March 14th, 1998: Snapcase, Boy Sets Fire, Chalkline, Holdstrong @ IQ Records, Erie, PA

My old friend Kelly Shaw was planning on getting tattooed by Mike Ski. This is right around the time he started tattooing. This show gave her a good excuse to head up to Erie, so she invited Drew Thiemann and myself along and we made a road trip out of it. Upon picking me up Kelly informed me that she'd pay for me to get my first tattoo as a belated birthday gift. I remember stopping at some college somewhere between Pittsburgh and Erie to meet up with the Chalkline kids on the way up. We hung out for an hour or so and then headed up to Erie. We must have gotten food or something before the show because we got there a bit late and missed all of Holdstrong and most of Chalkline, which was fine by me. Boy Sets Fire and Snapcase were both solid but what impressed me most about the show was the venue itself. It wasn't too far off from something like Champion Ship in Pennsylvania. You first walked into this small record store and then through some doors to a really nice sized venue with a stage and a big PA system. I'd never seen anything like it before and thought it was so cool that they had a record store and venue in the same building. Every town should have something like that.

After the show we headed back to Mike's house and I'm pretty sure he ended up tattooing Kelly that night. He did mine the next day, and while it was my first tattoo so I had no prior experience, he must have had a pretty heavy hand at the time because nothing I've had done since has hurt nearly as badly during or afterwards. It's not the best tattoo ever, but everyone has their first, and Mike talked me into some better ideas than the one I originally had so it could have been much worse.