a few days later. But, to be honest, it looked like a good place to pick up a solid case of hepatitis along with the art
...so the idea passed and faded. Then fate dropped a bomb that couldn’t be ignored
Our last day in downtown Bogotá took us to a press room in the urban core. We shuffled into the cavernous room and set to work wrapping up our coverage of six days of hard racing at high altitude
The stage ended, I stepped outside for some air and saw this across the street. You’ve got to be F-ing kidding? 
So I headed across the street for a look. There were about 5 shops and most were busy. I wandered into one that didn’t have a line (smart, right? Haha)
The guy inside didn’t speak English, but I showed him this and pointed to the inside of my bicep.
He nodded and rattled off a price. I didn’t understand, so I motioned for him to write it down. He wrote $200,000 pesos or about $60 USD. I countered with $100,000. He wrote down $150,000, and a deal was struck. I pulled out three $50,000 bills to make sure ...
Then he walked me over to the first shop I had passed, where a little old lady sat smoking in front of a computer. He spoke to her and showed her the flag and price we agreed to. She pointed to another shop, and off we went
He wrapped on the window, and the tatto guy looked up momentarily, he waved the flag at the guy and pointed to his inner bicep. The tattoo guy nodded. I was motioned to have a seat. And my original host left
After about 10 minutes he finished with the person he had been working on The little old lady brought over several printed out flags for me to choose from. I picked one, and the artist, whose name turned out to be Marco, started drawing its outline on paper to create the stencil
He was meticulous in his set up and cleaning all the surfaces, preparing his ink wells and organizing the needles, which he made a point of showing me were unopened in the original packaging
Off we went. Inner bicep is meaty, so the pain from the needle was negligible, but I was contorted to rest my elbow on a small pad, and Marco was steadying his hand by resting his arm near my wrist. Try that for an hour sometime. My hand fell asleep and my elbow screamed
Marco listened to wrap music while he worked, getting up to go to his computer and switch songs on occasion. He listed to a lot of Drake, and he sang along almost the entire time ...
He’s not quite the artist that Lacey in Hillsboro back home is, but I was happy with it for $45.
And that’s the story of meeting my new friend Marco in downtown Bogotá and taking home the best souvenir possible
@threadreaderapp unroll please
