It hurts, the man says as much, but so too does the shame of what those tattoos represent. She holds the machine over the man’s skin, burning the flesh: first his hand, then his ankle. The machine Steinke holds in her hand looks like something out of a science fiction film, a futuristic ray-gun that zaps and ticks with the steady beat of a metronome. He does what she says, leaning back, with a small pair of tanning goggles covering his eyes. Inside the small tattoo shop on Regent Avenue - Studio 431 - Steinke tells the man to lay down on a table.
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(Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)Ĭursive script wrapped around the ankle, five letters: B-L-O-O-D.Ī symbol on his hand, repping the street gang he was a member of, once upon a time, when he was a young man. The laser machine Steinke uses to remove tattoos.
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Ink etched into skin painfully washed away. Partnered with the Gang Action Interagency Network (GAIN), she offers free tattoo-removal for ex-gang members looking to erase the stains of their past.īecause just like a fresh coat of paint can cover up the gang graffiti seen throughout the streets and alleys of inner-city Winnipeg, so too can marked flesh be made clean again. That’s where Della Steinke, 51, comes in, offering hope in the form of a tattoo-removal machine. Not just people you pass on the sidewalk or see at the store, but the admissions officer at the school you wish to attend, or the boss sitting across the desk during your job interview.
Or worse: take back the tattoo, and the skin upon which it rests, through an act of violence.īut after that, there’s the rest of the world to consider, the mainstream society you want to break into, the way strangers look at the tattoos that mark your body - your hands and knuckles, your arms and legs, your neck and face. But what happens when someone decides that enough is enough, that they want to leave the life behind?įirst come the safety concerns, the worry the gang will attack you for continuing to rep the tattoo while no longer a member. The tattoos are meant to be for life, just like membership in the gang. Alongside the bandanas and colours of the gang, the tattoos serve as a form of armour, a mask with which members navigate a hostile world. Most aren’t done in tattoo shops, but in basements or prisons, with homemade ink called “soot” that stains the skin. The tattoos hold deep significance to those who wear them, representing their membership in a particular gang, or revealing details of their personal history: the rank they have risen to, their skills and accomplishments, time spent locked up. Many of the people who throw up those tags, or who make up the street gangs that call this city home, are marked, too - with ink instead of paint, the canvas not a wall but their skin. The tags are written in code: numbers and letters with double meanings, confusing to outsiders but clear to those in the know, those in the life. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)
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Gang graffiti is easy to spot in inner-city Winnipeg: pocking neighbourhoods and homes, scrawled upon fences and storefronts, scratched atop boarded-up windows and walls.ĭella Steinke offers free gang-tattoo removal to ex-gang members. More tags down the lane: territory claimed, crews repped, a memorial - RIP - for a fallen friend.
A tag thrown up by a gang member, or a misguided kid who wants to be one. A yellow garage door, dented, in a back lane.
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