Village Moon: A Place for Tattoos and Inspiration
By Sarah Grace Sajadi and Olivia Warren
JACKSON HEIGHTS — Like the neighborhood it calls home, the Village Moon tattoo parlor is a place of great ethnic diversity. Everyone who walks in and out of the shop has a different story. The manager and chief piercer, Mohammed Hoque, grew up in Canada in a Bengali household. Another employee is from Puerto Rico, and a tattoo artist recently moved from Colombia.
“We’re all from different countries,” said Rochelle Rodriguez, an employee that moved here two years ago from Puerto Rico. Since most customers are from Spanish-speaking countries, the employees must adapt as well. “Everybody here speaks Spanish. And if they don’t, they learn.”
Ms. Rodriguez, 25, takes a two hour commute from the Bronx to Jackson Heights every day for work. Ms. Rodriguez does “whatever is necessary,” from tending to customers to working the cash register. Her responsibilities are plentiful, but she’s grateful for the opportunity.
“Working here is good. At least I get to actually make a living,” she added, shrugging her shoulders. She moved to the Bronx two years ago from Puerto Rico to escape family and economic troubles.
The tattoo artist from Colombia is Eddie Francois, 26. He was a tattoo artist in Bogota, Colombia as well, but he seized better opportunities in New York. “It’s a long story,” he began. “At that time I had just gotten out of school, I didn’t have that much to do. My brother told me that I could tattoo and study at the same time,” he said in Spanish.
At noon in the scalding heat on a recent day, the manager, artist, and employee were the only ones to be found at the parlor. The shop, on the corner of Roosevelt Avenue and 78th Street, seems polished and shiny during the day. Buffed floors and organized display cases, Frank Sinatra playing blissfully in the background. There are few customers during the day. At night is when Village Moon comes alive. It doesn’t close its doors until 5 a.m.
All of the people who work at Village Moon can recall unruly customers. “Drunk idiots” come in and out of Village Moon, but one stuck in Mr. Hoque’s mind. One late night, he said, an intoxicated man entered demanding a tattoo. Mr. Hoque refused. The customer threatened to fall asleep right then and there if Mr. Hoque didn’t tattoo him. “Okay, go to sleep,” Mr. Hoque responded. The man was obedient — he fell over backwards and went to sleep on the floor.
Mr. Hoque, 25, has lived in Jackson Heights for 15 years, brought here from Toronto, Canada by his parents. He is trilingual, his first language being Bengali, his second language, English, and his last being Spanish, something he was forced to learn in his eight years of working at Village Moon.
As a native of Puerto Rico, Ms. Rodriguez knows many afflicted by the recent hurricane.
Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, not only ridding half a million Puerto Ricans of power, but killing an estimated figure of 4,645 people according to CNN. Many have criticized America’s approach to helping Puerto Rico, saying Puerto Rico needed more help than offered.
“In Puerto Rico, there’s going to be a problem for months, maybe years, until anybody tries to fix it,” she said.
Though the hurricane is on people’s minds, Ms. Rodriguez said that she has not noticed it spark a trend in Puerto Rican tattoos. In fact, she said, most people getting tattoos don’t associate it with their cultural or religious background. The majority of tattoos, she said, are inspired by pop culture. “They see it on TV, on celebrities, and it’s in.”
Mr. Francois has noticed differences in American culture from Colombian culture. He noted that even though he was a tattoo artists in Bogota, doing the same work in Jackson Heights is different. “The difference in culture is the people,” he said. In Jackson Heights, though there is a Colombian population, it is a hub of immigrants. All types of people can make their way into Village Moon.
“In Colombia, there was someone that came from here. He came looking for a tattoo — he tattooed his butt. He got an empanada,” Mr. Francois said. As Ms. Rodriguez translated the story, she struggled to stop laughing.
A computer desktop in the store shows an old picture of a man giving a tattoo. The man is Sailor Jerry, a tattoo icon. Mr. Hoque told us the story of how Jerry had skin cancer, and after the medical cream he was given didn’t work, he began tattooing it into his skin. The cancer went away. But, the work that made him famous was was tattooing sailors and soldiers in hidden basements back when it was illegal.
The walls are covered with pictures of tattoos, smoky vampires juxtaposed with blissful forties jazz in the background. Some come with an idea in their head and others need inspiration from Village Moon to decide what art they want to make part of their body. The tattoo parlor is colored not only by the experiences of the people there and the different cultures they bring, but the inspiration they surround it with.
