$13 tattoos for Friday the 13th: How safe is your ink?

A line was wrapped around Iron Tiger Tattoo Friday as customers awaited their $13 tattoos for Friday the 13th.

Whether it was a first tattoo or finishing up a sleeve, heading to one of the busy tattoo parlors in town Friday was a lucky deal.

“You’re never going to see a tattoo shop like this,” said tattoo artist Gabe Garcia.

Customer Alicia Myers said, “A lot of my tattoos cost $60 or so to a $100, so yeah, I always come up. It’s a good deal.”

Garcia said, “From the tattoos that we’re doing and the size they are coming in, they’ll range anywhere from $50 to $100.”

With the amount of people coming in, health standards of the shop are very important.

“Everything is 100% single-use, we don’t reuse any needles, we don’t use any tools without them being sterilized, everything is sprayed with medical grade chemicals,” said Garcia.

Customer Miranda Lord said, “They are very clean and professional. I’ve never had any infections, it’s very safe and clean, and the pain is not that bad.”

At the end of each session, everything is thrown away and cleaned thoroughly and new needles are opened up.

At Iron Tiger and its sister shop, Tattoo You, artists will tattoo on average 40 clients within a 12 hour period. That’s 560 people coming in and out of two shops.

“We’ve got 13 people doing 13 tattoos on Friday the 13th,” said Garcia.

The shop said they’ll be open until midnight Friday working hard to get as many tattoos done as possible.