It’s incredibly hard to run an honest business in a dishonest town.
Since that brush with business-death, many of the city’s tattoo artists and body piercers have organized to push back more effectively against potentially onerous regulations and to advocate for a sensible regulatory scheme.
It was then that a man who prefers to go by the name Fatty, owner of Fatty’s Tattoos and Piercings in Dupont Circle, helped start the D.C. Coalition of Professional Body Artists, the city’s tattoo and body piercing industry association.
The group’s most recent effort: keeping the district from requiring they use tattoo needles that don’t exist. The new round of regulations, proposed last month, would mandate that all body artists in D.C. use hollow needles.
While hollow needles are considered the best practice for body piercing, Fatty said there’s no such thing as a hollow tattoo needle. He compares it to requiring all taxis have square wheels.
The regulations would also require body artists to post warnings about potential health risks, including HIV/AIDS. Fatty says some of these risks are unsupported by medical research.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “They’re trying to scare our customers away.”