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Vancouver Ink: East Van alleyway grittiness

Vancouver Ink exposes you (and your friends') Vancouver-themed tattoos! We have an obvious fascination with pride-of-place and how it manifests, and getting a tattoo showing your pride and love for something is perhaps the ultimate commitment.

Vancouver Ink exposes you (and your friends') Vancouver-themed tattoos! We have an obvious fascination with pride-of-place and how it manifests, and getting a tattoo showing your pride and love for something is perhaps the ultimate commitment. Click HERE for the growing archive of your tattoos we've featured.

Please email your photos and stories of Vancouver-themed tattoos to contact@vancouverisawesome.com with the subject "Vancouver Ink".

Today we're sharing Pamela De Mark's piece that she sent in.

Of it, she says:

I've been thinking of the idea for a while now, since I spend so much time in the alleyways photographing mattresses. I love the grittiness of the alleys, the telephone lines, and the crows. I like the association of the crows with East Vancouver and with the original coastal peoples here. For me it is a way of showing my connection to my neighbourhood and to Canada in the larger sense, as you may remember I have my application in for Canadian citizenship. I was originally thinking of the Gastown square framed telephone poles but they are a little clunky for a small foot. Just a few months ago I walked past a nice piece of graffiti on Davie Street in the West End, that showed the type of scene I was looking for and which also had a more elegant telephone pole. I showed the image to Arlin Ffrench of Gastown Tattoos, he then sketched it freehand on my foot, I love how he was able to capture the detail of the crow plus the managed the difficult foreshortened scene on an irregular shaped part of the body. I'd love to find out who made the piece of original graffiti. I had the tattoo oriented so that it is presented to myself, rather than to others, since most of the time I will be the only person seeing it. I chose the foot because it's one of the parts of the body which won't change in size as I get older, and which won't get as wrinkly as other places....thinking ahead! :)