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WSJ Profiles Piercing Studio Owner
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This was on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reports this as if a Martian has landed. he sounds uncomfortable looking at Mic Miller. kelly The Wall Street Journal December 26, 2000 Page One Feature Mik Miller Brings Body Art to Quincy And Comes to Uneasy Truce With Locals By ROBERT TOMSHO Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL QUINCY, Mass. — In terms of tattoos, Mik Miller’s face was a blank slate when he came to town four years ago. But then, nobody could really miss what was hanging from it. There was the silver nose ring, big as a bottle cap, along with an array of studs jutting from eyebrows and lower lip. The trio of hefty rings dangling from each ear lobe jangled like a pocketful of change when he walked. "This is not for everybody," Mr. Miller says of his adornments. [Mik Miller] And when the 53-year-old former U.S. Customs agent opened a body-piercing salon in the middle of an old Quincy commercial district here three years ago, neighbors quickly decided that he wasn’t for them. At the time, the city was installing brick sidewalks and Colonial-style street lamps in the area. "We were trying to beautify the business district," says state Rep. Bruce Ayers, a former Quincy city councilman. "This wasn’t the caliber of business we were trying to attract. … It caused quite a commotion." Mr. Ayers quickly discovered that, like most cities nationwide, Quincy didn’t have a single regulation on the books dealing with body piercing. Council members soon lashed together a statute that required purveyors of piercing to buy sterilization equipment, learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation and pass a 15-week course in anatomy and physiology. Michael Cheney, a local labor leader who was on the city council at the time, says the whole effort was aimed at Mr. Miller. "It was designed to make him shut down, absolutely," he says. Ominous Creatures Instead of abandoning his body-art beachhead, Mr. Miller stubbornly dug in, taking the necessary courses and buying every piece of required equipment. He also memorialized the conflict by slowly tattooing his face and shaved head with all manner of ominous creatures. "A whole lot of it had to do with knowing that it would tick them off," he says, rubbing his spider-covered chin. Dominated by the descendants of the Irish and Italian immigrants who once labored in local quarries and shipyards, Quincy is a decidedly blue-collar place. But the city of 85,000, the home of the original father-son presidents, John and John Quincy Adams, also maintains an almost Puritan sense of propriety. The city voted itself dry long before Prohibition and, decades after the taps began flowing again, the club scene remains bleak. Stiff zoning has kept the topless bars at bay and, a few years ago, the city council passed an ordinance banning profanity in public places. "I don’t think we are a city of prudes," says Frank McCauley, a former mayor and local historian, "but we want things under control." Quincy’s leaders never imagined those things might one day include poking holes in lips, tongues and bellybuttons — things that were second nature to Mik Miller. His stepfather was a Hell’s Angel and his mother, a California beautician, was getting tattoos long before they were chic. ’My Way of Being an Individual’ As a Marine, Mr. Miller got his ear pierced to mark his initiation to battle in Vietnam. He got his first tattoo in Idaho after a memorable weekend of passion and was soon studying the tattooer’s art. Ever since, he has frequently marked events in his life with new tattoos and piercings, although he can’t say precisely why — any more than someone else might be able to readily explain a penchant for lamb chops or Beethoven. "I guess it’s just my way of being an individual," he says. "I’ve been a punk all my life." Only to a point, however. Mr. Miller wasn’t enough of a rebel to wear studs and rings while at the Customs Service and, even after opening a small Boston piercing salon in the 1980s, he confined his own tattoos to body parts that he could keep under cover. Then came the move to Quincy, where Mr. Miller set up shop after his Boston landlord sold out to a Starbucks. The rent was far cheaper in Quincy, which borders Boston to the south, but Mr. Miller worried that his big-city clientele would never find him at a quiet little crossroads otherwise occupied by insurance offices, sandwich shops and hardware stores. But the tumult over the council’s anti-piercing actions brought Mr. Miller attention and business. Local rock bands held benefits to help him hire lawyers and young piercees from around the area showed up to support his cause at city hearings. "He’s not the freak that people think he is," says Tommy Burk, a 24-year-old local drummer who was so impressed with Mr. Miller that he had him over to his parents’ house for Easter dinner. "He even brought a pie," Mr. Burk recalls. Piercing Problem Mr. Miller continued to outrage some with the likes of Vomitman, his Halloween window display featuring a goo-spewing mannequin. Still, he became active in the local merchants’ association and some neighbors even got to like him. "To each his own," says florist Jay Nestor, a father of three. "Mik himself is a very nice man." Coffee-shop owner Kevin McGurl admits to being relieved that Mr. Miller’s shop, Body Xtremes, hasn’t attracted a slew of similar businesses but adds that "he runs a good business and we have no problems with him." When the salon was cited for piercing the navel of an underage teenager, Mr. Miller and his staff of four voluntarily signed up for a state course — normally for bartenders — in detecting fake identification. Indeed, local health officials and city solicitors were impressed by Mr. Miller’s efforts to run a clean shop. "He has not been problematic," says Paul Hines, an assistant city solicitor. The relationship took an unexpected turn last month when a state court judge in Boston overturned Massachusetts’ longtime ban on tattooing. With other cities scrambling to figure out how and what to regulate, Quincy officials turned to Mr. Miller for counsel. If he was still not a favorite of most city council members, they were at least willing to hear his ideas while coming up with a new and broader city ordinance regulating all forms of body art. In recent weeks, Mr. Miller has been patiently schooling Quincy lawyers and health officials on sanitary tattooing techniques and on particularly dangerous forms of body art — such as spinal and rib piercing — which he thinks should be outlawed. "I find him to be smart, and kind of clever," says Mr. Hines, the solicitor, who plans to review the proposed ordinance line-by-line with Mr. Miller before he presents it to the city council. For his part, the veteran body artist doesn’t think his troubles in Quincy are over, but he’s enjoying the truce. "It’s actually kind of nice not having to argue and fight with them all the time," says Mr. Miller, who put a festive display of elves and giant candy canes in his store window this Christmas. Not that everything is looking up. All of the attention has made Mr. Miller the occasional target of anonymous phone threats from underground body artists who think he’s gotten a little too legitimate. Meanwhile, with a well-known kisser full of scorpions and spiders, he can’t go out for a sandwich without some stranger saddling up to the table and asking him to have a look at some botched tattoo or piercing. "It’s like I’m a doctor," Mr. Miller marvels. "People are very rude."
Response:
> This was on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal. The newspaper > reports this as if a Martian has landed. he sounds uncomfortable looking > at Mic Miller. > kelly
<snip> Actually, no. Maybe a little too much alliteration, but otherwise a good article. Very even-handed. Mik could not get better PR had he paid for it. So how much do you think an ad in the WSJ costs? Kavin