SEATTLE — In 90 minutes, Jason Estep can take off this embarrassing Green Bay Packers bandage. He frowns when he raises his left arm to show a visitor in Lake Forest Park’s 522 Tattoo as his tattoo artist Erika Jones, the green-and-yellow clad culprit behind the joke, laughs deviously at her handy work.
Underneath the green and yellow bandage are Estep’s true colors: a blue and green Seahawks logo, freshly minted on the inside of his left biceps, still raw from being under Jones’ tattoo gun for two hours.
When another jersey isn’t enough and you already own everything in the pro shop, a tattoo is just natural, said Estep, who got his first Seahawks tattoo two days before the Hawks punched their ticket to a second straight Super Bowl with an epic comeback over Jones’ Packers.
“If you’re a fan forever, then you’re a fan forever,” Estep said. “Why not wear it forever?”
However long local 12s have been Seahawks loyals, the team’s rise has many of them giving an arm, leg or torso to show support for their team and their city with permanent ink.
“Whether they’re bandwagon fans for a sports team or not, a lot of people take pride in this city in general,” said Graydon Payne, a tattoo artist at Queen Anne’s Rooster Down Tattoo Gallery, who estimates he’s done approximately two dozen Seahawks tattoos in the past year.
After last year’s Super Bowl run galvanized a new wave of fans, Seattle-area tattoo shops saw an uptick in Seahawks tattoos, particularly during the weeks leading up the NFC Championship Game last season when the Hawks were viewed as the favorite.
Payne said the fact that fans are choosing tattoos in addition to more traditional forms of support like jerseys or flags goes along with a growing trend in tattoos overall. Since several tattoo-reality shows including 2005’s “Miami Ink” and its spinoffs “NY Ink” and “LA Ink,” Payne said tattoos have lost some of their rough-around-the-edges connotations, and are more accessible.
522 Tattoo’s Jones, who has been practicing her trade in the Seattle area since 2002, said having a team tattoo was nothing out of the ordinary in Wisconsin, where she grew up a Packers fan. At home, it seemed like everyone had one, she said, and a tattoo signaled stronger allegiance than just a jersey.
“It’s just more showing whose side you’ve chosen; it kind of has a primal feeling to it,” she said. “This is my team and I will wear it forever.”
Back when the Seahawks went to their first Super Bowl in the 2005 season, she saw a spike in Seahawks tattoos, but nothing compares to the current wave.
She said she has done five to six Seahawks tattoos in the past year after doing only one or two previously.
The Seahawks logo, the block No. 12 and the Lombardi Trophy have been the most popular designs among tattoo-seeking 12s in the past year. Local fans often try to incorporate Seattle elements, including the skyline etched into their logo or the Space Needle reflecting off the Lombardi Trophy.
Occasionally though, clients will think even more creatively. Steve Garbe, who has been a fan since he was 3 years old in 1976 — when the Seahawks played their first game in the NFL — has four pieces currently on his left leg: Mickey Mouse dressed in full Seahawks uniform; the Lombardi Trophy with reflections of the Space Needle and a 12th Man flag wrapped in the blue and green feather-pattern lining seen on the team’s jerseys; the current team logo; and a throwback logo.
He also has plans for a full sleeve and ideas to add Roman numerals commemorating the Hawks’ Super Bowl win — or wins — with 522 Tattoo’s Ben “There” Wallenborn, also a Seahawks fan. Garbe knows he’ll be safe from ever having to wear an opposing team’s logo on a bandage.
“My guy would never do that to me,” Garbe said when Estep raised his arm in the air.
Even with a Packers bandage strapped to his arm, Estep regrets nothing about his fandom (except maybe an ill-fated Lofa Tatupu jersey sitting in his closet). When it comes to his tattoo and his Hawks, it’s forever.
“You don’t get things on you permanently that you’re going to think about later,” Estep said. “You want them there. They stay.”
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