It's Friday the 13th. Here's why there are long lines at local tattoo shops.

FALL RIVER – It’s Friday the 13th, which means tattoo parlors across the SouthCoast are busy offering tattoos at low prices. It was the case at Fall River Tattoo Co. where upwards of 80 people were in line by 9 a.m. to get one.

“We're promoting whimsy. We're promoting spontaneity,” said Bruce Deslauriers, owner of the tattoo shop at 1412 Main St.

“Every year, if there's a Friday the 13th, we do a special where we do $31 tattoos (reverse of 13). So it's kind of like a customer appreciation thing. We lose money doing it. But we have 10 times more fun than on any other day,” he added.

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Deslauriers said he did his first tattoo at 8 a.m. and by 9 a.m. already 80 people were waiting in line. Inside, there is a pre-made set of designs on the board for people to choose.

“They walk in, they pick one off the board, it’s spontaneous fun,” he said. “And none of these people in line know what's on the boards. So they're all standing in line for absolutely no reason until they get inside to see.”

Deslauriers, who has been tattooing in Fall River since the legalization in 2001, has been tattooing in Rhode Island since 1998.

“I've been tattooing my whole life; The only job I really ever had for longer than 20 minutes,” he said with a laugh.

What kind of tattoos are popular on Friday the 13th?

Deslauriers said that over the four years they’ve been open, they’ve done the Friday the 13th tattoo day a few times with a record 500 tattoos in one day.

Jaysia, the co-owner of the shop, was already doing his sixth tattoo by noon.

“The last time I did 55 of them,” he said as he worked on Lindsay Dixon from Fall River, who has over 60 tattoos.

“I love this tattoo shop and I'm good friends with Jay,” she said of Jaysia, who goes only by that name. “Everybody's good here. All the tattoo artists do a good job and they take their time and are really nice.”

Lauren Barboza, of New Bedford, was getting a centipede to go with her spider tattoo. “I haven't done a Friday the 13th tattoo in years so I was waiting to come today to do this,” she said.

“We were here at 9 a.m., waiting a while,” said Izabella Lee of Swansea, as she sat down to finally get her bobby pin and snail tattoo around 11:45 a.m.

“My mom told me about it, and we decided to come to check it out.”

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Gabe Carey, of Newport, Rhode Island, was getting his third tattoo. “It was cheap here and I said, why not get a tattoo?” he said with a chuckle.

His friend Anastaysia Gomes, also out of Newport, said she and their friends have also been waiting since 9 a.m. to get a tattoo.

“I love tattoos. And I've been waiting a while to get one here,” she added.

Why do tattoo shops do Friday the 13th day?

Jess Braley, owner of The Grey Witches’ Gallery and Tattoos in Wareham, said she had already done 25 so far by mid-afternoon Friday with her business partner, Emily Ash.

“It's supposed to be good luck to get tattooed on Friday,” Braley said, adding they are celebrating the event on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14, as well as on Halloween. They are offering over 500 different small tattoo choices for $50 each.

“I've been tattooing for almost 15 years, so this is probably my 10th one,” she said. “I've tattooed at other events until 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning, and still didn’t finish everyone.”

Braley, a native and resident of Acushnet whose family owns Braley's Orchard in Acushnet, opened her shop at 213A Main Street in Wareham on July 1.

“It really enables us to not only do a bunch of really good tiny tattoos, it's for us to be able to meet a ton of people. And that's really good for us because we're a newer shop.”

Friday the 13th brings in new customers

“We served everyone in line Dunkin Donuts this morning. And I only recognize maybe like 20% of the people. So there's a lot of people I haven’t seen,” Deslauriers said, adding that several clients returned to get more tattoos after their last Friday the 13th.

“I think over time people have been trained to overthink a tattoo. And they'll say, ‘Well, it's permanent.’ I think tattooing should be a bit more of a release or an expression,” he said.

Why Friday the 13th is associated with tattoos?

According to USAToday, Friday the 13th has become something of a Black Friday for tattoo shops. Many shops run special promotions charging steeply discounted prices to get work done, often for a flat rate at or even under shop minimum (the minimum fee a shop will usually charge on a tattoo to cover the cost of the basic supplies and overhead).

The average hourly price most artists charge is between $100 to $200 plus, making these flash sales a great deal. While affordable predesigned flash tattoos and flash sales are not uncommon practices throughout the rest of the calendar year, Friday the 13th is the one day you can depend on finding a wealth of markdowns at multiple shops near you.

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The ability to pick a shop, walk right in without an appointment and choose a fun design, then sit for a relatively short and easy piece that costs far less than usual attracts heavily tattooed people and newbies alike.

People with many tattoos use the day as a quick and affordable means to fill a small gap in their sleeve or add to their collection between big projects, while people new to tattoos can walk in and navigate a new experience that is already largely pre-planned.

Of course, there's always the added bonus of having what has become something of a good luck charm to combat the bad vibes that apparently come with the number 13.

While some businesses see the day as an opportunity to make connections, get more people in the door and more eyes on their work, other artists choose not to participate due to what they see as an undervaluing of their labor thanks to low pay and long days of churning out many copies of cheap, unoriginal art.

How did the tradition of tattoos on Friday the 13th start?

The modern model for Friday the 13th as a tattoo holiday is often credited back to co-owner of Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas Oliver Peck, who you may recognize from TV show "Ink Master" and his brief marriage to Kat Von D (he has since been remove from the show due to a blackface controversy).

Peck previously told Vice that he "definitely wasn't the first person to do it," saying he drew some inspiration from fellow artist Dave Lum's Halloween specials, but that he did "make it an event." He threw his first major Friday the 13th function in 1995 at the now-defunct Pair O' Dice in Dallas, a marathon session of tattooing the number "13" on as many people as possible in a 24-hour period.

Information in this article includes additional reporting by USAToday.

Standard-Times staff writer Seth Chitwood can be reached at schitwood@s-t.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ChitwoodReports. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Fall River, New Bedford tattoo shops see surge on Friday the 13th