The Iconography of Manhattan Island . . . And Certain Parts Of Brooklyn

Just when you think New York City couldn’t possibly get any more fetishized, someone tattoos the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building on their bicep:

Last week, Manushka Montemuino became the proud owner of what could be the first-ever brownstone tat, a six-inch black-ink rendering of the century-old Henry Street building she calls home.

The brownstone image — pedestals, cornices, wrought-iron-fence and all — nestles on her right scapula, between a larger tattoo of a red rose and one of a ghostly angel . . .

. . .

“New York City tattoos [are] a total grab bag of cross-cultural and pan-national references,” [“New York City Tattoo: The Oral History of an Urban Art” author Mike McCabe] said. “After 9-11, the World Trade Center was very popular. The Katz’s deli sign is popular, the Empire State building, the Staten Island Ferry. The brownstone is a new one.”

. . .

Montemuino’s rite of urban passage took place on a recent Friday at Brooklyn Tattoo, a popular ink shop on Atlantic Avenue near Hicks Street.

The shop’s owner, Adam Gould, said Montemuino was the first customer who asked for a tattoo of a brownstone — but the homegrown tattoo artist believes that she won’t be the last.

Indeed, he has already reserved a piece of his forearm for a rendering of the Carroll Gardens brownstone where he grew up.

The Tompkins Place house will nestle between an image of a Japanese bat and a banner of his nom de plume, “Suerte,” which he picked up working at a tattoo parlor in Manhattan, where “a lot of the kids didn’t trust a [tattoo artist] with a Jewish last name,” he said.

“When you draw something on your skin, it becomes part of the timeline of your life. In that way, it makes sense to tattoo a piece of the town you love on yourself,” said Gould, whose calf is emblazoned with a drawing of a subway station that resembles the F stop at Carroll Street that Gould has used since he was a kid.

Gould, a 37-year-old bachelor with wild, hard-rock hair, is reluctant to call Brooklyn-centric tattoos trendy.

“We aren’t talking about a 718 T-shirt here,” he said.

But even he admits that the number of people running around with the image of the Cyclone, the Brooklyn Bridge or the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building on their biceps is rising right along with the cachet of the borough itself.

“I’ve been doing a lot Williamsburgh Bank clock towers recently,” he said. “I’ve done the word ‘Brooklyn’ on backs, hands, stomachs, the neck of a kid from Park Slope. I tried to talk that kid out of it, but he was adamant. He had a huge sense of Brooklyn pride that transcended mine.”