Needles & Pins

Freshman Heather Couch got her belly button pierced two years ago during spring break. Like many teenagers, she says getting her belly button pierced with her closest friends was a great bonding experience to help her remember their crazy time in Florida.\nWhile she liked the piercing, she had always wanted a tattoo. After she turned 18 in May, she went with a friend to a local tattoo parlor.\n "One of my best friends, Annie, was leaving to go home to Norway, and the day before she left, we went to a tattoo place," Couch says. "It was a total bonding experience. And when she comes back this summer, we're getting another tattoo together."\nBe it to feel the first taste of adult independence or find a way to stand out from the general public, piercings and tattoos are big business with young adults. While body art brings with it the chance to display a part of one's personality where everyone can see (or where only the people you want can see), it also brings risks and requirements.\nThe piercing professionals\nBody art is serious business at Skinquake, a popular Bloomington tattoo and piercing parlor at 404 E. Kirkwood Ave. Colin McClain specializes in tattoos, and Jordan Trendalman in piercings. Even though they are in their mid-20s, both men have a great deal of experience in these trades.\nInside Skinquake, the atmosphere is relaxed and relatively open, with comfortable couches and few decorations other than designs of various tattoos. Numerous accessories line the glass cases, and each area where the tattooing and piercing take place is free of clutter and well organized. This is a departure from the stereotypical "grungy" feel of tattoo and piercing parlors. Like their workplace, McClain and Trendalman do not embody the stereotype. Both men look like put-together young adults, dressed in relatively plain clothes like button-down shirts and neutral-colored pants. \nMcClain, a Bloomington native, says his career was not planned. \n"It just fell into my lap," he says. "I ended up getting a two-year apprenticeship with a parlor, and now I work here."\nTrendalman, also a native of Bloomington, was attending college when piercing caught up with him.\n"I was away at school, and I started hanging out in shops," Trendalman says. "I just got interested in it."\nLike McClain, Trendalman also completed a two-year apprenticeship program. He says he worked in three different places before coming back to Bloomington to work at Skinquake.\nTrepidation with tattoos\nAs for the risks that go along with tattoos and piercings, both men agree on one thing: the fear of being unhappy with the end result.\n"You have to think a lot before you get something like this done." McClain says. "I mean, are you going to want this when you're forty?"\nTrendalman says people should also consider how it might impact their careers.\n"If you're going to be dressing up every day when you go to work, you might want to think about where exactly you're putting that piercing," he says.\nBoth men say infection is always a possibility when getting a piercing or tattoo. But they say if the area is kept clean, there shouldn't be any problems.\n"But there's not a lot I can do once the person walks out my door," Trendalman says.\nRite of passage\nAs for Couch, the only problem she has ever encountered was when her piercing grew back after she had taken it out so she could participate in cheerleading. Even when she first got her tattoo, she didn't experience any pain.\n"I was actually surprised at how painless it was," she says. "A lot of people told me that it would really hurt, but it didn't hurt me at all."\nAfter hearing about all the risks and dangers, Couch says she still isn't deterred from getting more tattoos.\n"To me, tattoos are just so cool," Couch says. "I can't explain it. And if I take care of them properly, I shouldn't have any problems."\nShe says tattoos and body piercings are a part of growing up and a rite of passage.\n"This is my theory. My parents and their generation think that tattoos and piercings are bad," Couch says. "But my generation is all about that kind of stuff. So every old woman is going to have a wrinkly old tattoo or funny hole in their body. It's like a universal bond that we all share"