Rush’s Forever: This man got a double cheeseburger tattooed across his chest

Stephanie Melora is laying out a smorgasbord.

A double cheeseburger with pickles, onions, tomatoes and lettuce rests happily in a bed of golden-brown french fries. There’s a Dr. Pepper to drink, and now she’s starting on the coleslaw for the chili dogs.

“Their coleslaw is really chunked up, so we’re trying to imitate that,” she explains, a tray of brightly-colored ink beside her.

“We’ve got some orange for the carrot and some green for the bits of cabbage. And then we went with a solar flare yellow, which is a super pale yellow.”

When she’s done, Nick Sielicki will have the tattoo of his dreams — a Rush’s double cheeseburger meal and two chili dogs with angel wings inked for life across the width of his broad chest.

It is an homage to the Columbia burger chain Rush’s and includes the restaurant’s iconic logo as well as the words “fabulous food…fast” and an angel’s halo.

“I have to look at this for the next 50 years?” he said his wife asked him, maybe only partly joking.

His response: Basically.

“If I have to have open-heart surgery, we’ll just put a knife through where the scar will be,” he said with a grin.

Rush’s, which opened in the 1940s as a roadside burger stand on Broad River Road, has become a local institution. Its menu consists of fried chicken, milkshakes and, of course, burgers and dogs.

Today, there are nine Rush’s locations across the Midlands and none anywhere else in the world — something born and bred Columbians are quite proud of.

As a kid growing up in the 1990s, it was one of very few places Sielicki could get his mom to stop at.

“We didn’t eat out that much when I was younger, it just cost a lot of money,” he said. “But she loved Rush’s hot dogs. And she always got the hot dog with chili, no onions. She didn’t really ever get anything else.”

It was the perfect in. She could get her chili dog, and he could get a double cheeseburger meal. After the dentist, during a busy day of errands, any time they were out and about and nearby, Sielicki could count on a stop at Rush’s.

If his mom didn’t have cash, she’d write a check at the counter.

“This was back before the Harbison location was even built. This was at Broad River where everything inside was teal and orange,” he said.

Sielicki lived in Charleston for 10 years, territory Rush’s has not breached.

Any time he came home, he’d go to Rush’s three or four times over just a few days.

Sielicki even brought Rush’s to Southern Cypress Tattoo shop to his previous appointment last Saturday. (When the company learned of his tattoo on social media, they gave him a free meal, too.)

This week, he arrived to his Saturday morning session in cargo shorts and aging flip flops with a Dr. Pepper in hand — a drink he professes to love so much he drinks two to three liters a day.

He’s an open, earnest person. He will tell you about his old drinking habits, and why he got two broken bottles — his favorites, Newcastle beer and Jean Marc XO vodka — tattooed on his right leg to honor that past.

On his other leg is a tattoo for his niece who has cystic fibrosis.

But he also doesn’t take himself too seriously; hence, the big burger brand on his chest.

More than a year ago, Sielicki messaged Melora on Instagram about her work. Melora, who owns Southern Cypress Tattoo in Five Points, specializes in tattoo cover-ups.

Sielicki was looking to have something on his arm covered, and Melora delivered with a sweeping ocean scene that spans his entire left arm.

It was while she was working on that tattoo that Sielicki pitched her on the Rush’s project.

“I was like, F— yeah I’ll do that,” she said.

The idea had been percolating for more than a decade, Sielicki said.

He got his first tattoo, a tribal symbol on his ankle bone, in somebody’s basement or garage when he was 17 years old. He’s been thinking of tattoo ideas ever since, though now he pays a professional for the work.

When Sielicki looks at this newest tattoo, he will think of riding home after a trip to the doctor or the dentist. He will think of standing inside the orange and teal interior of a beloved burger joint while his mom writes a check at the counter for a chili dog without onions and a double cheeseburger meal.

He will think, in some small way, of growing up and growing older in Columbia.

His mom, who still lives in Columbia, will probably think something else.

“She hates that I have (tattoos),” he said with a laugh. “The first one she ever saw on me, she asked if it was permanent.”