Some tattooed people are easier to read than others. When Richard Costello tried to sell stolen motorcycle parts on eBay earlier this year, he put the items on the floor and photographed them, though the photos also included his bare feet, with the word “White” tattooed on one and “Trash” on the other. The bike’s lawful owner did a Web search, found what appeared to be the stolen parts, and notified the Clearwater, Florida, police department. Since jail records typically include identifying marks, it didn’t take long for local detectives to identify Costello and set up a sting. He was arrested after showing up with a van full of stolen parts and is now facing trial. While incarceration isn’t always damaging to a criminal’s reputation—it shows a fellow’s out there trying, after all—he’s already known in every bike shop and beer joint on the west coast of Florida as the idiot who put photos of his tattooed feet on the Web so the police could nab him. According to Sergeant Greg Stewart, Costello “just tiptoed his way back to jail.”

L’Affaire White Trash confirmed just about everything that I thought about tattoos until recently; namely, that in addition to being nasty and unsanitary, tattoos only grace the skins of either bottom feeders or those who want to pretend they are. Richard Costello’s phenomenal act of self-betrayal wouldn’t have been a surprise at all to modernist architect Adolph Loos, whose influential 1908 essay “Ornament and Crime” is still cited today as a potent argument against frills and fancy stuff. Loos wrote in effect a manifesto opposing decoration, which he saw as a mark of primitive cultures, and in favor of simplicity, which is a sign of, well, modernism. Thus, Loos reasoned, it’s okay for a Pacific Islander to cover himself and all his possessions with ink and carvings, whereas “a modern person [i.e., a European] who tattoos himself is either a criminal or a degenerate. . . . People with tattoos not in prison are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats.”

So, presuming the kid with a Tweety Bird tattoo on his forearm who delivered your pizza last night isn’t...