Great shop and atmosphere- Don't let the location fool you, although A-1 is nestled back on Route 47 in a town most people probably never even heard of, this shop churns out top quality tattoos and tattoo artists. The work of the artists as well as the artists who come to do guest spots here speak to the integrity and quality of the shop. After all, do you think a raved about, up and coming artist who works at a world renowned shop in NYC travels down to middle-of-nowhere Southern New Jersey to tattoo and hang out at just any random tattoo shop? How about a Tebori artist all the way from Osaka, Japan?
Also, gross or dirty definitely aren't adjectives I would use to describe A-1. The work areas exceed any cleanliness standard I have for a tattoo shop- each artist's room is complete with a clean, uncluttered table top and stainless steel sink. Each and every time I have been there to get tattooed, which is well over ten times, the artist cleaned the surface I sat/laid on both before and after the session and wore sterile gloves, changing them during any and all breaks we took throughout the session.
"The toilet bowl looked like my old house. And I shared that with 5 GUYS"-the implications of such a comment both comedic and idiotic, I'm not sure why someone would write this because: 1) if the private bathroom within your house isn't cleaner than, but instead reminiscent of, any business or public restroom, even a rather "clean" one, that speaks volume about your own cleanliness and sounds like a personal issue; and 2) If you failed to keep your own bathroom clean, one which was shared with the same 5 people whom you could hold responsible, one that is actually in the place you lay your head at night, isn't it pretty audacious to expect a shop to do so considering they not only have up to 5 guy employees, but also numerous customers and whoever is accompanying them, as well as the many friends and patrons who frequently stop in just to say hi and see what's going on? As far as I'm concerned, by divulging your own failure and lack of cleanliness you have essentially stripped yourself of any and all authority to speak on such matters. I'm not saying their bathroom is in fact dirty, rather that even if it were, you have no right to judge or criticize them. I'm not going to counter that by saying "it's the cleanest bathroom ever", I'll keep it real, but honestly, although the bathroom never struck me as particularly clean, it never struck me as particularly dirty either, rather what one would expect to encounter when using a courtesy bathroom frequented by so many random people. Exercise some rational thought here, especially if you've only been somewhere once and or have always had positive experiences somewhere and then had a single experience with some unpleasant aspects-firstly, all businesses have off days where something happens, or doesn't happen, that is atypical of the business and more importantly, in regards to this subject, realize that any one person could mess up a single-toilet-bathroom for the next person and since they don't have a full time janitor or bathroom attendant I'm not sure what one could expect or take away from a single visit. I have been there numerous times at closing and seen the apprentices clean the bathroom, restock paper towels, soap, etcetera and that's doing their due diligence as far as I'm concerned.
Yelp seems to be living up to their reputation on this one (but please feel free to prove me wrong Yelp) 1 bad review and 6 shining reviews yet "somehow"only the 1 negative review is present on the main page, only 1 review can be seen from a cell phone's map application and only 1 review is being used to calculate an average score (which actually isn't much of an average since it's a sole review being taken into consideration). read more