Walking by a tattoo shop, you’d expect the music selection to be something in between Iron Maiden and Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road”, not the piano concertos of Rachmaninoff. But that’s what you get at the Summit’s Completely Charmed Life Tattoo Parlor.
Tattoo artist Charles Lee III (The Third!) takes us through his design catalog: emblems from the International Association of Train Travelers, Sorority Letters, Cartoon Veal Shanks and Eggs Benedict. Plus outlines of Andover with its zip code, 40509, in the center.
“We can also do custom inks, as well.” The parlor’s wall is lined with photos from previous Summit patrons. The ink immortalizing the names of their favorite childhood chauffeur or the cousin they had their summer tryst with on a rowboat in Martha’s Vineyard. “I got the name of my boat across my upper back,” said yacht owner, Geoff W (no middle name, just the letter) Woolry.
While the shop does not have content restrictions, they do have a strict no lower back tattoo policy. “We call them, ‘Scamp Stamps’,” Lee (The Third!) explains. “We’d be done with middle back tattoos, too, if we could get away with it. Upper back is ideal though we do cater to the needs of the upper middle, as well.”
Completely Charmed Life Tattoo Parlor is part of the Summit’s planned Vice District. The area will also feature a pool hall called Strictly Billiards and the grand reopening of Camelot East Gentleman’s Club.
“Our shopping area was designed as a simulacrum of the typical American neighborhood,” says the Summit’s public relations director Theodore Tycoon. “So, by Jove, what’s more American than a little ballyhoo from the riff-raff?” Then Mr. Tycoon adjusted his ascot.