SAMANTHA "CAKE" ROBLES & BRITT ROBLES

Left to right

Samantha “Cake” Robles (she/her) | Coney Island, Brooklyn | Puerto Rico

Britt Robles (she/her) | P.G. County Maryland | African American & ​​Haliwa-Saponi

Entrepreneurs, Founders of Girls Only Tattoo Studio and Collective

Flatbush

The studio is special. … Even if we don't know you, it’s meant to feel like home. We really want our space to feel, I keep using that word, safe, but to me, it's really home. I want our parties to feel like home, you know? I want everything that we do to feel like you've known us forever, and you could have just met us five minutes ago, because genuinely that's how we operate. It’s no frills, it’s special.

What does A Great Day in Ñiu Yor look like for you?

A lot of New Yorkers, I feel, like living this nostalgia. You always feel like things were better when you were younger, and I feel like a great day in New York for me is like a beach day in Coney Island. A lot of people outside, a lot of like sounds coming from the neighborhood. I was outside every day, all day till like the sun went down, you know? I went to the beach every weekend like clockwork, living across the street. It was very simple things. They didn’t cost nothing. I used to have so much fun! I used to come home, and I would be too lazy to go to the sink to get a drink of water, so I would go to the bathroom because it was right by the door and just drink out the bathroom sink and then run back outside, or I would drink from the sprinklers that were on 24/7… Beach, park, sounds, Mister Softee, riding my bike, wildin’, no expenses, enjoying the city for what the city is and what it offers you. — Cake

Mine is similar. Cake made me fall in love with Coney, and some of my best memories are of us going to Coney Island. I love an amusement park. Being able to say “I want a funnel cake,” you know, just random, and then pull up? Those were our best date days, just us chilling. I also follow DJs and I love that about New York so much, so a really good day, to me, looks like a ton of frolicking to then go and find a DJ at night and party. Music is a really big thing for me here in New York. Day to night, you know, with my boo during the day and then at night, I'm gone, you know, partying, you know, like doing something crazy, listening to crazy DJs. So that's my good time. —Britt

Photographed & Interviewed by Shaira Chaer