Body painting tattoo: July 2009

"So, there you have it. The inaugural tattoo on Tattoosday here at
BillyBlog. It should be interesting to see what else I can come up with
from strangers, or if I have to revert to friends to help me in this
project."

That's what I wrote two years ago today on my original site BillyBlog.

Little did I know how much this once weekly feature would turn into such a significant aspect of my life. In little over a month, I had spun Tattoosday off of BillyBlog, from a recurring character to a site of its own.

And we have grown! This month we will have our biggest visitor load of our short career here, reaching just under 30,000 hits. This month also marked a quarter of a million hits since Tattoosday stood alone in September 2007.

And we have our sights set even higher.

I once again want to thank everyone who has contributed to the success of the blog, from the occasional visitors, to the rabid fans, from the enthusiastic tourists and New Yorkers who have contributed their work, to the talented tattoo artists who created that work.

And most of all, I want to thank my friends and family, who have seen my passion for tattoo writing, and have supported me whole-heartedly. And to my beautiful wife Melanie, who is my biggest cheerleader, most avid supporter, and one of the most understanding women I know. Not may wives would be keen on their husbands taking pictures of tattoos of strange women
(and men) they've met on the street. But she is my number one fan. And I love her all the more for it.

A week from tomorrow my oldest daughter Jolee, who inspired this, my first tattoo, will be celebrating her bat mitzvah. The week ahead will be filled with planning and visits from family, so I am taking a week off in posting, so I can focus my energies on this landmark event.

Rest assured, I have two dozen tattoo posts in the queue and will likely be unable to restrain myself from collecting more photos and stories in the week to come.

I will resume posting on August 9th or 10th.

I thank everyone for their continued support and words of encouragement.

Bill Cohen