The Worst Tattoo In Austin Contest - Interview with Founder Devon Tincknell

And I guess the first question is where the idea for this event came from?

I had it probably a year or two ago... I think it was last summer. The Onion was doing this thing called Famewhore, which was basically sort of like a talent show, like a Gong Show type thing. And I remember this year that it wasn't going very well and they weren't having a good turn out and it wasn't very interesting, and I had this thought of this Worst Tattoo thing and thought it would be a good match for The Onion. [But] it got put on the backburner.

And then recently I brought it back up and people were very excited; everyone that I talked to was super-excited. And so this is the first one that we've ever done, but there's definitely plans to do another one next year and make this an ongoing, annual, awesome event.

And how are you tracking the turn-out, or what sort of turn-out are you expecting for the actual participants?

We are going to be surprised. We have high hopes - we have over a thousand dollars in gift certificates to award to the winners which, if you're someone who has a tattoo that is stupid enough to win a contest, you probably want more tattoos. So we really have our fingers crossed and we're hoping for a good turn-out.

It's interesting that the prizes are actually for more tattoos, rather than for tattoo removal.

The Worst Tattoo thing is sort of a misnomer, because we're not really looking for the shittiest tattoo or tattoos that are just uninteresting or bland, because if that's what we wanted to do we'd just give out prizes to everybody on 6th street that has a tramp stamp or tribal tattoo. What we're looking for is more indefensively bad tattoos in the hilarious sense - something that is just so regretted or so fucked up that it's going to keep the person from ever getting a normal job. We want to award those people for making such horribly great decisions.

From looking at some of the images that have been posted on the Facebook page, it seems that there's a lot of tattoos going on in the, ahem, nether regions of people. How much skin will you be able to get away with on stage?

From what I understand, the event is about art, and it's not lewd or designed to sexually arouse people, so we can do as much as we want.

Are you going to have any sort of video enhancement? It might be difficult to see tattoo details clearly from a distance.

The demonstration is going to be from 6 to 8 pm at Red 7. People are going to show up and they're going to enter their tattoos. We're going to photograph their tattoos. And then when the doors open, we'll have selected the top 10 finalists for each of the categories that we have. And then those people are going to compete on stage.

And they'll be coming up to briefly give a little back story of why they got such a bizarre, horrible, or poorly done tattoo, because there is a category for people who have really badly done tattoos. This is where they can come up and complain about how they wanted a Frankenstein, but they got something that looks like a melting booger and that's the tattoo artist's fault and not theirs.

And then we'll be projecting the images of the tattoos behind them, so that even if you're in the nosebleeds you can still see what is going on. And then in between rounds we have bands playing and while that is happening there's going to be voting in the back. And the voting will be clearly marked with photos, so even if you were outside smoking a cigarette, you can still say, "Oh that's the coolest one" and make your vote.

And in closing, do you want to give a shout out to anybody in the tattoo community that's really helped out with the event?

Well, the people that have helped out in the tattoo community have definitely been our sponsors: Bijou Studio, Sailor's Grave Ink, Austin Tattoo Company, Shaman Modifications, and Triple Crown are all donating their own tattoo artist's time and energy to reward our contestants with free tattooing. And that has been just amazing, that Austin has such a good tattoo scene that so many shops of such high quality are willing to donate their time and energy to promoting and being a part of something like this.