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Still, there are kids who have been made into martyrs. Stories are told about the 17-year-old girl known as Little Cindy who was shot, execution-style, in 2006. Police say Cynthia Gray pushed her 7-month-old godson under a parked car before a man walked over to her and shot her point-blank in the face, head and neck.

The baby wasn't hurt. Little Cindy's attempt to save the baby before she died has made her into an urban heroine.

"She put the baby under a car," says Tommy Thayer, a tattoo artist at a Silver Spring shop. "You'll see all kinds of people with her portrait."

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The Liquidity Jones shop attracts an odd collection of young people, some seeking to be different, to resist the imperatives of conformity. Technicolor hair, piercings, tattoos.

Nicole Moss, 18, of Alexandria, brushes away her red hair as she explains how a black ink drawing of a man came to appear on her right calf. "He's a good friend of mine. His name was Todd. He was an inspiration. He had green hair," she says. "But he was on a path of destruction. He had been sober four or five years. Then he decided to do drugs again."

Her friend, Todd Robert Scovill, moved to California. Lived on the streets. "We kept in touch through e-mails," Moss says. "Then one day, I checked his MySpace page. A community group had put up an RIP. I called one of his friends and they said he had overdosed."

When she found out he died, "at first I was upset at him. I was angry at him. To this day, if I saw him, I would punch him in the face. How could he leave us?"

Still, the tattoo is a reminder of the good in him. "He was an amazing writer. People will ask questions, then I can tell his story. His story doesn't have to stop. It can keep going."

A story running through the strokes of ink, now running beneath Nicole's skin.

People push open the glass doors all afternoon, seeking adornment. A teenager with a red flower in her hair and a baby in her stroller wants her breast pierced. The baby sits there entertaining himself as his mother gets the piercing. And walks out happy.

Two young men come in, Donnell Jones and Terry Johnson, who have already pulled off their T-shirts, displaying sculpted ebony skin.