Tag Archives: fitzgerald

Cooks, Illustrated: Why So Many Chefs Have Tattoos

by HWWSabinardfi Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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When it was time for sailor and cook Mandy Lamb to get a tattoo, she decided on two arrows arranged in an “X” on her forearm. They remind her, she says, of a painful lesson learned on her first boat: “Don’t fall in love with the captain.”

Fishing-boat cook Mandy Lamb

Lamb’s is one of more than 65 illustrated vignettes (and probably my favorite) on display in the artful book Knives and Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos, by BuzzFeed books editor Isaac Fitzgerald and prolific illustrator and graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton, who appeared on our latest episode of Bite. The duo previously worked together on the 2014 book Pen and Ink, which was inspired by their popular Tumblr blog of the same name and portrayed tattooed people of all professions.

But for Knives and Ink, they zeroed in on cooks and chefs, a breed well known for sporting body art. Fitzgerald, who had a short stint as a sushi chef in San Francisco, says one reason for the propensity for tattoos is that chefs want a symbol for their “dedication to the craft.” Some chefs feel they’ve landed in a career perfectly suited to their talents—and that getting a tattoo is a way of publicly dedicating their lives to the craft. Fitzgerald explains:

For a very long time, being a chef is one of the very few industries where you could just be covered head to toe, tattoos on your face, it didn’t matter as long as what you were making is good. It’s this idea of, ‘If I tattoo my neck, if I tattoo my knuckles, I can’t just walk away from this and start selling cars or just go work in a business or put on a suit or sit in a cubicle. This is going to be my life.’

Personal Chef Roze Traore; Chef Timmy Malloy

MacNaughton, who learned to cook while working on a cookbook project a few years ago, points to another reason for kitchen tattoos: “Chefs are preparing food for a lot of people, but it is about their distinct dishes and their distinct flavors and they’re expressing themselves in everything they do,” she says. “I think that the marks on their body are also manifestations of the same thing, the stories and experiences that are meaningful to them.”

The tales in Knives and Ink range from sentimental to flippant, sometimes revealing deep truths about a chef’s past, sometimes simply revealing her favorite seasoning. When asked about the most popular tattoo inked by the cooks they interviewed, Fitzgerald and MacNaughton were unequivocal: the pig. “It seems to be the official or unofficial logo of professional chefs,” MacNaughton says. Sure, the quintessential butchering diagram showing a quartered hog is a favorite, but Fitzgerald found fascinating the extent to which some chefs had “tried to one-up this classic pig tattoo design” with neck tattoos of pig skulls or a gory image of a zombie ripping up a pig from the inside. If that isn’t a reason to check out this delightful book, you’re sure to enjoy the recipes or artistic renderings of favorite ingredients accompanying many of the portraits.

Sous Chef Catherine Doyle

Bite is Mother Jones‘ new food politics podcast, out every other Friday. Listen to all our episodes here, or by subscribing in iTunes or Stitcher or via RSS. Please rate us and write us a review—it helps get the word out!

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Cooks, Illustrated: Why So Many Chefs Have Tattoos

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Scott Walker’s Office Was Part of a Sneaky Effort to Keep His Records Private

by Danielzhg Posted on July 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update (7/7/15): Gov. Scott Walker’s office has confirmed in a statement that it was involved with the measure to change Wisconsin’s open-records law to block access to many currently available government documents. The statement was released after Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) acknowledged that Walker’s office took part in discussions to slip the changes into a last-minute budget bill. Fitzgerald said the governor’s office had specifically cited the volume of requests it receives as one reason for the measure. Another Wisconsin Republican lawmaker, Rep. Dale Kooyenga, the vice-chairman of the legislative committee that included the provision, apologized for his role in allowing it into the budget bill. According to Kooyenga, he had been led to believe the change would put Wisconsin’s public records law in line with the rest of the country and federal law; since voting for the measure, he learned that it was actually much harsher.

Late on Thursday night, before the start of the holiday weekend, Republican state legislators in Wisconsin slipped wording into a bill authorizing Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget that would have blocked access to many public records. This includes records the Walker administration is currently fighting to keep secret, which concern a controversial proposal to rewrite key parts of the Wisconsin University system’s charter. Reporters and the governor’s Democratic critics immediately suspected this legislative maneuver was an attempt to shield Walker, who is about to announce his presidential bid next week, from greater scrutiny.

On Friday, as the controversy over the provision escalated, Walker at first avoided discussing it. But soon Republican lawmakers who had not been part of the committee that approved the language joined the chorus of critics. Knowing that he didn’t even have the support of fellow Republicans, Walker issued a joint statement with top GOP lawmakers Saturday morning stating that the language would be pulled from the budget, at least for now.

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Scott Walker’s Office Was Part of a Sneaky Effort to Keep His Records Private

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She & Him & M. Ward

by HildegaBelton Posted on December 8, 2014

Mother Jones

She & Him
Classics
Columbia

M. Ward
Transistor Radio
Merge

Behold the two sides of M. Ward (Matt to his friends), the gifted troubadour who makes nice pop records with actress Zooey Deschanel as She & Him and crafts darker folk-rock fare on his own. Classics finds She & Him covering 13 chestnuts in engaging fashion, with Deschanel taking most of the lead vocals, as usual.

Though she lacks the booming voice of a Dusty Springfield, whose “Stay Awhile” gets a welcome reboot here, Deschanel is a charming singer who sells a lyric with understated grace. See the downcast soul standard “Oh No, Not My Baby” or the enthralling and dreamy “Unchained Melody” for proof. If their sleepy reading of “Stars Fell on Alabama” won’t make anybody forget the timeless Ella Fitzgerald-Louis Armstrong duet, it’s still lovely.

Ward’s stellar 2005 album Transistor Radio, just reissued on vinyl with a CD containing four bonus tracks, has aged extremely well. Without straining for effect, his whispery rasp brilliantly conveys all the simmering desperation and mordant humor of haunting songs such as “Four Hours in Washington” (“It’s 4:00 in the morning and I’m turning in my bed/I wish I had a dream or a nightmare in my head”) and “One Life Away,” recounting a visit to a sweetheart’s grave. Ward can spook a person like few others when he’s in the mood.

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She & Him & M. Ward

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In "Pen and Ink," People Tell the Fascinating Stories Behind Their Tattoos

by Kristof0239 Posted on September 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton has no shame in asking our server about the tattoo peeking out from under her right armpit. We’re at Magnolia Brewery, a pub in San Francisco with a soft glow and a hint of an edgy past. The petite, bespectacled waitress explains that the hen and chicks inked on her inner bicep come from a kid’s book her grandma used to read to her at the childhood farm. After the server disappears to retrieve our fries, MacNaughton says: “If someone is choosing to permanently mark their body, there is a story behind it.”

She should know. MacNaughton has spent much of the last two years on a new oral-history book, Pen and Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them, out October 7. The testimonies accompanying her expressive drawings serve as glimpses into the subjects’ earlier selves—”my sister and I would race after bees in the lavender bushes and try to pet them without getting stung”—or mantras to live by—”a gray-blue stripe down my spine…symbolizes ‘balance.'” Some insignias represent disturbing moments: incarceration or chemo or lost family members. Others are just goofy: A male comedian sports a cursive “Whoops” on his arm, and one woman inked a T. rex on her ribcage as a reminder “not to take myself too seriously.”

The project was the brainchild of Isaac Fitzgerald, co-owner of literary website The Rumpus and the books editor at BuzzFeed. Past bartending gigs had taught Fitzgerald that quizzing fellow mixologists about their tattoos was an easy ice-breaker. As his interest in publishing took hold, he noticed that most books about tattoos merely relied on photographs, which, in terms of capturing the essence of a great tattoo, “leave a lot to be desired.”

One day, Fitzgerald was having a drink with MacNaughton, whose playful renderings have adorned the pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, PRINT, and several books. “I said, ‘Here’s this really dumb idea!'” Fitzgerald recalls. “And I think she was like, ‘That’s not that dumb.'” So, in 2012, they launched a Tumblr called Pen and Ink, which pairs MacNaughton’s tattoo portraits with the subjects’ personal stories. Before long, their project had attracted 80,000 followers, including rock star fans such as Neko Case and Colin Meloy.

“Andrea de Francisco, Cafe Owner”

Drawing hadn’t always come so easy for MacNaughton. After graduating from Pasadena’s City Art Center College of Design in 1999, and making, in her words, “the worst conceptual art ever,” she abandoned her pen in exasperation. Instead, she went to grad school for international social work, and spent several years working on political campaigns in East Africa.

The drawing bug bit again after she moved to the Bay Area and began sketching fellow commuters on the train to work. Something had shifted: “In art school it was all about expressing my analysis of the world, and my ideas.” But now she wanted to use her talents to tell other people’s stories. Her sketches of life in the city—street characters, found objects, or moments on a bus—became an online series for The Rumpus, culminating in a 2014 book, Meanwhile in San Francisco: The City in its Own Words.

“Anna Schoenberger, Manager at Thrift Store”

Interviewing diverse tribes for Meanwhile was a great warmup for Pen and Ink, MacNaughton tells me. Nowadays, it’s impossible to predict who might have a tattoo: anyone from “people who work downtown in an office on a top floor in a suit to somebody who doesn’t work who has tattoos all over his face,” she says. She shoots me a sly look. “I get a possible tattoo vibe from you.”

When I break the news that I’m actually not among the 23 percent of Americans who are inked, she counters, “You just don’t have one yet.” (I’ve recently become obsessed with FlashTats, those sparkly temporary tattoos designed to look like jewelry. Gateway drug?)

MacNaughton, who has wavy rust-colored hair and sparkly eyes, sports two tattoos herself—both equally embarrassing, she admits. She points to one on her forearm: a triangle connecting three circles meant to represent a philosophical “mirror theory.” “There was a point when I would have removed this. But I’m really glad now that I didn’t.” Doing Pen and Ink, she says, “helped me embrace that attitude that this represents a time in my life when I was more sincere. That was a great time. And I am so glad it is not that time anymore.”

MacNaughton and Fitzgerald are already busy with a sequel, Knives and Ink, an illustrated series of tattooed chefs and their tales. MacNaughton’s not done inking herself, either. “My next tattoo,” she confides, “is Grandma-related.”

“MJ Craig, Assistant Lab Manager”

“Mac McClelland, Journalist”

“Cassy Fritzen, Bartender”

“Chris Colin, Writer”

“Ryan M. Beshel, Public Relations Coordinator”

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In "Pen and Ink," People Tell the Fascinating Stories Behind Their Tattoos

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