Strap yourselves in, kids, it's a long one...
First red flag for this place is that they're open until 2am. They're basically angling for those people who drunk impulse get tattoos and piercings. Which is what hubby and i did, we decided to get piercings at like 10pm (not drunk tho).
We walk in, the place looks and smells like crap. The front area is clean-ish but everywhere reeks of pot smoke which i thought smoking in tattoo shops was a no-no for hygiene. Everything also looked really grimy and there were signs up saying not to photo or video anything without asking the artist first. The guy who pierced us told us there was no need to show ID, they don't need it. Red flag. We sign consent forms and this guy talks AT us for like 10 minutes, insisting we don't ask questions because everything he tells us will answer any questions we have. Tells us he has a bunch of "degrees" ranging from pre-med to microbiology to business and marketing, that he's a flight instructor etc etc. That all other piercers have at best an 8th grade education and don't know what they're talking about, he's the only one who knows what he's doing, blah blah
At this point I'm full on seeing red flags but he reminded me so much of my ex that i mistakenly thought it must be that messing with my head. This guy has never been taught how to pierce. He's watched a couple videos, i can guarantee that. He did everything with getting the needles and jewelry ready off behind us with his back turned so no idea if anything was even clean let alone sterile. He did wear new gloves, but they looked super cheap and kept breaking at the wrists when he tried to put them on. Marked the piercings with a used sharpie and before that vaguely swiped the areas with a bit of paper towel sprayed in what smelled like rubbing alcohol (and wiped some in my eye in the process because he didn't even really look to see if he got my nostril at all, kind of just dragged it across the vague area of my face where my nose was). When he pierced my husband he told him to take a breath but shoved the needle through before he'd even finished talking. The whole time this guy is just talking, talking, talking lecturing the other person working about something or other, then he got to my turn.
As i said, rubbing alcohol in the eye, used sharpie again and when he marked my nose piercing i was honestly so freaked out by this guy reminding me of my ex that i would have okayed any placement. As a result, it's so high up i will never be able to get a hoop in like i planned to. He shoved a splintered, gross looking popsicle stick into my nose to catch the needle, pierced me which really hurt, he didn't clean either of our piercings after they were done and sent us on our way with "aftercare" that consisted of "soak it once a day in strong salt water and apply ointment if your skin goes dry and scabby from the overuse of salt" (not a direct quote, but the gist of what he said). He did give us some samples of A&D to use, and insisted my husband photograph the aftercare instructions taped to the counter. Which are for tattoos, but hey the thought was there.
He made a huge huge fuss about how he only uses high quality jewelry, wont let you have anything else put in because it will be "cheap and give you an infection or reaction", how he used flat back labret studs on both of us because that's the safest etc. except my nose is an L-bend nose screw, so that was a straight up lie. Im allergic to nickel so I'm scared to death if he's used a coated alloy and when the coating wears off I'm in for a nice big reaction. Also scared of Hep B, HIV, Hep C, staph, MRSA and gods only know what else this dude could have given us if he didn't clean his stuff properly.
Skip this place. We're using a proper cleaning protocol instead of his instructions and hoping neither of us gets sick with anything, but i wish we'd gone to a proper place and got it done by a real piercer. This guy's methods are the equivalent of a stick n poke tattoo in your drunk friend's garage. read more