Chicago tattoo parlors let chance (and a gumball machine) choose your design

Any kid knows the anticipation of putting a coin in a gumball machine and waiting to see which color gumball comes out. There’s a certain suspenseful thrill as you wait to see: Will it be red? Purple? White? Blue?

Some tattoo shops have embraced a similar idea. Only the game of chance in these cases dictates which designs ended up being permanently etched onto a person’s skin.

At some Chicago tattoo shops, customers who don’t mind a little uncertainty with their tattoo experience can choose a “get what you get” deal. They pay a flat fee, usually from $50 to $180, depending on the shop and the size of design.

Tattoo designs, usually in a traditional style, are drawn on scraps of paper and put into plastic containers inside a gumball machine. Customers twist the crank and wait. Then, it’s up to gumball machines and fate to dispense the soon-permanent design.

“It takes a lot of the thinking out of it,” says Brad Rearden, owner of Taylor Street Tattoo, an early adopter of the concept.

After being developed in Chicago, the “get what you get” gumball machine has spread to tattoo parlors across the country.

In his early days of tattooing in Bridgeport more than a decade ago, artist Richard Bohnsak and his amateur tattoo-artist friends practiced on each other, not worrying much about what went on their bodies.

It became a game. They’d hold two designs behind their backs and have someone pick a hand to decide what the tattoo would be. Or one person would give designs numbers and have another choose a number.

Bohnsak thought: What about making the choice with a gumball machine?

“It’s brought a lot of fun and laughs,” says Bohnsak, who’s known as Ricky Bird in the tattoo world and now lives in Florida.

By 2012, Bohnsak was working at Taylor Street Tattoo on the Near West Side, and he pitched the idea. It took years after installing a gumball machine and advertising “get what you get” tattoos until it caught traction.

It was around 2016 that people started to come in seeking out a “get what you get” tattoo after Bohnsak started posting the deal on Instagram.

A viral TikTok video shows Brown Brothers Tattoo in Humboldt Park and its “get what you get” gumball machine. The woman in the video got a tattoo of a spider after the design came out of the machine.

“It’s a fun, spontaneous way to patronize tattoo shops without the overemphasis on emotion and meaning,” Brown Brothers co-owner Marshall Brown says.

Crystal McHenry, who lives in Humboldt Park, came to Brown Brothers after seeing the deal on TikTok to get two random tattoos from the machine. She ended up getting a panther with a sword through its head and a cross with a banner. She got to choose the text in the banner and decided on the nickname of her late aunt, “Nick.”

“At first, I was, like, ‘What is that? A panther with a sword?’ ” McHenry, 40, says.

But she says she figured, “OK, whatever, that’s what I came for, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

Thor Whitworth, who was visiting Chicago from Minneapolis last month, stopped at Brown Brothers with his girlfriend Latifah Warner to commemorate their trip. They wanted “something that’s sentimental in its own way,” he says.

“My reaction was ‘I cannot wait,’ ” Whitworth, 32, says of seeing his tattoo would be of a whale. “It’s great for those of us who have a tattoo, I don’t really want all of them to have some sort of meaning.”

Warner’s chance design was of a lion. Whitworth says the two animals fit their personalities despite being randomly selected.

Not everyone is as excited about the designs they get, but most people who opt for this know what the deal is, Brown and Rearden say.

“It’s like gambling: You don’t go to a casino and ask for your money back,” says Rearden, who says he knows of only one customer who was disappointed and refused the design.

As a backup at Brown Brothers, $20 can buy you second crank on the gumball machine if you can’t bear the thought of actually seeing the chance-selected design permanently tattooed on your body.