I've been wanting to leave a Yelp review to this place since it was first opened because that's when I immediately realized this was not a safe place at all to get any kind of body modification. I tried leaving a google review as soon as I left this shop THE FIRST DAY it opened and it got deleted, never posted. the owner Darnell is leaving childish unprofessional replies to anyone who leaves a negative review on Google, so that further made me want to leave one on Yelp specifically.
Let me start by saying, in case the owner replies back to this in a childish manner by assuming i'm leaving a negative review on behalf of a former employee, NO! your former employees were also horrible, and let me get into that.
So I live pretty close to this shop, when it first opened I was EXCITED to stop by and get a tattoo, they were free for the first day of their grand opening, that should've been the first red flag but I still decided to go.
When I walked in it was EXTREMELY hot inside, humid, and overall just a really nasty feeling. Everyone (should) know when you walk into a tattoo shop it should smell like a hospital where it is completely clean and sterilized, not like musty humid teenagers. No one greeted me or my sister who came with me. No one told us anything to do, the process, the wait, asked what we were looking for, NOTHING. There was just a bunch of teenagers sitting around. The teenagers weren't a surprise because the artists, or should I say FIRST DAY APPRENTICES, were teenagers themselves. Well this shop owner had all his apprentices (I think there was 2-3 at the time?) working on their OWN, with no one supervising them. They were extremely unprofessional, I watched them "sanitize" disgracefully in between customers and not even know how to proceed on tattooing certain body parts. The owner not once guiding them or correcting them. He was too busy flirting with the teenagers up front. Yes he's a grown man.
Oh yeah, throughout all this time, still we were not acknowledged. On the front counter they just had pieces of papers with the form to fill out and what I assume was their definition of "after care instructions", you were just supposed grab a paper, and sit and wait until it was your turn before anyone said a word to you. In the 30+ minutes my sister and I were sitting there we sat and watched how poorly everything was being done, we sat and watched one of the apprentices get a dirty table off the floor and sit a customer on it and do their tattoo without cleaning the nasty table she had just gotten OFF THE FLOOR. my jaw dropped and I immediately walked out. Yeah they were free for a reason. I looked at @electric cat tattoos instagram page later that night to see how their first day went, I saw the posted pictures of the tattoos they did that first day, and I had to laugh. Both the apprentices AND owners tattoos were, im sorry but horrendous. Extremely crooked and uneven lines, sloppy flashes, just overall horrible work. I was extremely grateful I did not get anything on on my body that night from this place.
I was still following this page for a few days because I knew someone who was going regularly there, and I was seeing how the local business was holding up. Then I saw the apprentice who used a dirty table off the floor to tattoo opened up HER OWN SHOP. My jaw dropped once again. She wasn't even an apprentice for less than a couple weeks and she was already opening up her own shop. Now guessing from the google reviews it has to do with the owner being a creep with, yes that some owner who was busy flirting with teenagers on the first day I came instead of guiding his apprentices. This further proves the apprentices at this shop are being taught NOTHING, because who in their right mind opens up their own tattoo shop when she has no experience herself in the industry but for a couple of weeks?? If you want to see what kind of owner is running this shop, just look at his replies to the negative google reviews and see for yourself how he is replying to others. Or just look at how many people have gotten infected piercings and tattoos from here, or the disgusting body shaming remarks he makes to the clients while he is working on them.
A tattoo shop should be a SAFE place where you feel welcome, not rushed, a place that should be thoroughly sanitized and kept uncluttered, a place where the owner is not messaging minors on social media asking them to hook up, or making fun of you for a tear coming out of your eye during a nose piercing which is a reflex reaction. read more