Graffiti’s Ink Gallery

I had a plan. A body art political statement (aren’t all tattoos political statements of some sort?) related to my work in health policy and advocacy.
Since I’m sick and ****ing tired of waiting for the healthcare industry to make my health records and data easily available to me, and to the doctors that treat me, I decided to roll my own, if you will.
A QR code, on my sternum, that opened a link — on one of my own sites — where my advance directive and my self-​generated Personal Health Record (PHR) would be available to any healthcare professional who needed to treat me if I was unable to tell ‘em what was what. With a password inked alongside the tattooed QR, of course, ’cause I don’t need to share all that data with just ever’-damn-body.
Little did I know that the hard part would not be creating a spreadsheet with [redacted] years of health information and history. The hard part was finding a tattoo artist in this, the 3^rd most tattooed city in America, who would deign to execute my plan. (Was I not paying for this? Customer service, folks.)
I spoke to several artists, over a period of months, and was about to start looking out of town when I remembered Graffiti’s from the ads they used to run on local TV.
Matt Frewer, one of their artists, came through with both a «yes» and a terrific execution of my plan.
Too bad for you, but mine was Matt’s first and last QR code tattoo — apparently it was a giant PITA for him, but I’m happy as a clam.
Great place, I highly recommend Matt (just don’t ask him for a QR code!), and the rest of the folks in the shop are pretty outstanding, too.