Transcript of AE 1157 - The Goss: Got a Tattoo? You Can't Come in!

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally down under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in the Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the Podcast Membership or the Academy Membership at www.aussieenglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising. And that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Wnat to talk about it?

Oh, man. Okay, so. Tattoos and pubs, Dad.

Oh, yeah, you sent me this one and I read it quickly and went, 'What the-?!'

Got to open it up here on my phone.

Yes.

I think- where are you? Got your here. So yeah there was a really interesting story.

Well, it's a euphemism for something, but.

Yeah. "Push for dress code tattoo bans to be included in Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Act." So a Queensland businessman wants anti-discrimination laws changed to stop pubs, clubs and restaurants from barring people with face and neck tattoos from entry. His push has gained the support of civil libertarians and tattooists, big surprise.

Yeah, exactly.

With lawyers saying that's two foxes on a chicken discussing which one of them is going to be dinner.

Yeah. With lawyers saying venue owners with discriminatory dress codes are already breaching existing human rights laws, but the issue is yet to be tested in court. So I found this really interesting. Effectively, this guy Daniel, who's 34, has neck tattoos and obviously finds it difficult to go to clubs, pubs and restaurants at times because I guess they reserve the right to decide what you can or can't wear.

Yeah, they have a they have a dress code that they impose and they can choose what to include in that dress code.

Yeah. So sorry.

You've got a shaved head. You must be a neo-Nazi. You're not allowed to come in here.

Yeah, but it's one of those things, too. It's like, okay, so you're not wearing any clothes. Or you're in underwear. Like, it- it was one of those- my initial reaction is 'That's fucked', right? Like this- anyone with any tattoos or whatever, like assuming they're not doing anything that's harming anyone else, or that is, you know, perceived as incredibly offensive. Like I can imagine if you had a tattoo of a swastika on your forehead.

Yes.

That's past a certain line, because that's just inherently offensive to look at. The same thing, if you had just a massive penis tattooed on your forehead, people would be like, 'Okay, that's a bit much', but if you just have-.

More- one is, okay!

That's it. If it was on your neck, that'd be one thing. But having a rose on your neck or something, or just whatever other tattoos on your face that have, you know, no real offensive content on them, that you should arguably be allowed to just go in when the average person can effectively have no problem at all. But then I was thinking, well, but these are sort of private businesses, right? And they get to decide who and- who can enter and who can't. And I remember going to clubs as a young teenager- when a young teenager, or young- young person who was a teenager, who was 18 and above but being denied simply because I had a penis, I was a male. And they were like, we want a higher ratio of women in the club than we do males.

Yes.

And so there would be a line of both men and women at the front,

That's right,

and they would always hear women go straight in...

... in to stand and wait.

Right, exactly. And I would be like, well, how is this any different? Like I'm effectively being discriminated against for my gender or my sex.

Yeah.

And yet, you know. So it is interesting. It is interesting. But.

Yeah, it is.

You wouldn't complain about that. I haven't heard people having a whinge about men, typically.

But they won't. You know why?

Because men don't tend to complain about the shit.

No, do you know why?

Because men want to go in.

Because when the men- when you get in there, you want more women in there than men.

Yeah, that's it. The men get in and they're like, 'Jesus, only guys here? What the hell?'

Exactly!

Women are like, 'why are we waiting outside?' And the guys are like, 'We don't know!' Whereas the women are going..

Exactly. So that is a self-fulfilling conspiracy.

Yeah, that's true.

So but yeah, look, I find it an interesting as a euphemism, as I suggested earlier, I find it an offensive thing for an organisation to do to say that we're not going to allow you to come in with tattoos because where do you draw the line? Is that- if somebody is. Yeah, the swastika is the example. It's not the tattoo. That's the problem. It's what the tattoo represents. That's the problem. But if you're saying that you're not allowed to have neck or facial tattoos, what about Mari or other Pacific Islanders who- it's a cultural thing. And they do it as not necessarily just a form of personal decoration, but it's a culture thing that they do. And are you just saying to them that their culture is offensive and they're not allowed to come in?

Well, I think this stems from the fact that back in the day, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, and plus, people who had face and neck tattoos typically were associated with gangs, especially biker gangs. And that has..

Biker gangs in American context...

It's just maintained itself. And so we still associate- and it's one of those tragic things I still catch myself. If I see someone with an entirely tattooed face, my instant reaction is going to be, I'm going to have this, 'okay, they're dangerous' or 'okay, they're of lower education' or. And nowadays we have to catch up because so often now you people have that stuff and they'll be a doctor or a lawyer or a biologist.

Or often. Often they're a sportsperson, a highly paid young male sportsperson. Nothing better to do with your life. What I'm going to do. I'm going to go and get a sleeve tattooed on. Yeah, I get tens of thousands of dollars sitting in my pocket, burning a hole.

...seeing that coming in with AFL and rugby, I think, in the 2000s onwards.

Exactly.

All of a sudden you had guys with tattoo sleeves and I don't think they have a face or neck, but they've had legs and arms.

Oh, a few have had head and necks. But,...

But, but anyway, yeah, it seemed like one of these things where our culture needs to catch up to reality because as Daniel in this story was saying, is like, I'm not a criminal, I'm not an extremist. I'm just a guy who was influenced by punk bands when I was growing up and got the same tattoos. And obviously that, that old signal of face tattoos, neck tattoos is associated with the underworld and dangerous criminals or extremists or nut jobs that, you know, that typically venues didn't want in the venue, unless that venue was specifically for those kinds of people. Right. Where you'd probably be denied entry if you didn't have them.

Where? Show us your tats.

Yeah, that's it. Look, we're just gonna do a little star on the side of your head so you can get in.

Exactly. We'll just do the noughts and crosses. Yeah, that's it. I'll draw one on. Hold on. I'm back. Oh, you've drawn a swastika, dude. What the hell?

It was a noughts and crosses sign? But I didn't finish it.

I know exactly. But yeah, it is. It is interesting. I think our culture's catching up, though, and I think this is the kind of thing that will be changed.

Yes.

And it does blow my mind that there are still pubs and clubs and restaurants that would turn these kinds of people away. I mean, again, it probably wouldn't surprise me if they were really, really upper class restaurants, like Michelin-star restaurants. And you showed up in a singlet with face tattoos and neck, and neck tattoos and thongs or whatever. They're probably going to be like, 'look, you know, we can't-' and ironically, there's no real difference between them doing it and a pub doing it.

No.

But you would kind of let that go, I think, or at least the expectation would be.

Oh, I think it'd be the reverse.

You reckon? You'd make a fuss?

No, no.

Well, they'd be like, 'all right, we'll let you in. Jesus.'.

I don't think they'd even complain.

Yeah.

Because again, if you're a high class restaurant and somebody's made a booking for two people, they're willing to pay and there they meet. Otherwise meet your dress code. If your dress code is, you've got to be wearing a shirt with a collar and a jacket. You've got to have shoes on. Yeah, whatever it happens to be. If you met those criteria, I don't think they'd have a problem.

I think it is the pubs and the clubs who assume that their biggest problem is going to be young male violence.

Yeah.

And the people who are coming in with obvious tattoos are, in their opinion, more likely to be committing that violence...

Which may or may not be true,

Which may or may not be true. But they've got that bias and that's why they're doing it. I think they, the upper class, high end things, are just going to go, sure. We'll take your money. Yeah. You're behaving yourself. Yeah. So.

We reserve the right to turf you whether or not...

We're not the same as anybody else. That is exactly true.

True, true.

Yeah. Don't ask for the pub- parma and the pint.

Yeah, but it is, it is one of those things- I find it interesting, too, what the article said that libertarians were on his side because I would have thought that it would be the opposite, where they'd be like, What's a private business? They can do whatever they want. Like if it was the government saying that people with face tattoos can't come into a government building, then I imagine libertarians would be up in arms saying like this is just...

I don't know libertarians or libertarians anymore.

Yeah, I don't know what it means.

Yeah, no. I know what it does mean, but I don't think people describe themselves as liberal. Yeah. Freedom to do. What is the question.

Freedom to be free.

Yeah, freedom to be free. But yeah, again, this is where you've got a dispute between two people. One is a private business and the other one is a potential customer of that business whose freedom trumps the other person's freedom. And that's the question. And that's I don't think a libertarian can answer that, whereas a government can say based on our society's norms. An organisation is not able to discriminate, or is able to discriminate.

It is interesting, isn't it, because...

...a decision that will have to be made.

What was it like for you growing up with tattoos, face tattoos and neck tattoos? And...

They didn't exist.

...tattoos that you could see when the person was fully clothed, even with a long sleeve thing. And what was it like when you started seeing them more frequently? Was it shocking?

I grew up in the sixties and so that was really about the time that bikie gangs, as we call them, with- and a lot of them didn't have tattoos, but then tattoos became more prevalent. It became that sort of thing. There was also the, the ex crims who had gone to jail, had gone to jail and got their tattoos in jail. And that was like.

Needle and some battery acid.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it was always the 'hate' or whatever written on, you know, H A T E on their knuckles. That sort of thing was sort of obvious.

But there wasn't the big facial things. Or there's a guy, you know, one of the thugs that I grew up with who was a couple of years older than me, he had a facial tattoo, but it was just a little star on a cheekbone.

Yeah.

But he was, you know, you knew why he had it. And he was marking himself as dangerous. You know, that's, um.

Yeah, it must be annoying for those people nowadays where they're just, like, every fucking man and his dog has a tattoo.

Well, my grandfather had...

...symbols don't mean anything anymore.

My grandfather had tattoos on his feet.

Yeah, and I like this story. Yeah, he. He was in the Royal Navy, joined the Navy before the First World War in 1913 and got tattoos while he was in the Navy and back in those days, as he said. And he was he was the one of the most bigoted people I have ever known. Loved him dearly. But he said...

... shamelessly racist.

He said, he would say things like, "Don't understand all these idiots and poofters. Now we've got, you've got tattoos. You only ever got tattoos if you're in the Navy."

Tattoos when he... When he grew up were as a Navy thing, uh, sailors got tattoos. And he had a kangaroo on each foot, tattooed on each foot. And and he made the joke, you know, when I was a kid, so he would have been any seventies.

They called me Jim because his name was Jim. So he go, Oh, now, Jim, I got these things when I was a kid. The silliest thing I ever did, they used to be kangaroos, but 50 years later, they look like wombats. Because, because his skin had got old and stretched.

And that's what I always wondered growing up in the early 2000s where sleeves and, you know, full body tattoos and everything was going nuts. And I'm like, what's this going to look like when people are 60, 70, 80, 90 years old? Like, it's going to be so interesting. All the old people around today, obviously, you know, like my grandparents in their late eighties nineties grew up at a time like the thirties and the forties and the fifties, where no one would have had tattoos. But maybe your grandfather who was in the Navy. And so I don't think you ever see anyone in the nineties who's got a sleeve or a face tattoo or something like it would be the...

Unless, unless they uh. Yeah. Maori or Pacific Islanders.

Well, for cultural reasons, yeah. But like just I guess. Well, everyone gets tattoos for cultural reasons but yeah. For those sorts of, they've been longstanding cultures that have had those tattoos for hundreds, maybe thousands of years then. Yeah, I can understand that. But it's going to be so interesting when I'm, I mean, assuming knock on wood, my grandfathers age and it's probably a 50/50 of getting past 82 or whatever it is at the moment.

That's the average male age before death. It'll be interesting to see all the people walking around that are, you know, holding on to the culture that they grew up in, listening to the music that we grew up with. Like imagine 90 year olds listening to Justin Bieber. Like, my grandparents don't listen typically to music with singing, unless it's like Michael Buble, right? Or like Christmas carols. They listen to sort of classical music. They go to the ballet. They like the orchestra, the the opera, all that sort of stuff. I can't imagine what it's going to be like, where we'll have 90 year olds running around being like, Fuck yeah, man. Rick and Morty love that shit. All those old Carter family guys, South Park!

It's, you know, we all do grow up with that because, you know..

I'm a grandpa and I'm wearing a hoodie and there'll be all these young kids being like damn hoodies...

I'm in my sixties. And I dress like I did when I was a teenager. I still listen to the music that I listen to in the sixties, the seventies and the eighties, also in the nineties and the 2000s and so on.

That- that sounded like the music from...

Some of it does. Some of it does and and so it's you- you do tend to capture a snapshot of periods in your life.

Yeah.

And continue to be like that. My grandfather was the same when he lived with us, when he was in his seventies and his eighties and for the last sort of 12 or 15 years of his life. And for a long time, he wouldn't go out into the street without a hat on.

Yeah.

Nobody else wore a hat. Yeah, this is pre wearing hats, sunscreen. Yeah, but this was just that. Yeah, in the- up until the 1940s and 50s, all men wore a hat that was just. You wore a jacket and a hat when you went out.

This is like Grandpa and people of his generation not having beards.

Yeah.

Right? Like my grandfather's always been clean shaven. And still today. Like, he probably shaves every few days, right? If not every day.

I wouldn't know, but yes.

And then I think it's interesting because you look back at the- is it probably the late 1800s earlier where they had like...

You can have up until the...

..big beards,

...First World War. Really?

Yeah.

People had, you know, great big beards, 19th century and very early 20th century. Typically you see old photographs of, you know, family groupings. And all the men over the age of 16 have got beards. Yeah.

So it's interesting how that obviously came out of style. And then in my grandpa's generation, it was all clean shaven.

Yeah.

At least for the most part, I'm sure it wasn't every single person. But a lot of them. And then your generation was moustaches and beards again. And we've sort of...

And your generation has gone through to that again. And the, you know, that 20 year period in the middle, was everybody was clean shaven except a few old farts like me. Well, I think I even noticed when we were watching, we had- I think I gave you a DVD for your birthday like a decade or so ago. That was certain football matches through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. And you got to see, when you were watching some of these footy matches, just the men's hairstyles.

Yes.

And beards and everything changing. And the one thing that I noticed was it wasn't until maybe the 2000s when men started clean shaving their heads. Prior to that everyone had the skullet.

Yes, right.

The, the, the, the,

The bald head and the long hair...

...long ball mullet, like Gary Ablett Sr and Gary Ablett Jr are the good examples. Gary Ablett Sr, who was the Gary Ablett that I grew up watching. Gary Ablett Jr was my age.

Yeah.

His dad was a famous player for the Cats, I think. A prolific goalscorer. Right. Just a...

More than 8000 goals.

Yeah. Insane. Like Tony Lockett from the Swans, too, right. At the same age. But he was bald and had that just filthy, receding mullet, the skullet thing that was like no hair except for the back of his head and neck. And just had that throughout his entire career. I remember just you'd always see him running through the field with this weird mullet, sweaty mullet behind him. But then his son, Gary Ablett Jr obviously grew up, had hair, and then had the same receding hairline that his dad had and just shaved it.

Yeah.

Shaved it clean. Straight away. And it was interesting noticing that change of no one shaved their heads. And now anyone who effectively has a receding hairline shaves the head. No one my age has a comb over. No. They might have a wig, and in which case they'd be hiding the fact that they're losing hair.

I don't know. Would there be 30-somethings that would wear wigs?

Well, you don't typically know because it's still, it's kind of taboo, I think, for people to ask or talk about it. But I remember.

No, I've never seen a wig that I haven't been able to pick.

Yeah, but they're the only, the only one...

...I know. Yeah. I, it's usually pretty obvious.

There was- well there was,

Because there's no- it's easy to pick because there's no facial hair around it.

Yeah.

The wig just sort of sits on the head a sort of falls over clean.

You'd be surprised that, I mean, again, I think it's a certain type of people that have to go, that really want to maintain that hair, to go to the trouble of having the weird, shaved, clean hairstyle that allows you to put a wig on but look normal. Because you kind of have to have your facial hair to have grown up to the side of your head and the back of your head and everything's hair to be there. But then the top has to kind of be clean shaved so that the wig sucks on. Yeah. And so I imagine there's...

I do have I, I've seen a few really bad ones of men in their 50s and 60s.

There was a guy when I was doing-.

Who were actually quite wealthy. And you sit there and you look at me, and I, 'Really?' Like. Like.

Who gives a shit?

Yeah, but the who cares. But it's just like- you- and it's a train smash. You cannot not look at it.

It was like Trump. Right,

Yeah, exactly. You couldn't, you just sit there staring at it like, 'don't look. Look away, look away, look away.'.

Well, I feel like like I've got a receding hairline, which is why I decided to shave my head because I was like...

Well your hair hasn't receded much.

It's not too bad, but it's enough.

In the last ten years.

No.

It sort of, yeah, in your..

It wasn't one that was like the full...

Within two years of you know, turning 18 or something. Yeah. But. Yeah. What was I going to say? So I decided to do it because it was just 'I didn't have to think about my hair anymore.'

And so I can't imagine. It is always weird where people have these kind of physical features come up that are that become a complex for the person, that they're constantly thinking about. They're nervous about, you know, 'Oh my God, I've got man boobs.' Or this girl thinks she's got lips that are too small or a nose that's too big. I feel like if you go out of your way to have something like a wig that's prosthetic, you're going to be constantly paranoid about how it's sitting.

Yeah, exactly.

And what it looks like and you're going to be thinking about all the time. And I found that was, I tried to get on, I think it was alopecia was the drug when I first found out my hair was falling out.

Alopecia is the disease.

Is that. No. What was it? Maybe it's Propecia. Maybe that's something- Propecia. Alopecia is the hair falling out. You're right. Propecia. And it was like $2 a pill. And so it was like $60, $70 a month to be on this thing that would just stop the hair from falling out any further.

Yeah.

So I had to be on a medication effectively for as long as I wanted to keep my hair. I don't remember there being side effects, but every drug does right.

Yeah, I think it reduces testosterone.

But I was constantly checking my hair.

Yeah,

And I was just-.

Is it working? Is it working?

Yeah, exactly. What do I look like? What does this look like? And so I got to the point where I was just like fucking...

...save $70 and my blood pressure..

Would I- would- yeah. If someone offered to pay me 70 bucks a month, would I shave my head, you know? So it's sort of like, yes, done. And I stopped thinking about it. And the funny thing was, I remember the first time doing it. I had dreadlocks beforehand.

You did. Yeah.

And I remember that was when I found out my hair was falling out because I tried, I got- I'd grown my hair out from my teen years, early twenties. I went to uni, I had friends with dreadlocks and they said, 'We can do your hair once it gets to a certain length.' And they came over to do it and they were like, 'We can't do you fringe.' And I was like, That's weird.

Yeah.

And..

Because there wasn't enough of it.

There wasn't enough of it. And that was when I was like, Huh, okay, my hair's fallen out. Bugger. So anyway, I had the dreads and I just shaved...

It was all the sand in your hair that was causing it.

That was causing it. Yeah. Dreads is so uncomfortable, man. Oh, my God. I remember that how waxy that, because you have to put wax in there constantly, be rubbing them, be constantly preening them, and so much more...

You were surfing at the same time, just filling up your head with- with sand.

They do look cool, but, um, anyway, so I shaved them off and just decided to shave my head to the skin with a razor blade. And I remember thinking, it's one of those things. It's like where you suddenly change your fashion, you know what you like wearing and you go out for the first time and you're like, People are going to stare at me.

Yeah, but it's only you that notices you're different.

Yeah, exactly. No one else knows, no one else has seen you before so they don't have- and so, yeah, I remember walking around outside with a shaved head for the first time thinking 'people are going to look at me and be like, Jesus.'.

And people do look at you.

Yeah.

And these people look at everybody.

...Jesus, this guy looks weird just because you...

That's what you think, oh, they're looking at me because I've got a bald head.

Yeah. So it was funny having that moment. But then within, you know, days you're no longer think about it and everyone suddenly sees you as a person with shaved head and doesn't think about it anymore. But anyway, the person that I met who had one that was my age, or a bit older maybe, but he would have been in his 30s, wears it at jiujitsu. And I remember the entire time that he was there, he would roll in jiujitsu.

Rolling is the act of fighting. So we roll around on the ground wrestling. And I never knew. For two or three years. And then one day he came in with a shaved head and I was like, Evan, we're going to talk about this. Like what? You had a full head of hair yesterday and now you have a clean, shaved head. Did you do like one of these cancer funds or something? Like, do you know someone who's got on chemo? Like what's happened?

And he was like, No, I was bald. I had a wig on. And then showed me a photo of his wig. And I was like, No shit. And you were rolling. And he's like, Yeah, man!

Just good glue.

So I had no idea. And you, you are never closer to anyone than when you're rolling with them in jiujitsu or having sex with them. So.

Well, I reckon having sex with him is probably less close many times.

Well, that's it, right? Yeah. But I've rolled with Evan many, many, many a time. And I had never noticed that he had a a wig. I never grabbed his hair. Because you're not allowed to do that jiujitsu. I think if I'd done that, I probably would have worked it out quickly.

Yes. You would have had more hair in your hand that he had on his head.

But yeah, and it was funny because he just ditched it. And he was like, Oh, it's actually pretty liberating.

Yeah.

And I was like, Yeah, you don't have to think about it anymore, dude. Like, it's just it's it's all gone. It's just. It's a weight off your shoulders now.

Ha ha. Oh, very good.

Yeah. And it is funny, though, how- I guess because it's become so accepted and you see more and more men with shaved heads, it had to get to a threshold. Because I imagine that back in the 80s and 90s, people with shaved heads were associated with neo-Nazis, right? The skinheads. Or maybe Buddhist monks or something like. It was always a some sort of a group that shaved their heads clean.

Yeah.

And then it passes a certain threshold where just randoms are doing it. And you no longer see a shaved head and associate it with a certain group. And so to come full circle, it is funny that our culture hasn't gotten there yet, at least in the, with respect to restaurants, pubs and clubs with face tattoos. And neck tattoos. Because yeah, nowadays when I walk around, I do have an- depending on the tattoos and the kind of person. Like again, if you see a woman, a small, petite woman who's got a face tattoo or a neck tattoo, I'm probably not going to think she's going to murder me. But if I see some big looming dude at night who's got those things in the middle of Melbourne, you know, walking down the street, I'm sort of, you know, my adrenaline shoots up a little more than it would if I met some woman at a farmer's market who had a cow tattooed on his face.

So it is interesting, but it is one of those things where you see it so more so much more frequently now that my assumption isn't scumbag, you know, organised criminal bikie who's, who's going to rob me or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So I wonder- the other interesting thing to talk about here is I wonder how long it's going to take for Japan to go through the same thing because they have a completely different history. Well, it's not completely different, but they have the Yakuza there, right?

Yes.

Who traditionally got their full body tattoos, those Japanese style tattoos that I think a lot of the time were hidden below suits so that you couldn't see them.

Yes, they weren't facial or upper neck.

No. They tended to be...

..stopped at the wrists.

But if people saw them, they would know that you would be associated with the Yakuza or with or the underworld, because there was such a social taboo for getting tattoos. And ironically, it's both Korea and Japan, I think, have those same things. You can't go to places like spas in Korea, at least, I think I don't know what Japan's like, but where if you if you have tattoos, they would just won't won't let you in there because it makes everyone uncomfortable.

And ironically, with Japan, because I think they've had issues, and guys, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I was chatting about this with David Rajaraman recently on on the podcast. He was saying that Japan has laws that say if you have tattoos, you can't get a bank account. Or it might be if you have tattoos and you were associated with the Yakuza, they find out that you're associated with the Yakuza. You can't get bank accounts. But there are these things that it's like, it's interesting that the human rights sort of fall down when the society has a problem with a certain group and they're like, this is the easiest way to...

...deal with that group is..

Yeah. And we've got the recent laws that are being changed, right, for bikie gangs that have allowed police to no longer need, uh, what's it called again?

A warrant?

No. Well, the warrant, but the, um, suspicion. Is it legitimate? What's it called again? What's the phrase? Um, where they. They effectively have a reason to.

To search or...

Search you. Probable cause. Yeah, I think is the thing. Or, you know. Yeah, something like that, where if they pull you over, they can't just be like, get out of the car, open the boot. Show us everything. They would have to probably lean in and be like, I can smell marijuana.

Yes.

Or if they saw a gun or something, they could do it. But apparently now I think because we've got such a big issue in Australia with bikie gangs..

...associations.

If you've been convicted and it's related to bikie gangs, I think for something like a decade afterwards, now they're allowed to just go through your stuff, pull you over at any time, take you into custody or whatever because they're trying to stamp it out.

Yeah, yeah.

But. Yeah. So what do you think? Do you think it'll change with the, the way that we view facial tattoos? Do you think facial tattoos will just die out because every man and his dog is going to have one?

Well, they've become whether it's, they're always a fashion, but I think now it's become a- and I- I'm biased because I actually, I don't dislike tattoos. I just don't see the point. Um, and so I look at. No, well, it's just that. Well, I'll, I've jumped into that pool. I'm going to have to swim to the edge again, don't I? I, I don't like them in a sense that because I don't see the point, and most of them it's- and there are some very nice tattoos, nice in a sense where you look at them and go, That's clever for the artist to have done that. I understand people who are putting tattoos on to make a statement.

Mm hmm.

People who put a tattoo, you know, the the clichéd old love heart and the rose and mum written on it. I'm making, you know, your mum's died. You're- what are you going to do? Going to go out and get a tattoo?

Well, that's the kind of thing that's never going to change, right? You're not going to suddenly wake up...

...put my kids names on my arm.

I hate my kids now. This tattoo gone. But other than the making a statement ones, I look at them and go. If somebody took that drawing and framed it and handed it to you, would you put it on your dining room wall? You'd probably go 'Nah, I'd hang it on the toilet door.' It's- it's nice, but it's not a piece of art that I want to live with for the rest of my life. And the irony is that the people who are wearing it don't. Everybody else has to see it.

Yeah.

Particularly people who have it on their back. Like, why would you ever get a tattoo on your back?

Well, I think it becomes deeper than just.

Yes,

What you can see. Right.

I know. And I understand the background to it and all that sort of thing. But but that's why I don't, and I say I don't, I don't have an objection to tattoos in particular. I just don't understand it. And..

Well, it's funny because I can imagine all of us in another life, and maybe even in this life, could, like me with the plants, find ourselves going down a rabbit hole that leads to us being interested in tattoos.

Yeah.

Because it's just one more. It's just one more hobby, one more interest, one more passion, one more cultural thing that you can go down.

Yeah, exactly.

The rabbit hole.

I understand how people end up getting sucked into the vortex.

But I think that's it, right? Like the- people's passions and interests and hobbies and everything are totally arbitrary. Effective?

Yes, of course they are.

And they're, they're effectively decided by your experiences and the people around you. And, you know, the things that, for whatever reason, you just seem to have this little initial interest in...

... endorphines.

Yeah, yeah. But that's what..

I get a kick out of it and you do it again.

Well, and you probably get peer respect.

Yes.

I remember when I worked at the pizza shop when I was younger, everyone there had a Holden of some kind. A Holden wagon, a Holden sedan, some kind of a Holden.

The poor kid who'd bought the Ford.

Yeah, exactly. And we had that rivalry. Right. But I remember prior to that, I never gave a shit about Holden.

Sort of car, it was. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it was just like I wanted transport. But as soon as I was on a regular basis working with other young men my age, I was suddenly interested in the things they were interested in because I wanted to be part of the group.

Yeah.

Right. And so I think it is funny how it was decided for me that I would become interested in in Holdens.

Yeah.

And Holden cars, and I would, but that would be my first car, would be a Holden VN wagon from the year I was born in 1987. And it was, you know, had a body kit on it, had been re-sprayed and it was- it fell in line with what all the guys at the pizza shop liked, and were interested in, and got peer respect. So I think it's, it's clearly the same thing with tattoos, right? If you grew up somewhere and you never encountered anyone with tattoos, no one interested in them or whatever, you're probably not just going to go out one day and be like, I want to get an image of a rose on my neck.

Either that or are you going to do it deliberately to separate yourself from that...

Oh, my family likes to...

You do it, you do it for the same reason.

...a Holden.

Exactly. You do it for the same reason, but the reverse of it.

Yeah, the inverse reason.

But yeah, so I understand that. But I think getting back to your question of whether I think they will disappear, I don't- they'll never disappear, but I think their prevalence will go. It's a fashion. It goes in cycles.

That's what's interesting, right?

There'll be- because there'll be the counter-reaction.

Yeah, well, I'm already feeling that. That was what I was going to get, too. Sorry to interrupt you, but I've got one tattoo. And I remember I got that. It's an atheist tattoo. It's the Jesus fish with legs and it says Darwin instead of Jesus in the middle of the fish. And that was because I grew up in a family that had some very extreme religious members of the family.

Not direct family.

Not direct family, but so yeah, it was a way of me kind of separating yourself well and overtly but subtly showing that I was part of a certain group that was not their group.

Yes.

So but- but at the time, I think it was that started- it was 2006, 2005. I think it was the end of highs- it would have been after I finished high school. But it was that first year out, me and two mates went and got tattooed and it's the only one that I've ever gotten. I was always interested in getting more, but yeah, I got it recoloured. So I did get it twice, I guess. But I just never could justify spending the money and never could think of anything specific that I wanted that badly on my skin. But I understood that other people did. But yeah. Anyway, the point is that nowadays it'd be hard for me to point out a friend of mine that doesn't have a tattoo. And more tattoos than me.

My wife, Kel, And she's got- I wouldn't even be able to count them, I think maybe four? Like, and this is the other thing, you just forget where they are. You don't even see them anymore.

Exactly.

So she's got like two big ones on her legs and then one on a, one or two on her back, I think one on the back of her neck. Again, associated with her family. Um, but yeah, so the, the point is that it is funny that now my generation, it's like every single person I know effectively has it. My sister and her partner wouldn't have tattoos, I don't think. I don't think Annika does. So there you go. There's two. I can't- I lied. I can name two people in my generation who don't have tattoos. But typically it's probably more common than not, I would imagine, that most people would have done it. But it's gotten to that point where now you see them everywhere, that no- it's no longer a special thing, it's no longer edgy, it's no longer within the limits. It's-.

You don't need them to belong.

No. Exactly.

It's one of those things where it's become such of a norm that it isn't distinguishing a group of people that you feel like you have to identify with those people to see you've got to have a tattoo. It's just sort of. Well, most, not most. I think it's still a lot of people have them. A lot of people don't. So who cares?

Yeah.

And I think-.

Well, that's what's going to be interesting going forward is are people still going to get them at the same rate? Or does it get to a certain a threshold where initially loads do because no one has them, but then it gets to about 50/50 where you see them more often or bad as often as not. And so it's no longer a big deal. And then the only people getting them are the ones who are really in the scene.

Yeah.

They're the ones who end up with the full body completely covered in tattoos.

And the- an example of that I think is facial piercings.

Yeah.

They just seem to have almost disappeared.

Yeah. Uh, you see them...

Yeah. There might be the odd person now who has, like, a nose stud, but the- when was the last time you saw a person who had one facial piercing? Usually if you see somebody with them, they'll have a lot of them because it's become a thing.

That was sort of late 90s and then 2000, right?

And that- and that just- yeah.

Nose ring or the eye-.

Or the eyebrow ring. It just sort of disappeared.

I got that eyebrow piercing.

Yeah.

And that was fucking painful. And it wasn't the piercing that was painful. It was every time you put on or took off a t-shirt.

Yes.

And it caught the damn thing. And I remember taking it out before it had a chance to rip through, because I was speaking to a few people who had them and they were like, pretty much you have to get it re-pierced every single year because it'll just rip out. Because the, for whatever reason, the skin there doesn't form a

Scar.

Calloused kind of scar, whole tube hole for the ring or whatever to sit in the same way that your ear does, or your nose does. So anyway, yeah, I remember having that for about what, six months? Not even. Probably less.

... a few months.

I'm like, Fuck this.

I remember when you, remember when you came out with that and you and your mother went, Oh, no, just. Just let it go. Yeah, let it go. It'll last weeks, not years. Yeah. So, and it wouldn't be that had anything to do with you. It was just he's going to realise that this is a pain in the head literally, and it's going to disappear.

Well, it is tough because you do- I do see a lot of people who go down those rabbit holes really hard. I think too, the older I've gotten, anyone who is, is really going hard with fashion or piercings or tattoos. I'm always like, Why do you care so much about the way that you look?

... 'cause your appearance..

Yeah, like, I mean, and even it's the same with gym junkies, right? Guys who go to the gym way too often and or women who are obsessed with the shape of their boobs or their bum size. You kind of like, look, there's a certain point where you're kind of like, I get that you do it for aesthetic reasons, like, I'll get a tattoo here or piercing there, or I go to the gym a little bit. But if this is the only thing that you ever think about and do-.

Yeah, it, it's, it's just-.

...too much.

People become obsessive.

Yeah.

And, and the obsession takes over. And then it's the- anorexia, as a symbol, a sort of thing of people who are anorexic, don't see themselves as thin, they see themselves as fat. So they are constantly trying to fix a problem that actually doesn't exist.

Well, they're not doing it because they give a shit about anyone else thinking that they're fat or thin, apparently. I was listening- I've been listening to a few interviews with how-.

... they see themselves.

Recently on the- a YouTube channel called Soft White Underbelly. Not for kids.

Yeah.

Check it out. It's people, drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps, gambling addicts, people who have severe problems in their lives. Talking about these stories, how it happened, what their upbringing was like, what do they struggle with on a daily basis? How do they recover from it if they've recovered from it? And there was one anorexic woman talking recently about her problem. And yeah, some of the knowledge bombs that she drops, you're just like shit...

..can they control it.

Yeah. Control and how you see yourself.

Yeah.

But that's that thing of- the guys who go to the gym. And I grew up, I was a sports person and I grew up in a culture of, you know, going to the gym a lot, you know..

It's reverse anorexia, right?

Yeah. And it's that, you know, I- there's plenty of guys that I used to see in the gym all the time who were, you know, 'I'm not big enough. I'm not big enough. I'm not big enough.' And, you know. Yes, you are. You know you- in order now to look normal, you have to stop being ripped. Yeah, you actually have to get slightly fat.

Yeah.

In order to look normal because-

When you chat to a lot of those guys and you'll be like, who are you doing this for? And they'll- first they'll say, me, but then they'll be like, I want other guys to think that I'm big.

Yeah.

And it's the last thing on the list is usually 'I want women to find me attractive'.

No, most women don't find that ultra thing attractive.

I think that blew my mind when I was going to the gym and training hard and trying to get shredded. And I never got massive. I never took steroids. I got huge and like disproportionate for what a man should look like. But there were quite a few women that you would have these discussions with and they'd be like, 'Yeah, no', even though I train and I like jiujitsu, 'I want a sort of chubby guy because I like chubby dudes'. And I remember that being a mind blowing thing where they were like, 'Oh, I just don't find six packs attractive'. And I was just like, 'What? Isn't this a sign of health?' And then you realise it's all in your head. This is what we've- the culture of going to the gym. Weird. Yeah. If you've got huge biceps and a, you know, you can bench press this much, you're a, an amazing man that women are going to love. And then you chat to the average of women and they kind of like 'fuck that'.

Exactly. Yeah.

So yeah it is, it is interesting.

Yeah. So people get obsessed by those sort of things and whether it is behavioural, whether it's, you know, how you look at yourself, whether it's, you like plants, whatever it happens to be, some people will get obsessed by it and go way too far. And I think, yeah, as a society we choose to have views of those things. But mostly it's just fashion changes because it gets tired. And you know, people didn't wear flared jeans for 30 years after the 70s to the early 80s because, not because flared jeans, there wasn't anything inherently wrong with them.

It was just that, well, the world had fled change. But guess what people are wearing now? Flared jeans. And yeah, what happened? Because people didn't like straight jeans anymore. And and it's and like, nobody decided, this is ridiculous. I'm going to go out and make my own jeans.

It's like I..

I like them flared...

It's like an unconscious-.

The fashion industry decided, yeah, that we want to sell something. We can't sell the same old straight leg of jeans for 40 years in a row.

Yeah.

We've got to come up with something new and tell people that this is a cool thing to do. And so I think that the fashions that are not actually being pushed by designers, like having tattoos and things.

Mm hmm.

You know, you don't see tattoo ads on television. You don't see Tattooists coming out and go. Yeah, you'll look cool if you have a tattoo.

Well, I think you probably, you probably don't have big organisations that sell tattoos, right? They're individual stores.

Exactly. So I think that sort of, that general sort of fashion just comes and goes. So hopefully our, yeah, governments will get ahead of this one and say to people that you can't discriminate based on what somebody looks like.

It is one of those things. Like, I'm sort of pessimistic or I think though, unfortunately, like, companies shouldn't be able to, at least, like, consciously be discriminating against people. But I think, unfortunately, human beings discriminate against people. Right. So you you discriminate against people when you decide who you're going to date. Or who you're going to be friends with. Or..

Oh yeah, as individuals.

So yeah, it is. It is.

But when you're sustaining..

Find that balance.

When you are systemically saying this group of people is less than another group of people, that's a different thing. And the interesting thing would be how would the owners of the, an organisation or multiple organisations, who are discriminating against those people react if they had people protesting outside their doors telling people, 'don't go in there, these people discriminate'. They be coming out saying, 'Stop that. It's illegal for you to be telling people who to come in'. It's not. But it's..

The other side of me, though, that libertarian side would say, 'Well, why aren't businesses just taking up the slack' and being like, 'Well, you know what? All these arseholes aren't taking in tattooed people, we'll actively do something showing that we will take it in'.

There will be. I'm sure there will be. Sure. Around the corner from that club, there'll be a pub that just says, 'Don't go to X Y Z. They discriminate against tattoos. We don't care'.

Yeah, that's..

Yeah. Facial tattoo. No one gives a- no one gives a monkey's.

Exactly.

All right. We've been riding on for a bit. Thanks for hanging out, guys. We will chat with you next time. Peace! See ya!