It’s amazing how often Laguna Beach’s alleged 6 million visitors are used to justify dubious things.
The latest is the City Council’s green light for another tattoo parlor, the city’s sixth. During public testimony on May 14, the statistic was used to prove that all of these pass-through daytrippers need tattoos.
There were other more important reasons that the council (with the exception of George Weiss), went along with the Planning Commission’s prior approval of Vatican Gallery, at 618 S. Coast Hwy.
Essentially, Laguna Beach city leaders do not want to get their hands dirty with business competition.
It doesn’t matter that the new tattoo parlor sits nearly next door to Laguna’s oldest shop, Laguna Tattoo.
It doesn’t matter that every Laguna resident we’ve polled on this issue says, “Wait, what? Another tattoo parlor?”
Yes, sadly. It’s not that tattoo parlors are bad. It’s their saturation. In other words, here’s the trendy business mix of today’s Laguna:
Tattoo parlor, coffee shop, coffee shop, tattoo parlor, closed restaurant, coffee shop, closed restaurant, coffee shop, tattoo parlor….
And the council washes its hands because the zoning allows it.
That’s not to say at a future date they could consider a moratorium, which Councilmember Alex Rounaghi alluded to during the meeting.
“Our job today is to act in a quasi-judicial role, and so we’re supposed to make findings based on the existing laws,” he said. “Even if we were all against tattoo shops in Laguna Beach, this would not be the proper venue to be talking about that.”
So get ready for 6 million tourists, clamoring for tattoos, coffee and bad choices.
