DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Daytona Beach is home to biker bars and t-shirt shops, but surprisingly not to tattoo parlors. The city doesn't allow any tattooing within city limits, but that rule could soon change.
City staff decided that down the street on Indian Lake Road might be an OK spot to get a tattoo. The only traffic out there is for the prison, a behavioral hospital and a shooting range. The part of Daytona Beach everyone actually sees is five miles away.
Tattoo artists may finally be allowed to work in Daytona Beach, but they may not want to if they're forced to do it on Indian Lake Road, a heavy industrial section of the city.
"There's no way we'd be able to make a living, keep the doors open, out there," shop owner Dave Keezer said.
Keezer owns the only tattoo shop WFTV could find in the city. When you walk into Daytona Tattoo Design Company, you can look at different ideas for tattoos, you can talk to an artist, you can actually buy your tattoo, but you cannot get your tattoo there.
To actually get the tattoo bought at Daytona Tattoo Design Company, they'll give you directions to another shop. You can drive there yourself, or they will take you there in a courtesy van that's set up for it. The tattoo is actually applied in Volusia County.
"People that want serious artwork, that want really good tattoos and want clean professional environment, that's the kind of people we get," Keezer said.
Planning board members, though, still called tattooing detrimental to the community. The vice-chair told WFTV residents have been clear they don't want tattoo shops, even though Keezer and his employees said there is a huge demand for them.
"They have bong shops and pipe shops and liquor stores and sex shops all over the place, but I guess tattoos have a stigma," Keezer said.
The city worked with Keezer to set up his design shop on A-1-A.
It would take five city council members Wednesday night, a super majority, to end the outright ban.