Tattoo

Amanda Bynes dodged a bullet Tuesday night ... when the quest to get a neck tattoo came up short ... because she couldn't prove her identity.

We're told Bynes showed up at The Honorable Society, a West Hollywood tattoo parlor, looking for a neck tattoo showcasing her phantom fiance Caleb.

Amanda's plan got derailed when the tattoo artist asked for ID -- she had none.

What's weird ... the tattoo artist knew it was Amanda, so it's unclear why they even got as far as the ID question.

An employee at the parlor says even if Amanda produced ID they would have made her fill out a medical form, which asks for known illnesses. Of course, that assumes Amanda would have told them she was bipolar and schizophrenic.

Amanda left without incident.

Police finally busted a man for allegedly gunning down Chris Brown's tattoo artist, Trigz ... TMZ has learned.

LAPD arrested Robert Falcon on Tuesday for the murder of Trigz earlier this month. The tattoo artist -- who worked with tons of music celebs -- was shot outside the Black Derby Smoke Shop in North Hollywood.

As we reported ... police say Trigz and Falcon had gotten into an argument, which eventually ended in gunfire. Falcon was booked for 1 count of murder and his bail was set at $2 million. He's still in custody.

Kat Von D went off on local news reporters outside her burned out tattoo shop -- making it clear she doesn't want ANYONE covering the story.

As we previously reported ... Kat's famous High Voltage tattoo parlor caught fire early this morning. It took firefighters several hours to knock down the blaze completely -- and local news has been outside the whole time.

But Kat showed up within the last hour, and went off on the media ... knocking the hat off a female photographer's head, and telling everyone -- including us -- to "have some respect."

Kat was asked if she knew what started the fire. Watch ... her only response is anger.

Kat Von D's famous tattoo shop is on fire ... and firefighters have been trying to put it out for several hours.

LAFD got the call around 4 AM about the blaze at her High Voltage Tattoo shop in West Hollywood. It's unknown at this point if anyone was inside the shop when the fire started. As of 6:30 AM ... there are no flames, but crews are still on scene.

Kat's tat palace became extremely popular from her now cancelled reality TV show, "LA Ink."

We've reached out to Kat ... but so far no word back.

Nicki Minaj has a message for her ex ... if you didn't wanna be a superstar so damn bad, you'd still be sleeping in my bed.

Sources connected with the former couple tell TMZ ... Nicki cut the relationship off -- after 14 years -- because he became uncontrollably jealous of her success ... success he wanted for himself.

We're told Nicki and Safaree had an arrangement -- she's the breadwinner and he's the backup singer/hype man/personal assistant. But we're told Safaree was getting sick of being in the background and had become increasingly hostile ... an emotion she reciprocated.

We hear the final straw was when Safaree didn't show up recently to one of Nicki's shows, leaving her scrambling for a hype man. She confronted him and he went crazy.

Breakup rumors spread this week when Safaree showed up in public with several of his Nicki tats covered up.

Looks like he's got a lot more work to do now.

L.A. Clippers star Matt Barnes admits ... he's not proud of all of his tattoos -- in fact, Barnes says there's one piece of ink he hated so much, he HAD to go out and cover it up.

Barnes was out at Kitson in L.A. Wednesday to support teammate DeAndre Jordan when he told us about the regrettable work he got on his arm back when he was a teenager ... and why he had to make it go away.