No, Sir, Your Salvador Dali Tattoo Does Not Impress Me

In Nashville, there is a burrito place I like to visit. This is because they have the best burritos a person could ever imagine. It is like someone took Chipotle, then decided to make it roughly 80% better. Then they added Horchata at the beverage station, effectively creating the greatest restaurant ever.

The restaurant must be great for me to love it despite the influx of hipsters, hipsterdom, and all of the terribleness that comes with hipsters. The clientele that usually stands before me and my barbacoa is a sea of irony wrapped in a faux caustic wit. I have seen teenage girls, their blue streaked blonde hair hanging over a strategically worn Wu-Tang clan shirt. There have been young men in thrift store suits, their pants falling two inches short of reaching their shoes. Of course no one would notice this, though, as they were sure to be distracted by the thick coating of pomade applied so delicately to the nicely slicked down hair. Then there are the skinny jeans. Oh so many skinny jeans.

As I sat down to my burrito, chips, and half pineapple- half spicy salsa, I saw the king of hipsters. He wondered from the counter, a feather in his fedora. He wore a scarf despite the fact that it was warm enough for a thin t-shirt outside. His arms had become a showcase for random tattoos. Amongst the skulls and a bizarre picture of Frankenstein was a portrait of famed surreal artist Salvador Dali. His face had been permanently etched on the man’s left bicep, his weird pointy moustache wrapping around the man’s thin arm.

I know that Salvador Dali is considered a great artist, but this seemed like an odd choice to me. I mean, he certainly is not considered the greatest artist of all time. That would be like me wanting a tattoo of a great baseball player, but instead of choosing Willie Mays or Babe Ruth or Nolan Ryan, I decided to tattoo Bill Mazeroski on my arm.

Maybe he really loves Salvador Dali. “The Persistence of Memory”  and “The Face of War” are interesting. “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening” wins the award for title of a painting that sounds most like a very bad Mad Lib. I guess I could understand someone having that great of an appreciation for Dali. If that were the case, though, I doubt he would be held in the same esteem as Frankenstein on the man’s right bicep.

Call me cynical, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the tattoo has less to do with a love of Dali’s art and more to do with the fact that Salvador Dali was a polarizing art figure and choosing to tattoo a polarizing art figure is a very different thing that many people would not do. Plus he had a very strange mustache and hipsters do love their mustaches.

When people like this wander into my favorite burrito place, I get the feeling I do not belong there. I have no tattoo and no feathered fedora. None of my clothing is “ironic.” I started briefly thinking that maybe I should find a new burrito place and leave this for the tattooed Salvador Dali fans of the world. Then I had a realization.

Tattoos may be forever, but the memory of that burrito is also forever AND it was delicious. No tattooed hipsters will run me off from my barbacoa, especially if it comes paired with Horchata. That is my solemn promise.