In San Francisco in the early 90’s it seemed like everyone from lawyers to street punks was getting pierced and tattooed.   "Body Modification" was the buzzword with tattoo and piercing shops as ubiquitous as Starbucks.   Above a popular sex club sat a large school to train would be piercers.

In San Francisco in the early 90’s it seemed like everyone from lawyers to street punks was getting pierced and tattooed.   “Body Modification” was the buzzword with tattoo and piercing shops as ubiquitous as Starbucks.   Above a popular sex club sat a large school to train would be piercers.  Among a certain set of the perpetually underemployed counterculture crowd becoming a certified piercer or tattoo artist was a viable career option right up there with earning a massage certificate or training as a yoga instructor.    In no time a level of elitism entered the picture,  “who did your work” mattered as well as what you had done.    A hierarchy of sorts developed relating to the “edginess” of piercings.  The most extreme were the large ear plugs,  ever larger septum piercings,  back of the neck piercings and any facial piercing that appeared painful (foreheads,  Adams apples, bridge of the nose, back of the neck).   On the safer side was small dainty eyebrow piercings,  small discreet nostril piercings, and upper ear piercings. Another subset was the genital and body piercing which were easier to hide at work. 

     I had an enormous bull looking nose piercing, commonly called a septum, which was done at the school by Fakir Musafar, the godfather of modern primitivism.  It was my only piercing aside from my earring which I got at age 16 at a suburban shopping mall and was subsequently kicked out if the house for.  I did have a plethora of tattoos but nothing that I would regret later (like all those folks with large face ink jobs).   I was always surprised by the number of “normal clean-cut guys” who had discreet eyebrow piercings.   It was popular as was getting a tattoo.  Tattoo parlors popped up on every corner to meet the demand.   The tattoo designs ranged from the resurgence of old school flash tattoos (Sailor Jerry, Ed Hardy),  discreet asian inspired lotus flowers/ Chinese lettering to the massive “modern primitive” tattoos.  The latter were especially popular with the  gym bunny gays, appearing on the more meaty parts of the body-  the chest,  legs,  biceps and back.  Big and all black with the natural skin color acting as the negative space.  They often were vaguely tribal/ maori looking, and in the end became extremely generic and sought after.  They really meant nothing as they had no distinct elements to them,  just swirls and spirals or maybe a vague fish or winged bird.  Large, bold but pretty non committal,  kinda like the 90’s themselves.  And man do they look dated now.  

The modern primitive trend eventually went mainstream with tattoos becoming normalized along with modest facial piercings.    A tattoo is no longer an obstacle at most job interviews.   The trends in piercing and tattoos continues and since prehistory are still used to mark what subculture one identifies within society.   For a brief moment in time though in the early 90’s it was a “thing” that caught on like fire and served as an entry point for people to explore alternative ways of existing in the world.   For that I’m grateful.