HANNAN IS right. Few Massachusetts businesses are regulated the way tattooing is now. When the state’s 38-year-long ban was finally lifted in October 2000, thanks to a ruling by the State Superior Court, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health issued general guidelines on the industry and left regulation of tattoo parlors up to each of the state’s 351 municipalities, which has led to inconsistency across city and town lines. Take the 66-square-mile region of Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville. Boston and Somerville have restricted tattooing to industrial areas, while Cambridge and Brookline allow tattooists to do business in commercially zoned districts. Communities such as Quincy and Springfield have allowed tattoo parlors to open in commercial zones since February without incident.

Hannan sees Boston’s zoning restriction as an " over-regulation " of businesses that, like hair and nail salons and barber shops, should come under the purview of health boards alone (see " So You Want To Open a Tattoo Parlor? " , page 24). " Health and safety should be the only concerns, " he says. " Improperly performed, getting your nails done can be dangerous. Tattooing is no different from any other beautification. "

But the BRA, which amended the zoning regulations, seems to believe that the long absence of tattooing in Boston makes it quite a different business from, say, hairdressing. Requiring those who want to open tattoo parlors in Boston to get a conditional-use permit from the ZBA — which means the board can attach conditions such as where trash barrels must be stored and how late the shop can stay open — is not an attempt to keep tattoo parlors out of neighborhoods, stresses Elsbree. " Neighborhoods were apprehensive, since tattooing had been outlawed for so long, " she says. " We use zoning to protect communities. "

Protect them against what, exactly?

" There are a lot of misconceptions about tattooing, " she explains. " The requirement for conditional-use permits is a way to let people know these places are coming in, a way to let them know where they are going to be so they can be set up in a proper manner. We want to ease them in. It is a balancing act, and I think this is the right balance. "

In other words, if the applicants can convince the neighborhood that they are okay and garner support — as Hannan and Houlne did — they will probably get the permit. Probably. If the neighbors say " Not in my back yard, " it’s unlikely that the ZBA will override their opposition. This kind of local control, some say, is a fair way to allow Boston’s neighborhoods the right to decide who does business there. On the other hand, it is a regulation seemingly tailor-made to allow prejudices and close-mindedness to dictate whether tattooing — which was, after all, legalized under free-speech provisions — will ever gain the acceptance here that it enjoys in much of the rest of the country.

" There are 22 wards in the city, all with different views of what they find acceptable, " says Joseph Feaster, acting chair of the seven-member ZBA. " A request for a permit for [a parlor in] a basement apartment in Allston, for instance, has a nil to zero chance of being approved. The views of the community are taken into account. "

But the contrast between the skittishness of some municipalities and the pop-culture prevalence of tattoos indicates a schism that may be rooted in Boston’s famous puritanism and resistance to change. After all, we’ve reached the point at which entertainers like Cher and sports figures like Dennis Rodman casually sport tattoos — and even a rose on the ankle of a grandmother would raise few eyebrows.

EXCEPT, PERHAPS, in Somerville.

This blue-collar city, in recent years, has seen an influx of young professionals, many priced out of Cambridge after the demise of rent control. This has sent Somerville’s own real-estate prices soaring, and has brought a wave of trendy restaurants, cafés, and shops in Davis and Union Squares. But an old-guard attitude toward tattooing prevails. Before even one application for a tattoo parlor was filed at City Hall, Somerville officials took the bold step of restricting tattoo establishments: on July 12, the Board of Aldermen unanimously endorsed a measure to restrict body-art establishments to two industrial zones. One is Inner Belt Road, a rambling sprawl of businesses far from the foot traffic of the city’s squares, where UPS trucks rumble to and from the company’s shipping warehouse. The others are in the Boynton Yards area outside Union Square, patches of Somerville Avenue, and sections of the site of the former Somerville Lumber off Route 93. The move effectively outlawed body art from commercial districts like Davis and Union Squares. The board also took the unusual step of amending the tattoo zoning ordinance so that tattoo parlors cannot be situated within 500 feet of an adult-entertainment business — which would make it difficult for a tattoo parlor to open along Mystic Avenue, a business district in East Somerville where one adult bookstore is already situated.

" Tattoo parlors are not the image we want to project, " says Alderman Bill Roche, who represents East Somerville, where the industrial zones are located. " Somerville has turned a corner; we have a reputation now as an up-and-coming city. We want to maintain that, and I’m not sure if we can with tattoo parlors scattered around our squares. "

Concern for the interests of residents motivated Somerville’s zoning efforts, says at-large alderman Bill White, who sponsored the " 500 feet " amendment. " Somerville is a densely populated city with a lot of residential neighborhoods, " he notes. " Residents felt it was not appropriate to locate tattoo parlors here. I think it is a generational thing. Kids in their 20s with tattoos may look at it differently when they are in their 40s or 50s. Tattoos make older people think of sailors in Scollay Square and punk kids. "

But Hannan, a Cambridge native who studied painting and sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and who commands $100 an hour for his custom work (he commutes to Rhode Island, where tattooing is legal), simply shakes his head when he hears old-timers invoking drunken sailors and Boston’s old burlesque area. " Because tattooing was underground here for so long, Massachusetts is way behind the curve, " he says. " To talk about modern tattooing in terms of Scollay Square is as absurd as saying that going to the dentist today is like going to the dentist in 1965, when you were probably lucky if they used a bucket and soap. "

Nevertheless, Somerville mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay supports the board’s decision, says her spokesperson, Sean Fitzgerald. " This practice was banned for 50 years [sic], " he says. " However unfair that might have been, we can’t just allow it without regulations. It has to be properly regulated by zoning. Somerville is unique. We don’t have a downtown. We have squares clustered with residences, and there was apprehension in the neighborhoods. The most desirable area [for tattoo parlors] was Inner Belt Road. "

Tattooists disagree. " Who wants to open in an industrial area? It’s unsafe, " says one tattooist, who’s worried that publishing his name could affect his application for a special permit still pending before the Boston ZBA. " There’s no foot traffic, and all the problems associated with tattoo parlors in the ’60s will happen, because there will be no inspections and no scrutiny. We’ve worked so hard to bring tattooing aboveground, and they are shoving us into the dark alleys. "

But Roche doesn’t think that putting tattoo parlors in industrially zoned areas is bad for the businesses or their customers. " Safety isn’t a concern, " he says. " We don’t have robberies there. The places we’ve set aside are no less desirable, they’re just more industrial. Some [tattooists] won’t be able to afford the real estate there; it’s very expensive. Personally, for me, I don’t want tattoo places in my neighborhood. There are three elementary schools there, a church, and kids walking back and forth. The image we want to see isn’t body piercing and tattoo parlors. I’d rather it be a coffee shop or something like that. "

It’s the tattooed-people-are-bad-for-kids idea that outrages body-ink aficionados like Eileen Forristall, who owns a hair salon in Somerville’s Teele Square. When tattooing became legal in the state last year, Forristall toyed with the idea of inviting a tattoo artist to share her salon space. But she quickly realized that the idea would probably never win zoning approval. Given the public remarks of officials and the negative editorial comment published in the weekly Somerville Journal, Forristall knew that the depth of resistance was too great.

Take the editorial cartoon that ran in the April 26 Journal. It depicts a garbage truck with tattoo and sleaze trucking on its side. A man on the sidewalk points his finger to his right. The caption reads, " Oh, you want East Somerville. That’s at the other end of Broadway. " For Forristall, equating tattooing with sleaze evinces a prejudice that would not be tolerated if directed at any other group.

The city is " worried about a stigma that doesn’t exist anymore, " says Forristall, who grew up in Somerville. " The politicians and the newspaper have portrayed tattooing and people with tattoos as sleazy and cheap. Well, I’m neither. But if tattooing is pushed to out-of-the-way places, out of sight, that’s asking for trouble. Then it will become cheap and sleazy. "

Hannan, too, is annoyed by blatant hostility toward people with tattoos, but says, " It’s still better than [tattooing] being illegal. For anybody to think that someone with a tattoo is any different from someone without a tattoo is absurd.... I’m a father and I have tattoos. I’m going to be a senior citizen someday and I will still have these tattoos. "