Welcome to Grim Yelp Reviews, a regular feature where we share people’s worst experiences at the worst places. This week, you either got the Chinese symbol for “respect” or “biohazard,” and you will never, ever know.
Tattoos are the best kind of hobby: the kind in which you get to lie down and make someone else do all the work. (Amirite, ladie—no, let’s just let that one go.)
But tattooing also requires a level of trust and optimism: that your artist will be skillful, that they will understand and share your particular vision, and, crucially, that at least one of you will own a dictionary and think to double-check it before committing a word to your flesh forever.
And when tattooing gets grim, it gets very grim indeed: things are crooked, they are overly bloody, they are missing “O”s and “L”s, and sometimes, they are the name of a living person to whom you did not give birth, a person you’re convinced you will love forever in a romantic way. (You won’t. No—ssh—nope.)
Grim Yelp reviews of tattoos can be divided into three broad categories: Spelling, Bedside Manner, and What the Hell Happened? As almost always, to protect the names of the innocent and not-so-innocent alike, we’ve redacted the names of the businesses, as well as the identities of the Yelpers who wrote the reviews. We realize you can probably find out all of that information by employing five seconds of Google magic.
Spelling
Typically, a tattoo artist draws your design, transfers it onto a stencil, and puts said stencil on your body. That’s everyone’s opportunity to check the design, the placement, the size,and, crucially, the words. Check the words.
Otherwise, this happens:
There’s only one review of this shop, and it makes the case that an artist’s best (or worst) advertisement is their own work:
There are roaches in this shop. The owner does not have his piercing licence and has misspelled tattoos. Would not recommend.
Oy:
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