Summer ink wars

>> Outdoor tattoo artists fight city regulations and each other

by CRAIG SEGAL

Crammed up against a low wall on the east side of Montreal tourist hotspot Place Jacques-Cartier are 10 identical tattoo artist stalls. For prices ranging from five dollars to 50, young women lift skin-tight tops and men roll up their shirtsleeves to get their bodies inked with temporary tattoos, which last several weeks.

But there are other reasons why the tattoo artists are lucky to be there. This year the city slashed the number of outdoor style-artist permits from 100 to 40. And since the 40 permits are now broken down by category, tattoo artists were only given 10 permits for the entire city. The new rules were announced in Le Devoir at the end of December, and permits were given out at the beginning of January. The few artists who knew about the rule change snatched up all the permits. Others perform the service without them, risking hefty fines.

"There are some people starving to death because the city made this rule and didn't tell anybody," says Sunshine (not her real name), 26, who received a $136 ticket a month ago for tattooing without a permit. "The cops watched me for two hours from their car," she says. "I think they were giving me a chance to leave. But I kept working. Then they gave me a ticket. I said, 'Don't you have anything better to do? Go catch criminals!' They said it's stricter this year.

"It's really been a pain in the ass--it's like I can't work in my own city. It would have been better if they hadn't given any permits. We would have all been illegal."

The city says they had no choice. "Last year it seemed more like a bazaar than a public place," says François Lemay of the city's Economic and Urban Development Department. "You had to crawl over those who monopolized the area. Place Jacques-Cartier must not be invaded by small business monopolizers."

Lemay says the decision to limit space was based on consultations with Old Montreal businesses. "Just imagine you have a terrasse and an artist decides to stick to your terrasse for two hours. How can you have your customers enjoy the place?"

But Lemay readily admits the city may not have given artists fair warning. "Although we wrote to every known address we had, it was maybe not known enough," Lemay says. "So we are giving out five extra permits."

Fighting for space

The case went to the city ombudsman. "We analyzed the situation in complete and came to the conclusion that the best solution is to give out the five additional permits," says Maurice Beauchamp. "That's 50 per cent more."

But an employee working for the ombudsman thinks the city handled the entire situation poorly. "Well obviously, when you start giving out permits a few days after announcing the change at Christmas time, I think it's not acceptable," says the employee, who did not want to be named.

But the employee says there was another reason for the rule change: the lack of properly designated spaces was creating a free-for-all between artists staking their claims on valuable real estate. "They want to limit the number of permits because there were too many fights among tattoo artists over territory. But if they wanted to stop the fights, they should have given more permits."

Tattoo artist Sunshine confirms the fights. She tells stories of artists stealing design books from each other, calling the police on each other and having friends sleep overnight on their spots to reserve them. "They're the most disgusting of all the artists," says Sunshine. "One time when I climbed an electricity poll to plug in a wire, I refused to plug another artist's wires, so the artist called the police on me.

"Later when she had a customer I went over and told the guy she was crazy and she pushed me and I pushed her back, and security kicked me off the grounds."

Last Sunday evening, in packed Place Jacques-Cartier, tattoo artists said they felt sorry for those who did not receive permits, but they are having a hard time with the city themselves. "They harass us," says Luciano Joseph, tattooing for the third year in a row. "They come to see that we are not taking up more than the allotted space--even by a couple of inches. It's a free country, but they're acting like dictators. In the winter we can't work. Let us be free in the summer. We're entertainment for the city. We're not bums."

"The city felt they were dominating the city too much," says the ombudsman employee. "But now I look at the Place Jacques-Cartier and there are lines to get tattoos. If there's such a high demand, we should have more artists. If people want it, they want it, that's all."