About 30 years ago, Tim Loftus and his older brother, Frank, said they’d get tattoos — their first — if the Cubs ever made it to the World Series.
Loftus, 62, now has a date at Noodles Tattoo, a Warrenville parlor he drives by weekly on his way to Thursday dinners with two granddaughters.
Loftus plans to get a “very basic Cubs insignia” about the size of a ping-pong ball on his posterior — “high enough where I can show it to my grandchildren without their losing their appetite,” he said Thursday.
The Carol Stream resident, who considers himself a “die-hard” Cubs fan, said his two adult sons have tattoos and “are getting a charge out of this.” His wife also thinks it’s “hilarious.”
Loftus also said his brother, now 63, plans to make good on his promise to get a Cubs tattoo.
“We’re keeping our word to each other,” Loftus said.
Emil “Noodles” Spengler, who founded Noodles Tattoo in 2013, said he typically sees more requests for sports logos when the team is doing well, and the Cubs have been no exception.
Growing up in the Chicago area, Spengler remembers people, such as Loftus, saying that the only way they’d get a tattoo is if the Cubs won the World Series.
“Now I’m wondering if other people will follow through with that,” said Spengler, whose shop has a minimum tattoo cost of $80.
About a mile from Wrigley Field, Tattoo Factory owner Paul Collurafici said his business typically might get one or two requests a month during the season to apply a Chicago Cubs logo on a body part.
But in the past week or two, as the ballclub’s hopes for a World Series title remained alive, the royal blue ink started flowing about five times a day, he said.
Since the Cubs won the World Series on Wednesday night, Collurafici said Tattoo Factory, which his family has owned since 1976, has booked another 15 to 20 appointments to ink Cubs logos.
Almost without exception, the customers say they’re getting a Cubs tat to honor a family member who was a longtime fan but who didn’t live to see the team make it back to the World Series.
“Some are in tears,” Collurafici said.
Tattoo Factory, which has about two dozen tattoo artists and three body piercers, also has a bar next door, called Drink & Ink, but Collurafici said his parlor won’t tattoo people who have been drinking alcohol.
A basic Cubs tattoo about the size of a baseball might take about two hours and cost $150, Collurafici said.
The other day, his parlor inked the design of a Notre Dame Fighting Irish leprechaun holding a “W” flag.
Collurafici noticed that the “W” has been requested for the first time this year by Cubs fans getting a tattoo.
But it could just mean that the team is winning, he said.
Chicago Tattoo & Piercing has done nearly two dozen Cubs tattoos in the past week, said owner Dale Grande.
More Top Picks Avulux Vs Fl 41 How The Lenses Differ
“That’s quite a bit more than usual,” he said. “I’m expecting to do even more now that they took the series.”
By Thursday morning, he already had received several emails requesting Cubs tattoos.
“Anytime a Chicago team wins the big one, we get people coming in for logo tattoos,” Grande said.
Deluxe Tattoo in Chicago also said it has seen an increase in Cubs tattoos, from two or three a month in a normal year to at least a couple every day for the last couple of weeks across a variety of demographic groups.
Mid-Thursday afternoon, two people were at the business getting Cubs tattoos, artist Ben Wah said.
Wah told of a customer who earlier this year got a tattoo with a Cubs logo and the phrase “World Series Champions 1907, 1908, 201_,”
Twitter @beckyyerak