For me, it all started with the Caldwells Street Fair. I was with my daughter and her friends, and a very colorful tattooed man with a strong “Je ne sais quoi” appeal walked by us. But the tween girls, both non-plussed by just about anything, gasped.
“Who is that man?” asked one. “Why does he look like that? Is he a bad guy or a super-hero?”
Truthfully, I too noticed the artistically designed face of the tall man, who also sported tattoos on his arms and hands and I assumed, his entire body. I was not only mesmerized by the sheer courage of anyone walking around suburban New Jersey as a living work of art, but also determined to see how this man - a Picasso meets American Indian meets Vintage Sailor painting on flesh - could possibly be in our midst, and how he came to share his artistic vision via his own body.
It took a few months to track down my local work of art, since he would pop up and somehow disappear along the Avenue. But then, like a vision in ink, he walked into our local coffee shop, and I had the pleasure of meeting Bobby Steele.
Steele grew up in New York, and from an early age was attracted to rebel icons such as Marlon Brando and James Dean. And who can blame him?
“I’m a boy kid from Queens,” he said. “As a kid, I was both quiet and mischievous, but I always had the rebel instinct in me.”
As a young teen, Steele started a club with friends who called themselves the Corona Rumblers, and said in those 1950’s days, there was plenty of racism around, from all corners, aimed at everyone from Irish to Italians to Blacks.
“That name got us into trouble sometimes, since everybody always wanted to fight us,” he added.
But Steele wasn’t really looking for trouble, just a job. Growing up, he had a dream to become something that would one day connect to his longtime career, and even his well designed, connected tattoos.
“I wanted to be a subway engineer, and I was very into model rail roads,” explained Steele.
Though he never did fulfill this dream, he did use his abstract and creative talents throughout his entire career, and in all of his full-body tattoo designs.
He landed his first job in New York, working for Fairchild Publishing, and used his experience working in production to help him in his longtime career - on Wall Street.
“I didn’t graduate high school,” said Steele. “I dropped out to become a president on Wall Street - that’s what happened.”
After landing a job on Wall Street, now with a wife and kids, Steele decided to get ahead . These were heady times, both on Wall Street and all around the world. Think Wolf of Wall Street world, or Gordon Gekko world, although Steele never rose to that
surreal position of power and abuse. Instead, he grew steadily in his first job, and eventually jumped to a friend’s business and after a few years became a Vice President.
“I started on Wall Street at $90 a week as a margin clerk,” he said.”A few years later, I was Vice President of the whole firm.”
All along, he said, he had been enamored of tattoos, and the historic tales of seamen roaming the ocean, sometimes never to return home. TAttoos were a badge of honor and courage to these men of the sea, and after a trip to Atlantic City, Steele came home with his first well planned tattoo.
“I got an old-time sailing ship on my left arm,” he said. “Unlike other people, I didn’t hem and haw about it. When picking out first tattoo I wanted, and the art I liked, I had already picked out 2, 3, and 4 more tattoos before I got my first. I went back for my second in Long Island about 2 months later, an old time sailing tattoo of mermaids.”
Fully embracing his love for tattoos, he eventually chose over 1700 designs for his skin. But on Wall Street, his hands and face had to be clear of all markings, so Steele spent years hiding his tattoos from the general public while on the job.
Once he left Wall Street,though, all bets were off, and he added tribal and symmetrical designs to his fingers, hands, forearms, and face. His inspiration, besides the icons of rebelliousness such as Brando and Dean, is the tattooed man called the “Man of Coney Island”, Michael Wilson. Steele wanted to cover not just his torso and legs and arms, but also every inch of his body if possible.
When asked what hurt the most, he laughed.
“The worst places were the sides of stomach but my nose was the worst.” he noted. “The nose is very sensitive.”
As to the reaction of people. like anything else in life, it often comes down to location.
“I got tossed out of a bar last year, when the bouncer said “We don’t serve people with tattooed faces”, said Steele. “In Caldwell, I was in the supermarket (Jacks) buying salami and next thing I know 4 policemen said they wanted to talk to me. They looked at my hand, asked for my license, and when I asked if I had done anything wrong, they said no. So, I did not give them my license, and they were okay. A woman in the store had called them. And at the Caldwell Diner I was asked to leave because of my tattoos.”
But many people not only enjoy this tattooed man’s designs but also embrace them.
“Everybody at the Clover Leaf is very nice and friendly,” said Steele. “There are a lot of girls who like my tattoos too. But I gave up all hope of going back to Wall Street in 2010 - those days are gone.
What struck Steele about Wall Street after he left, he said, was the corporate greed, and with Occupy Wall Street up and coming, he decided to participate during the protests at Zuccheti Park in New York.
“I felt like I had to be accountable for everything I did, just by working on Wall Street,” explained Steele.”With all these people like John Corzine and others just taking, and not going to jail. The thing I learned when I was on Wall Street is that this is customer’s money - and I learned you always keep that separate from the firm’s money.”
Surprisingly, the protesters at Occupy Wall Street did not appreciate the attention Steele was getting from national press, and approached him with their demands to edit his signs. Even at Occupy Wall Street, Bobby Steele was an outlaw.
“I wasn’t part of their message and they wanted me to adjust my signs,” said Steele.”Occupy Wall Street was a big accomplishment. The movement is known world wide.”
A fan of Du-Whop, Country music, and designing his own colorful clothing that usually compliments his intricately designed tattoos, Steele is proud of his canvas, which just happens to be his entire body.
Looking at the dazzling tattoo designs that seem to swirl and dance around this soft-spoken man, who managed to create a balanced body of work that covers his skin like a constellation of little lines and shapes, I had to ask: Is he done yet?
“No, I am still working on it,” he said, smiling. “I want to add to my left hand; and redo the star on wrist.”
And the cost of all this art work tattooed on his body?
“It was over $50,000,” he noted. “But it was worth it - like a political statement or proof of my freedom of speech.”
Art is a funny thing, especially when it arrives on someone’s face. As I spoke to Steele, I started to see beneath his tattoos, and it was as if every line, shape and symmetrical design melted away, revealing the man within - a patriotic American with a deep belief in freedom of expression and the power of one person’s voice to change the world - through art.
Back to the local girl’s question when we first spied Bobby Steele: as in all creative projects, even ones done on skin, the answer is ever changing.
Bobby Steele may just be a little bit outlaw and, as the wise girls pointed out as they marveled at him, a little bit modern day super-hero.
But what he is not? If you take the time to say hello, he is not scary.
