What is the meaning of a solid black band tattoo?

Answer 1

I've got black bands tattooed on my leg.

a lot of my friends have them aswell.

its a southern Florida hardcore thing.

I've also been told that some people get them in rememberance of a failed marriage

actually they were a common polynesian tattoo among Marquesan women .

the following selection is taken from Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World by Georg H. von Langsdorff. London 1513:

The women of Nukuhiva are very little tattooed, differing in this aspect than the females of the South-Sea islands. The hands are punctured from the ends of the fingers to the wrist, which gives them the appearance of wearing gloves, and our glovers might well borrow from them the patterns, and introduce a new fashion among the ladies, of gloves worked a la Washington. The feet, which among many are tattooed, look like highly ornamented half-boots; long stripes are sometimes to be seen down the arms of the women, and circles round them, which have much the same effect as the bracelets worn by many European ladies. Some also have their ears and lips tattooed.