Shin's Body Art
by Lee Crane

What's the ink attraction?

It's so pain/pleasure. I don't know. It's fun. I don't know like, I got this done with a pin and a needle [pointing to a Santa Cruz logo on his ankle]. My other buddy did a Independent. I did a Santa Cruz logo myself. Right when that came out I thought that was a great symbol, it was a guy running or it could have been anything. It's like anything. It will remind me of when I was seventeen.

How do you do that?

You wrap a guitar string around a needle so the string is just a little opening with the needle so when you dip it in ink it acts like a tiny little dropper and you just stick it in. You just put ink in a bottle cap.

Did you draw it out before you did it?

No. Actually I was just sitting around one day bored. My other friend Chris did an exploding sun on the foot and it looks rad. It took him hours. It's looks like a tattoo and he did it with a pin.

The first in a book Shin hopes to publish on his back--page by painful page.

The ink on my back is all Japanese. My dad is Japanese and I like that Japanese animation and shit. So I figured fuck it, I'll just get it done. It's my design. I wanted something with skateboarding and I like girls. It's kind of like Akira when they're all on their motorcycles and the city starts exploding. I wanted to kind of capture that.

Why the page?

It will kind of be like a story on my back. Different years, different pages. I would never get arms done. Actually I'd get shoulders. My Buddy Darren just got a shoulder piece of a girl from X-Men and her hair goes back over his shoulder.

Are you worried that you're going to keep going?

Worried in a good way. I could spend a lot of money on this. One of our Japanese distributors has spent $35,000 on his tattoos. Full-body. Full back, solid back, shoulders. His ass and the back of his legs. It's all Japanese samurai and stuff. It's so nice though.

You've only got one life to live so you might as well do whatever you want.