2020-04-17 14:40:30 -0400
To: Governor Cuomo & All NYS Mayors
Reopen All NY Tattoo Shops By May 1st With COVID Safety Measures
Open tattoo shops with restrictions . Shops would be limited to 1 customer per artist/chair at a time. All work stations must be minimum 6’ apart. Surgical grade face masks must be worn by workers and customers at all times. Sanitizing stations offered at entrances. And of course all this along with the standard health department rules for tattoo shops. We all already have extensive training in blood-borne pathogen‘s. We all go through health department inspections and we are checked randomly to ensure that we are following guidelines set for safe in sterile operation.
Why is this important?
Ever since COVID-19 it has been affecting us in major ways and forcing people to make tough decisions for their families. We are going through financial hardship. we were promised bail outs through small business loans or grants. Yet the government has made the stipulations on these grants nearly impossible for our type of business to qualify for the loan to become a grant. Most tattoo shops if not all tattoo shops have been/ will be denied . We have no help when we have been promised help. The Quarantine was implemented to flatten the curve of the spread of COVID-19 to assure that hospitals were not overwhelmed all the once in to help prevent such a rapid spread . The numbers of infected people is on the decline . We tattoo artists are trained and certified in blood-borne pathogen‘s and cross-contamination as well as many other medical safety and sterility procedures we are just as safe if not safer than most hospitals. tattoo shops are very clean we take this serious this is our livelihood if we do not return back to work by May 1st many small businesses will be lost . We will not be able to pay our bills, rents/mortgages, Insurances, we have the very potentially of losing everything. We still have to pay our mortgages/ rents and phone bills and gas and electric none of this has stopped for us . Yes, we can postpone them, but they’re not going away! Some of us can still sustain for a while, but that doesn’t mean that we are doing OK this is how we pay our bills this is how we feed our families and we are not getting any help from anyone, nor are we asking for it. We just want to be allowed to return to work in a safe manor