The itch for adornment and self-expression may lead some to seek a tattoo, but local health department officials and the staff of Boo Boo’s Tattoos in Princeton are urging caution for those looking for some ink to do it right — the wrong way may prove fatal.
Both the health department and the tattoo shop are receiving reports of illegal tattoo artists — “scratchers” — operating locally, unregulated, out of their homes.
Josh Ramage, the Pennyrile District Health Department’s senior health environmentalist, said the local health department has been visited by several individuals, mainly teenage girls, with rashes or other problems originating after receiving such at-home tattoos from a scratcher.
Ramage said the department had heard rumors of two such operations going on in the area.
Boo Boo’s owner and master tattoo artist Bob Asher said the problem is more widespread than some parents may realize.
“Parents are coming to me, masses of them, saying ‘can you fix these tattoos?’,” he said.
The recipients may be hiding their illegal ink, he noted, and urged suspicious parents to pay attention to clues, like ink outlines on bed linens.
“You need to watch your kids, because it’s happening in Caldwell County,” he said. “If I was a parent, I would say from one to 10, it would be a 12.”
The risk of contamination and illness is serious, he said, since scratchers may not have the sterilized equipment, disinfectants or health safety training necessary to do a proper job.
Hepatitis, HIV and other diseases can result.
“It’s something you can’t just wish away,” said Asher. “It just takes one time to get sick.”
Sanitation is the key, Ramage added.
“These people that tattoo at home first of all don’t have their areas clean,” he said.
“They just don’t do it the sanitary way like Mr. Asher does, so that’s their main problem.”
Boo Boo’s has a health inspection every six months, and Asher has his license renewed annually.
“He’s the only one in our five-county district that’s licensed to do tattoos,” said Ramage.
Asher uses all disposable equipment and keeps an autoclave on hand in the Dawson Road shop to sterilize equipment as needed.
Health inspections for the past eight years have been perfect, he noted.
The health department has the authority to shut down illegal operations, and investigation into those operating locally is ongoing.
“We’re not looking the other way,” said Asher.
“Catching them’s the main problem,” Ramage said. Tattoo shops, legal or illegal, tend to operate in the evenings, after regular business hours, making it difficult for health officials to track them down.
Also, those who utilize a scratcher’s services are often reluctant to out the scratcher or his/her location.
“They’re so afraid of narcing on somebody,” Ramage said. “They won’t tell on them.”
Both Ramage and Asher encouraged anyone with information on illegal tattoo operations to make contact. Ramage is available at the health department at (270) 365-6594.
“These people, they’re putting their lives in their hands when they use these people,” said Asher.
Only two artists are currently employed by Boo Boo’s, he added — himself and his niece, Brittni Asher, who is apprenticing under him.
“She will be Caldwell County’s youngest tattoo artist, and she will be 10 times the artist I am,” he said.
Anyone else claiming to be tattooing for Boo Boo’s is a fraud, he said.
The shop is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. “We’re Princeton’s tattoo pioneers,” he said, adding that he hoped to keep the shop going as long as possible.
“I want Princeton to keep a tattoo studio,” he said. “I think it’s a good out for these kids. I’ve been here 10 years. I’m not going anywhere.
Asher noted that, in his career, he had tattooed firefighters, police officers, ministers, nuns, rabbis, and multiple generations of the same family.
“It’s a family tradition with a lot of people,” he said. “This place here should be a safe haven for the regular people of Caldwell County.”
For more information on the studio, call (270) 365-0700.
To the scratchers themselves, Asher urged them to take responsibility and pursue the art legally, not out of their homes.
“If you’re tattooing yourself (illegally), that’s not very smart,” he said. “If you’re tattooing somebody else, that’s criminal.”
