Tattooers Take Stab at Cleaning Up Image : Trends: Artists are making better impressions on customers, and not just on their skin.

The reasons people get tattooed are profound and simple, but not the issue here. The fact is, they do, and they pay well for the privilege.

That is old news, as is the second-class image suffered by the tattooed because so many of their forebears in personal decoration were bikers, hookers and drunken sailors. But there are changes in this eccentric little industry, one that is attempting to adapt to modern business practice as much as it is rough around the edges.

“It’s a business like any other business,” says Larry Romano, a 43-year-old practitioner of body art who says his is the largest chain of tattoo shops in the country. “You only do as well as you run it.”

The challenge for the forward thinkers in an industry that has moved to the edge of respectability is to persuade its untidy members that there is reason to clean up their acts.

Joe Kaplan, for example, is president of Empire State Tattoo Club of America, one of the groups trying to spruce up both the players and the image. Kaplan, who has welcomed his offspring into the business, runs Big Joe & Sons Tattooing in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

“I ride a bike,” Kaplan says. “I’ve been riding forever. But you don’t see my bike parked in the middle of the shop. Yeah, years ago, maybe, but times have changed. Either you have rolled with the times or you’re in serious trouble.”

Tattooing is in the awkward adolescence of transition. It still appeals to the macho and the indignant. Yet it also entices a new audience of blue, pink and white collars that may not show off the tattoos, but has them nonetheless.

“It has definitely changed as far as that,” says Romano, who owns Peter Tat-2 in West Hempstead, three others on Long Island and more around the country. “If you went into a studio and met a man wearing dirty clothes, with a cigar, a wallet on a chain, you’d be reluctant just the same as if you went to the doctor’s office and got a grubby doctor.”

Another change, which goes hand in hand with the evolving clientele, is in the stylings of the tattoos themselves. Many tattooers now can put sophisticated designs on the skin, including the increasingly popular scenes of one’s life. Some do cosmetic applications, which range from permanent eyebrows to post-mastectomy nipples.

“People don’t want to be marked up any more,” Kaplan says. “They want art. Years ago they were satisfied with a mark, a skunk, a devil, a little Casper the ghost, an American flag, know what I’m saying? We’ve taken the tattoo to art. We’re talking about something you would put on a canvas and be happy with it hanging on the wall, except it’s on your arm, your back, your butt, your chest.”

At Peter Tat-2, hundreds of designs hang on the walls like the offerings in a shirt shop. These look like needlepoint, which, of course, they are.

The possibilities are limited only by the imaginations of the artist and the recipient. Flipping through a photo album, Romano’s son Frank, 23, proudly shows off what can be done. The traditional tough stuff--motorcycles, nudes, snakes and skulls--is supplemented by a colorful array of softer designs.

“Ten years ago,” he says, “if you asked for a portrait of your wife, you’d be laughed at. Today, we say, ‘From what angle?’ ” One page shows an upper arm on which a customer carries with him his wife and children.

“Back in the ‘60s,” says Larry Romano, “panthers were big, roses were big, eagles were big. ‘Death Before Dishonor’ was also big. Now we’re into tribalism, into Oriental-style tattoos, large floral work, some of the Frazetta drawings. The American public is becoming more art-oriented than it was in the ‘60s.”

That tattoos are not for everybody, and that some even find them revolting, gets a shrug from Frank Romano, who got his first tattoo, a lioness attacking a zebra, on his chest at 18. He likely is on his way to full coverage, which his father already has achieved.

It is their belief that the public mood is changing. Statistics are unavailable, but tattooers suggest that more than 30% of Americans have a tattoo. No occupations are excluded. It is said that half are female.

“We’re breaking away the stereotype that every woman who has a tattoo is not a lady,” Frank Romano says. “My grandmother got her first tattoo at 73 years old. Eyeliner, and three roses over her heart. She finally said, ‘Who cares what people think? I want it.’ ”

Recognizing that times are changing, tattooers have started to behave like others who work on bodies: going to conventions and seminars, studying with masters.

There are no formal standards. Local health departments monitor tattoo shops, although some places are still as shabby as the stereotype. Larry Romano remembers one tattooer “who had a high-tide line in his rinse glass. That definitely turned me off.”

Those in the industry say there is absolutely no danger of AIDS or hepatitis in a clean shop.

Likewise, Kaplan makes no excuses for sleazy operators and says that clients should patronize only shops that sterilize their instruments, use disposable needles and ink capsules, wear rubber gloves and are clean.

Tattoo shops are illegal in many cities and states, which means only that the work is done underground. Other than seminars, conferences and apprenticeships, there is no formal instruction. Tattoo artists learn from one another and are only as good as their skills and their teacher. Because one tattooer is great doesn’t mean the shop is.

“An unsuspecting person can really get knocked,” Kaplan says. “People around the business, people that get tattooed, people that give tattoos, they know where to go. It’s not the size of the ad in the Yellow Pages; it’s the quality of the work.”

He recommends that those who want a tattoo examine photographs of a tattooer’s work--and the work itself. Anyone can hang up photographs of “real fine, primo work,” but doing it is another matter.

“You must already be an artist,” says Larry Romano, who also teaches some common business sense. “I’m teaching all different aspects of the business: sterilization, basic tattooing equipment, the procedure before getting tattooed, the ability to speak with people and project your artwork verbally to them. Basically, your art is what you’re selling to people.”

The artist, he believes, must be professional and a salesman and he has no use for “somebody coming out and saying, ‘Whaddaya want?’ ”

Tattooing is new enough in the arena of legitimate business that operators still are wary of discussing numbers, though it is said that a good operator can make $30,000 to $50,000 or more a year. A small tattoo starts at $30 or $40. Big ones can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The sky’s the limit for full-body work.

It is believed in tattoo circles that the first tattoo is just that, the first, and that there is an addictive quality about body art, which, if true, gives tattooers a kind of security others in business dream of.

“This is classic,” Frank Romano says. “On the way out, people say, ‘Nice meeting you. I’m only getting this one.’

“I say, ‘Sure.’ ”