This episode is sponsored by Eternal Ink and Tattoo Smart.

Hi, I'm Andrew Storz, and we're back with another episode of Books Closed,

and I hope you had an enjoyable holiday in a nice new year,

as I did. And I had a few weeks off from the show, but now I'm back. And we've got the whole

second half of season three coming at you starting right now. This week, you're going to hear

a conversation that I had with tattooer Nick Colella, who owns and works at Great Lakes

Tattoo in Chicago. I think this interview is a great example of me getting to meet someone in real

life for the first time and having our very first conversation on film. And you can kind of hear

our comfort level developing as the hour progresses.

And by the end of it, we're probably making more jokes than sense.

I filmed this at the end of the summer, I think.

And it was right as I was really formulating a lot of the topics and ideas that I was having for this entire season.

So you'll hear me rehashing some stuff

with Nick that I've talked about on previous episodes of the season and possibly some teasers

for topics and ideas that are still upcoming the end of season three. So I hope you dig it. This was, I liked this one.

This was a fun one.

I really enjoyed talking to Nick, so I hope you enjoy listening to it just as much.

All right.

So I'm joined now by Nick Colella from Great Lakes Tattoo. What's up with Chicago tattooing in general? You've been in Chicago for a long time.

Yeah, I was born and raised there. I've been tattooing for 25 years. So always in Chicago. I was 19 years at Chicago tattoo. And then Great Lakes has been open for six.

So I've seen some things.

It's weird to say that, like, you know, you're tattooing people and they're having

...