Sick of "tramp stamps"? Head to Helena! Montana's landlocked capital city has one listed tattoo parlor to serve its 25,780 residents, 14 percent of whom are over age 65. The mountain city also has a larger female population, who tend to have slightly fewer tattoos than men, according to the Harris Interactive poll.
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No. 2: Anchorage, Alaska
As a top skin city, Anchorage is rife with great tattoo "canvases" ... but it looks like the artists here might be in for disappointment. With about six tattoo shops in the immediate area, Anchorage averages only two tattoo shops per 100,000 people. On the bright side (for tattoo fans), its relatively low senior population (5.5 percent), proximity to more tattoo shops within an hour's drive, status as a tourist destination and home to two military bases increases the chances that tattoos might be more popular here than the numbers show.
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No. 1: Salina, Kan.
While the city of Olathe has the lowest ratio of tattoo parlors vs. residents in Kansas, its close proximity to Kansas City, considered very "tattoo-friendly" with at least 53 listed parlors (that's about 11 per 100,000 people), makes it more likely to sport visible ink; hence, our No. 1 spot falls to the pretty-sounding family town of Salina, recently elected by Business Week magazine as the "best place in Kansas to raise your kids." With only one listed tattoo parlor for 46,140 people (that equates to about two per 100,000 people), Salina is also several hours by car from both Kansas City and Wichita, making it less convenient for Salina residents to get inked.
Think tattoos are sexy ... or sleazy? Well, to hear men's magazines and tabloid fodder (cough, Sandra Bullock) tell it, you'd think tattoos were part of a magical formula for an instant hook-up. About half of the women on "Maxim's" Hot 100 and "Playboy's" Top 25 Sexiest lists are inked (think Megan Fox, Angelina Jolie, Katy Perry and Jessica Alba). Even Miley Cyrus and big-screen sweetheart Reese Witherspoon have reportedly boarded the tattoo train -- contributing to the trend's rise in popularity since the '70s. That said, there are still quite a few places in the U.S. where tattoos have yet to shed their stigma.
And as of 2008, approximately 14 percent of the country's adults had at least one tattoo, according to a Harris Interactive poll, with the least tattooed people being above age 65 and living in the East and Midwest regions, according to a 2003 Harris Interactive poll. In 2006, a Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology study found that nearly 75 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 50 were not tattooed. And while the Harris poll, which was based on survey responses by more than 2,000 Americans, reported that people with tattoos thought they were "sexy," "rebellious," "attractive" and "spiritual," those without ink said that tattoos seemed "rebellious," less "sexy" or "attractive," less "spiritual," and less "healthy." (Ouch.)
To find out which towns in America might dare to dock Scarlett Johansson's sexy meter for her big forearm tattoo, we went through every state in several public directories, including Yellow Pages, Google listings, Tattoo Yellow Pages and AAA Tattoo Directory, to narrow down the states with the fewest listed tattoo parlors. Then we looked up which cities in those states had the fewest listed tattoo parlors per capita with populations based on the latest U.S. Census numbers. We also took into consideration the city's demographics, its proximity to youth-populated urban centers, and the fact that not all tattoo parlors were listed. See which cities made the list, and let us know if you think we left a good one out!
