SUSPENDED (BY HOOKS) IN SPACE

We met with East Dallas neighbor Allen Falkner to talk about tattoo removal for an August magazine story dedicated to the art of making, and removing, body ink. As we were leaving, Falkner told us it was his first time to be interviewed about tattoo removal, although he’s used to being interviewed.

“I’m normally being interviewed about suspension,” he said off-handedly.

Wait … say what now?

For those who don’t know, suspension practitioners pierce their skin with large metal hooks from which they suspend in midair for anywhere from seconds to hours.

Apparently there’s a bit of a suspension community in Dallas, thanks to Falkner, who is considered “The Father of Modern Suspension” by many due to the decades he’s spent educating people about it.

“The first time I did a suspension, there was not good suspension education out there,” Falkner explains. “There weren’t really groups or networks of people doing suspension at the time, so I started putting them together. I created a website and started traveling and working with people.”

He’s trying to shed light on a largely underground community.

“Everybody’s first question is, ‘Why?’” Falkner says. “It’s not an easy thing to explain in a short amount of time. People tend to understand the performance aspect of it more than the ritual, soul-searching, rights of passage and yada yada. There are a lot of reasons why people are involved in it.”

The biggest misconception is that it’s gruesomely painful. “It’s actually not a terribly painful thing to do,” Falkner insists, but it can be dangerous if it’s not done correctly. It’s more about the endorphin rush, he says. “The mentality is no different than skydiving or riding roller coasters.”

Sharks In A Glass

For the October cover story about reality TV stars, Advocate photo editor Danny Fulgencio had to figure out a way to communicate “Shark Tank” photographically when shooting Gina Cotroneo. “I was scrambling to find a large pair of shark jaws. I’d reached out to Facebookland and wasn’t having any success,” Fulgencio explains. “My other idea was to have a little fun with it.” His backup idea was to get a small freshwater shark from a pet store and photograph it swimming around inside an oversized brandy glass. He bought a tiny shark from a pet store shortly before the shoot. He then made a mad dash to the studio to photograph Cotroneo, carefully calculating the time he had left before the shark died in the small amount of water. “I was kind of doing the math of how much oxygen was in the water,” he says. “I felt like I was pushing the clock, but I got him back to the pet store without incident.” Unfortunately, in the end, the effort was in vain. We found a pair of giant shark jaws after all.