This nail salon is nicely located just off la Brea and Slauson, so I decided to give it a shot as they had an opening for my Mother in law and I to get mani-pedis scheduled just a couple hours after my call on a Saturday evening when everywhere else I called was booked up. It had 4 star reviews so I was excited to try it out. The pedicure was nice- the guy took his time with the massage and the scrubs (I got the Pamper Pedi), but he also cut my nails and created a hangnail basically and then proceeded to pull it while looking at me to see if I would react. When I did because it hurt, he stopped and cut it and kept going with the other toes. When it came to painting I asked for black and silver and showed him a simple pic- it took him a while to find the colors (they ended up being out of the subtle silver I asked for, and I settled for a more glittery silver), and then instead of painting two toes just silver, he painted them all black and then seemed to remember I wanted silver so he painted silver on top of the black, so those two toes have a black border that I know could have been avoided. He did do a good job on the calluses however, my feet are soft and smooth now.
Hands- this is where the horror begins. They started the manicure after my feet were done and the old lady that came over was impatient looking- and ridiculously aggressive with my nails. Everything she did hurt- she started by filing my nails down way shorter than they needed to be- and she kept filing my finger skin under the nails like she was trying to make my fingers shorter too. She cleaned under the nails with a really sharp tool and was not gentle about it. Then she trimmed the dead skin around my nails and managed to cut deep twice, on two different fingers! The first time I said Ow, that hurt... and she ignored me. The second time I recoiled a little and again she didn't even notice. Thankfully another poor customer needed something complicated with her toe so she left me to go take care of that, and a third person came to work on my other hand. What was super scary, is that she didn't bother to get new tools or even wash them. Just tossed them on her cart and went to the other lady. The guy who came to me did take his tools over to a sink, but I didn't see any particular soap or sanitizing being done. I showed him the cuts and told him to be extra gentle with my other hand. He was much more gentle, and found the colors much easier, but for some reason kept filing on both fingers even though they were already too short. After painting the nails as requested, he then used the file AGAIN to detach the gel polish from my skin where he hadn't bothered to clean around them with anything but his fingernail and the polish had dried fused to my skin. The result was messy, too short looking nails, with weird edges. I can't wait til they grow out so I can go to my usual place that is a million times better and actually uses new sanitary tools every single time. Avoid this place if you like your nails! I should have gotten up and left when I saw they don't even use clean sterile tools but I am way too nice and my mother in law was still mid-massage on the pedicure at that point. Overall, the experience took 2 hours total for two subpar mani-pedis. read more