This 50-year-old Flyers fan got a bloody ‘Halloween Gritty’ tattooed on his head. He hopes it brings the team good luck.
“Everybody so far has loved it. ... A lot of people like the added touch of the eyes and the blood and the fangs,” said 50-year-old Willie Aston said.
With the Flyers back in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2020, everyone has their own way of showing how Flyer’d up they are. For Willie Aston of Kutztown, that meant getting a portrait of Gritty, the most maniacal mascot in all of sports, tattooed on the top of his head.
Aston, 50, has been a Flyers fan since the 1990s. He grew up playing hockey and wanted to cheer on a local team since he already had out-of-town allegiances in other sports.
“I wanted to be able to watch the home team,” he said.
Aston, a factory worker at East Penn Manufacturing, got his first Flyers tattoo, a gnome sporting the team’s logo, three years ago, but he knew he also wanted to get Gritty tattooed somewhere on his body.
“I just thought of it a couple months ago, maybe,” Aston said. “I was just looking at a picture of Gritty. We got this piece of art from an artist at a cannabis festival, and I liked the way that Gritty looked, and I just thought about putting it on top of my head.”
Aston brought the idea to Mike Milburn, a tattoo artist at Electric Cheetah Tattoos in Bethlehem. Aston is a regular at the shop, and he and his wife Jodi go on frequent tattoo dates. Milburn estimates he’s given Aston at least 10 tattoos.
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Aston gave Milburn a photo of the artwork as a reference image, but otherwise gave Milburn a lot of room for artistic interpretation.
“He basically just said, ‘Hey, the idea is Gritty with his helmet. You have free rein, draw whatever you want,’” Milburn said.
Milburn measured the top of Aston’s head and drew a digital image of the Flyers’ mascot. Milburn gave Gritty fangs in his initial drawing, leading Aston to lean in to a more horror-inspired tattoo look.
“He drew it all up, and the fangs were on Gritty,” Aston said. “I said, ‘Those won’t belong there unless we want to make him a Halloween Gritty.’”
Milburn gave Gritty bloodshot eyes, and added some bloody accents to his helmet and mouth, and Aston was on board with the design. Milburn put needle to skin on Thursday.
Milburn, who has been a tattoo artist for 15 years and has spent the last 10 at Electric Cheetah, said he had done one other scalp tattoo in his career, and it was simple lettering.
The full color portrait took two hours and six minutes to complete, not including breaks, during a tattoo date for the Astons. Jodi got a Hello Kitty piece done while Willie sat for the Gritty tattoo.
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“I didn’t feel the outline,” Willie Aston said. “It didn’t hurt at all. The helmet started to get a little saucy, and then, by the orange, I was done.”
Aston, who estimates he has about 50 tattoos, said getting Gritty tattooed ranks as the most painful.
“The ribs were kind of tender, and the lower butt cheek was a little tender too,” Aston said. “Gritty was the worst.”
The tattoo started to peel on Tuesday and is still in the healing process, but it may already be proving to be a good-luck charm for the Flyers. They lost on the night Aston got the tattoo, but have won three straight since and clinched their first trip to the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2020 with a win on Monday.
Aston said he’s hoping his new ink will bring the Flyers some luck as they take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in their first-round series, which will also be Gritty’s first home playoff series since his introduction in 2018.
“We’re hoping for it,” Aston said. “A bunch of people mentioned it. The only problem was, they lost on Thursday to Detroit when I was getting it. But then they destroyed the Jets, and they won [Monday] night. So, maybe it could be a good-luck charm, hopefully.”
Regardless of whether or not his new tattoo brings the Flyers’ postseason success, Aston said he’s very satisfied with his new ink, and that he’s gotten positive reactions to Milburn’s artwork.
“Everybody so far has loved it,” Aston said. “Nobody’s said that it’s dumb or anything, but everybody’s like, ‘That’s awesome.’ A lot of people like the added touch of the eyes and the blood and the fangs.”
Aston is hoping to draw some shocked reactions out of passersby once his new tattoo is fully healed.
“If I bend down to look at people, you got Gritty,” Aston said. “If I put some googly eyes on it, it could be a fun night.”