Tattoo shop opens near Lampasas

After months of searching for a location and spending thousands of dollars on renovations, Double Barrel Tattoos recently opened just outside the city limits.

Randy Garcia, manger of the shop, said he wanted to open a tattoo business in the city because "they don't have anything like that here."

"We were just throwing stuff around, ideas of different places to open," he said. "Not Killeen or Austin because they have so many. We finally decided on Lampasas, and people said it would be great; it's what Lampasas needs. People say there's nothing here."

Prior to settling at South U.S. Highway 183, Garcia spent about $10,000 in renovations on a building on Farm-to-Market 580, within the city limits, believing the lease was guaranteed. Then he got a letter from city officials.

denied the shop a special-use permit to open in a noncommercial business location. Several residents attended the council's mid-October meeting, which was held at a school cafeteria to accomodate the crowd interested in the controversial matter.

"We did the floors, the walls; we were ready to open up," said Garcia. "It was a huge setback for us. That was the majority of our budget for opening that shop."

"We heard about (our current location) through a Facebook friend," said Garcia. "I went knocking on doors and found the owner, who lives behind the building. He said a gentleman had been renting it from him, but had gotten sick. After a week he called us back to say the man wouldn't be able to continue paying rent."

Garcia signed a five-year lease within a week of the Facebook tip.

"The rent is perfect. It wasn't in too bad disrepair, so we wouldn't have to spend a whole lot of money on it. It's just perfect," said Garcia. "Mainly, it was location. It's right outside the city limits. The drive-by traffic is going to be great."

Besides acquiring a location, the tattoo shop also met several state standards before opening.

"We had to get a business license, then get a body piercing and tattoo license from the state, which requires following a lot of guidelines in the way the shop is set up," said Garcia. "Once we got the state license, we had to start getting approvals from the city. We had to get into a light industrial area, So we moved right outside the city limits so we didn't have to do City Council meetings."

Securing a state license, including paying the $1,600 fee, was something Garcia had to go through twice.

"It's address-based," he said. "We got our license at the last location, and when we found out we couldn't open there, we had to get a new license. We were trying to tell (the state) that we didn't actually open up there at the (previous) address, and we tried to get some kind of discount, but the state isn't too lenient. They did the best they could."

At the shop's State Highway 183 location, Garcia estimates he's spent about $13,000 on renovations and supplies, including required flooring, chairs and sterilization equipment. The shop will employ five people, including two apprentices. All tattoo artists have been professionally trained.

"A lot of people in Lampasas have been getting tattoos out of friends' garages, and doing it that way is not 100 percent sterile," said Garcia. "The chance of cross-contamination and blood-borne illness is high, and the artists who do it that way don't have a lot of experience. Do it here, and there's a guarantee that we've taken our blood-borne pathogens class. All needles are disposable and thrown away."

Shop staffers intend to take part in activities to benefit the community, after they get settled.

"Right now, we're just trying to open," said Terry Bruce, the shop's owner. "We're going to work with Blue Santa and have a toy collection box; we want to collect food for the local food pantry, too."

Working to help local charities and planning to collaborate with the school to offer face-painting for football games are all in an effort to work with the town and dispel assumptions about the inked-crowd.

"They frowned upon tattoo shops at first, and we're trying to tell them it's not like it was in the '60s and 70s with bikers and drugs," said Bruce. "We're trying to work with the city. If we help them, they'll help us."