Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue NY logo on upper arm in biomechanical shading

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the letters NY in outlined blue block form, with white highlights along each stroke. The letters sit on a black and grey backdrop with organic, sinewy shading and small circular forms around the edges. The image is a close, straight-on view of the upper arm, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

Upper arm Logo Letter Biomechanical

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pattern for the letters had been cut by my uncle Ray in 1971, from a block of mahogany he'd steamed out of a dead piano. Two tall strokes, one bent like a stooped man, the other a flat-footed hook. When Mr Teale brought them into the foundry on Dock Road, he wanted them in iron, painted blue, to hang over the door of his dodgems in Hartlepool, and he wanted them by Friday.

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We poured them on Thursday night. The sand took the wood's shape the way wet sand takes a footprint, and when the iron went in it hissed and the heat rose off the flasks like breath. Dennis, who had worked the furnace since the pit closed, stood at the pour with his hood up and said the first stroke looked like it was reaching for something. I told him it was only the pattern. He didn't argue, which was how I knew he'd seen it too.

By Friday the castings were cold and ground smooth, and the paint went on in three coats, with white lines pulled down each edge by Teale's daughter, who had the steadiest hand in town. The black behind them was worked in fine spiralling bands, like ribbing on a ship's hull. Nobody had drawn that. Dennis said it came from the sand, where the mould had taken the shadow of the wood and kept it.

They went up on Saturday morning. Teale stood below with his hands in his coat pockets and nodded, pleased, and the first child to ride under them stopped dead and pointed. I looked up. The black ribbing had shifted in the night, pulled tight like sinew under skin, and the small round knots along the edges had doubled. The Y had turned a few degrees toward the sea. Teale said it was the wind. Down at the furnace, Dennis was already lighting the fire for the next job, and he did not look up.