Contributors

 

When Brian Finke went to Starlight Tattoo in New Jersey to photograph this month's cover story, he quickly realized it was nothing like the parlor he visited to get two tattoos when he was 16 years old. "Starlight is a real place of business," he says. "They were total professionals." Still, Finke wasn't tempted to update his old tattoos, which he describes as "some sort of tribal symbols." It was painful just to watch rapper Jim Jones getting a tattoo on his breastbone, and Finke eventually left the room to give him privacy. Finke, who is based in New York City, has also photographed for GQ, The New Yorker, and Wired. His latest book, Flight Attendants, will be released in February 2008.

Burgerville is a fast-food chain known for environmentalism, not speed. Seems like a bad way to make money, thought Chris Lydgate, as he started investigating the company (click here). But Burgerville has earned loyalty from both employees and customers. "I was fascinated to find out how this blue-collar burger joint could turn itself green, and not just stay in business but thrive," says Lydgate, who lives in Portland, Oregon, and has also written for The Economist and The Wall Street Journal.

Dan Briody writes in this issue about widgets, an increasingly popular online marketing tool (click here). The most surprising widget: the one with the fetus. "Anyone who can build a business around pictures of floating fetuses is all right by me," says Briody. But he's not knocking the mortgage calculator--what it lacks in beauty it makes up for in functionality. Briody, a Connecticut-based freelance writer, is the author of The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money.

When Dee Gill started work on "When Good Deals Go Bad", she assumed groveling was the only way to get out of a contract. But there are other options. "You have to find something the other party needs," says Gill, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, and contributes regularly to Inc.

Ryan McCarthy, an Inc. reporter, writes this month about companies that merge marketing and HR (click here). "Companies are now treating job candidates like potential customers," says McCarthy. He also writes this month about small-business credit cards.

Jean-Philippe Delhomme cooks his own meals and dresses himself, even after illustrating our story about outsourcing everyday tasks (click here). "I'd rather do the small things myself, including going down in the street for coffee," he says. If, like him, you lived in Paris, you'd want to take that walk too. In addition to his magazine work, Delhomme has illustrated animated commercials for Saab.