“Nowadays, I think more people outside the service have tattoos than people in the service.” “It used to be a tradition, part of being in the Navy,” said Robert Audiss, 30, a Navy SEAL instructor in San Diego who got his first tattoo at Grimm’s in 1983, two years after he joined up. In the Pentagon, image-conscious Navy officials also frown on the designs. But even in those Navy strongholds, today’s young seamen, with their better technical training and high school educations, seem less likely to want tattoos. In towns such as San Diego and Norfolk, Va.-homes to two of the world’s largest naval bases-tattoo shops still ink crowds of sailors. With the departure of the Navy, the traditional tie between tattoos and sailors in Long Beach has withered. With painstaking care, they etched symbols of love or belief in God and country onto countless sailors waiting to go to battle. From Grimm’s downtown storefront, artists have watched since 1927 as the Navy made its mark on Long Beach, home port to hundreds of ships during World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars.
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