Right now, on Queen West, a man is getting a Rob Ford tattoo. Not just a Rob Ford tattoo, but a tattoo of Rob Ford smoking a crack pipe, lips pursed around the mouthpiece like a bulbous Gandalf.
“He’s entertaining,” says Keven, 32, stretched out on a table at Forever Young Ink near Queen and Bathurst. “He’s an honest guy. He’s Toronto’s Chris Farley.”
The piece, about 25 by 15 centimetres, is being zapped into Keven’s left upper thigh, right next to a traditional-styled panther head tattoo. He also has tattoos of Johnny Cash and Lemmy from Motörhead, joking that he’s giving Rob Ford the “rock-star treatment” (har-har).
Though it’s easy to assume that something like this may be (very) deeply ironic, Keven seems sincere about his support for Ford. He voted for Ford in 2010. And he’d vote for him again. “Ford more years!” he exclaims.
Keven doesn’t hail from the heart of Ford Nation (“I’m not from Etobicoke or wherever”), but he’s fluent in the rhetoric. “Everything he says, he gets it done,” he says. “I don’t care about the crack stuff. He’s a regular guy. He goes to work in a suit and tie and looks uncomfortable wearing it. He drives himself home from work and gets fast food, like any other regular person.”
As for the artist, he’s unruffled. And seems to relish people circling in to look at his work. “I laughed,” says FYI’s Scoot Mason, rubbing the excess ink off Keven’s thigh. “It’s what the client wants.”
The tattoo is expected to take about five hours of total needle-on-skin time – Keven intends to get it done in a single sit. The result, like the legacy of Ford’s mayoralty, will be around a lot longer. A lifetime. At least.
