Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at a tattoo parlor in Brooklyn that offered original designs of Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl at a discounted rate.
Ion Sokhos drove from Boston to get a Flaco tattoo on Thursday.Credit…Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times
Duke Riley, the owner of East River Tattoo in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, had always been obsessed with birds in the urban landscape and closely followed the story of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl.
He never did get to see Flaco in person but had still been saddened when the owl died in February, he said.
Now, more than a dozen people have new tattoos of Flaco — whose escape from the Central Park Zoo and life on the loose enthralled New Yorkers — after Riley’s tattoo parlor offered original designs of the owl at a discounted rate on Thursday.
“I just wanted to give people an opportunity to sort of commemorate his life,” Riley said.
The tattoos are just one example of Flaco’s legacy. Fans have created T-shirts, mugs and other merchandise. Legislation that had been introduced in Albany that would require bird-friendly material to be used in more buildings in New York State was renamed the FLACO Act — “Feathered Lives Also Count.” The New York City Council introduced a bill that would deploy contraceptives to rodents in place of rat poison, in the hopes of shrinking the rat population and protecting wildlife, like Flaco, from being poisoned.
