Needling Through: How Body Electric’s Brian Keith Thompson Took Piercing to the Next Level

Like all types of physique modification, the artwork of piercing has advanced. Getting one’s ears pierced is frequent regardless of your gender or age, and no one blinks a watch on the website of a nostril, a bellybutton, an eyebrow or perhaps a lip ring lately, although the latter three may appear a bit dated to older folks, visually tied to the early ‘90s punk and metallic heyday after they grew to become hottest and have been seen throughout album covers and MTV.

A brand new technology has found physique jewellery and adornment, and it’s not even a retro factor. Followers of goth aesthetics and style hubs like Dolls Kill, Killstar, and the like, have re-ignited a brand new piercing tradition. With celebrities like Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus rocking them, they’re virtually mainstream. The hashtag “piercings” has 14.7 billion views on TikTok.

Lately, this author’s personal teenager requested to maneuver past earlobes to the cartilage between their nostrils – the septum – and our response wasn’t precisely that of a “cool mother,” although we occur to be tattooed and have a number of holes in our personal ears. For a lot of, facial piercings go too far, even at present. They might not precisely be job killers anymore, however faces are focal factors and, relying on the dimensions of the jewellery, it could nonetheless be distracting. For others, particularly in South Asian cultures, it’s commonplace and represents social standing and a coming-of-age, signifying womanhood. In India, nostril piercing is solely custom.

As soon as we got here to a compromise – two piercings: one nostril, and an higher ear – and we needed to resolve the place to go. Piercing parlors aren’t as prevalent as they as soon as have been in Los Angeles, and mall piercing stations at locations like Claire’s Equipment are extraordinarily dangerous and extra painful than the options.

For security and high quality, a little analysis was so as. Google “finest in piercers in L.A.” proper now and one title comes up time and again: Brian Keith Thompson at Physique Electrical on Melrose Ave. Thompson is the proprietor and “chief piercing officer” on the second-story store, which for a few years was finest identified only for its tattoo work. We acquired our first piece of ink there in actual fact, so coming again could be a full-circle expertise. Whereas Thompson and Physique Electrical have gained consideration for a constant celeb clientele (he’s touted as “Beyonce’s piercer” by name-driven publications and tabloids), the longtime Angeleno additionally is thought for his soulful, communicative method to the artwork of piercing, which is something however pretentious or celebrity-seeking.

After we arrived on the Melrose studio, Thompson was speaking with a mom and her two younger daughters, each of whom needed to get “constellation piercings” – the time period coined for his clever stars-in-the-sky-like ear designs, which normally characteristic clusters of tiny studs, gems and delicate hoops operating from the underside of the lobe all the best way as much as the highest of the ear, every part with a special title: the daith, the helix, and the orbital, being simply three of them.

We opted for an “industrial” ear piercing, which runs by two factors of cartilage on prime of the ear, and the aforementioned nostril. Thompson talked about what he was doing as he took a big needle and pushed by the pores and skin and flesh in a relaxed, relaxed method that made everybody really feel snug. It was over shortly, with minimal wincing, flinching or blood.

Subsequent comes the therapeutic stage, and if you happen to’re pondering of getting pierced, please word: It takes consideration, numerous day by day care and might contain swelling and irritation, because the physique adjusts to the wound. Even so, as is usually the case after one’s first physique modification, our child is already itching for extra.

Bars and Barbells

Brian Keith Thompson got here to Los Angeles from Texas on the age of 12, after his dad and mom divorced in 1984. “I used to be at all times simply totally different. I regarded totally different, I believed in another way,” he remembers. “So I moved right here with my dad I lastly felt free to be who I needed. However then I acquired right here and I used to be bullied. The issues didn’t go away. I had lengthy hair again then, listened to metallic, and I used to be referred to as hesher. In eighth grade, the children picked me up at lunch and threw me in a trash can in entrance of the entire college. It simply sucked, continually getting messed with and beat up. So I simply type of retracted. I at all times mentioned that sooner or later, I’m gonna make these folks see what I’m manufactured from.”

Thompson was suicidal as a teen, till he met a brand new pal at an area Goal. The man he referred to as his mentor in the end launched him to cholo tradition and gangs, which gave him the sense of belonging he craved. It was each a very good and a foul factor. He began hanging with the principally Latino Canoga Park Alabama Road gang, who referred to him as “gaba,” quick for “gabacho,” a time period typically used for white folks.

“These folks have been like brothers and it was like being within the army, too – there was a rank construction and a respect stage. I used to be part of one thing that had a purposeful base to it. And it made me really feel highly effective,” he says.

However ultimately, he was within the unsuitable place on the unsuitable time and it acquired him pinned with a homicide cost. He was on the scene of a taking pictures, although he didn’t pull the set off. In 1998 he went to jail for 2 years, however in the end fought the case and acquired out.

Thompson had labored at his father’s tech firm and been within the Marines prior. He was good and decided. As soon as he centered on getting out of jail, he made it occur. Although he says it was onerous to be white in L.A. county at the moment, he made associates. Compelled to decide on an allegiance, as most inmates are, he joined the white gang, “the Woods,” out of sheer self-preservation. He acquired a job serving meals to the inmates in super-maximum and would sneak extras for everybody, forging connections and incomes respect.

“Once I acquired out, I heard, ‘see you assholes subsequent month,’ and it’s a man within the tower wanting down (at me). And I mentioned, ‘no, sir, you’ll by no means see me once more.’”

Although he says, in some methods, jail was “the very best factor that ever occurred to me,” he was centered on transferring on as soon as launched. He began getting the gang and jail ink he’d acquired coated up with new artwork, which led him to the famed Physique Electrical tattoo on Melrose. He “grew to become obsessed” with getting work accomplished at the same time as he was nonetheless working at his dad’s firm, earning money and saving it, as he hid his tattoos underneath his enterprise fits.

Earlier than the inventory market crash of 2008, Thompson cashed out his 401k and purchased the store, set on connecting with folks in new methods and revitalizing tattoo and piercing tradition in Los Angeles. He’s accomplished simply that. Physique Electrical is now identified globally for each its ink work and piercing providers, and Thompson hopes the place will stay an area landmark as soon as he’s gone. He’s been renovating and reworking the constructing for the previous few years, placing in new Deco and classic touches like marble and fixtures from historic L.A. landmarks. The store is gleamingly stunning, clear and stylish. You stroll in and also you simply know you’re in a high quality spot.

“I needed to make it a pleasant place, extra customer-oriented, in order that regardless of who you might be, you don’t need to really feel intimidated to stroll in,” Thompson says. “ I additionally needed to point out a finer aspect of it. I didn’t need all that tribal stuff anymore. I like diamonds and gold and high quality jewellery.”

Thompson’s presence and private type solely add to this vibe. Wearing trendy fits and pristine sneakers – his signature look – he additionally has a shaved head and an array of iced piercings, together with stretched earlobes that shimmer underneath overhead lighting and within the sunshine that beams into the store from giant home windows overlooking Melrose Ave. That is an elevated piercing atmosphere that’s additionally fairly relaxed and welcoming, for well-known folks (he pierces in a personal backroom), for different sorts, and for households.

Thompson acquired into getting closely tattooed in 2001, and he acquired into piercing in 2006. However he had at all times been fascinated by each. “One in all my favourite films was Pulp Fiction,” he remembers, about what first made him assume critically in regards to the artwork of piercing. “That complete scene the place John Travolta asks about piercing weapons when he will get his medicine and (Rosanna Arquette) says how weapons go in opposition to the whole lot it’s about…  Then he talks about ‘all of the shit in her face,” and (Eric Stoltz)] says, ‘that’s Judy, my spouse.’ That scene is burned in my mind. After which I grew to become a fucking piercer. That’s simply so bizarre to me.”

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Whereas Thompson has cast his personal path on this planet of piercing, we’d be remiss if we didn’t give a nod to the groundbreaking figures of the previous who turned piercing right into a bona fide motion, particularly as they have been based mostly proper right here in L.A. The Gauntlet, based by grasp piercer Jim Ward within the late ‘70s, was the primary enterprise of its sort, with an unique location in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard, adopted by retailers in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and even Paris.

Although piercing first emerged from queer and BDSM communities in Southern California and gained traction with the recognition of the trendy primitive motion (as seen within the iconic Re:Search e book Trendy Primitives: Tattoo, Piercing, Scarification) it shortly grew and have become fashionable with every kind of people that steadily had increasingly jewellery and designs to select from, together with totally different gauges (thicknesses) and naturally, locations to pierce. Because the Gauntlet piercers and those that discovered from them grew to become extra fashionable, the general public grew to become extra educated, too. The protected, skilled practices in place led to the recognition of extra intimate physique components (nipples, tongues and genitalia, for instance) for a lot of.

“Its main focus was on physique piercing as a option to improve intercourse,” says the Gantlet’s proprietor and acknowledged pioneer of piercing Jim Ward tells LA Weekly. “In these days, we did numerous nipple and genital piercings. Issues have modified dramatically since then. Gauntlet might have created an business, however the focus lately is totally on piercings above the neck and for beauty functions.”

“Right now’s requirements for methods, instruments, jewellery designs, and ethos, shared by essentially the most superior practitioners, practically all hint their roots again to the Gauntlet,” provides Paul King, a grasp piercer who labored for Ward in all three former Gauntlet areas and later went on to open his personal area Chilly Metal in SF. “The fashionable physique piercing business rose from the inspiration developed by (Jim) and unfold by masterfully expert piercers reminiscent of Elayne Angel.”

Angel, the primary particular person to be licensed as a Grasp Piercer at The Gauntlet, actually wrote the e book on the apply, The Piercing Bible– a tome Thompson beneficial we learn for analysis. It options data on the whole lot you’d ever wish to find out about piercing. “Once I was a Gauntlet shopper within the early Nineteen Eighties and have become supervisor there later in that decade, physique piercing was not but an accepted a part of fashionable tradition,” she says. “Piercing was an obscure fringe exercise, and folks thought we have been freaks, weirdos and perverts. It was so totally different, it’s onerous for youthful folks at present to even think about the shock and disgust onlookers typically displayed when confronted with physique piercings again then.”

“There was an incredible sense of newness and journey when the sphere was nonetheless in its infancy,” she continues. “Piercing had but to grow to be an business. That was a interval of experimentation and innovation, together with trials and errors. We discovered quite a bit about what to not do, together with our successes. It was a really thrilling period that I recall fondly. Although my household was far much less passionate about my profession alternative; they’d by no means heard of a “skilled piercer.” Finally, they got here round, and so they’re now happy with me for my function as a pioneer within the discipline. These days, everybody is aware of that piercing exists, and it has grow to be an possibility that almost anybody may train.”

Each Angel and King extremely suggest Ward’s e book Working the Gauntlet (and its accompanying web site (runningthegauntlet-book.com) as an important useful resource for anybody concerned with piercing tradition. For extra background and historical past try King’s Physique Piercing Archive (bodypiercingarchive.org) and Angel’s e book website (piercingbible.com/the-piercing-bible-book).

Stars and Studs

Whereas piercing is not essentially an outsider factor, it nonetheless provides a bit of edge to anybody who chooses do it. Rihanna (a Thompson shopper) has proudly proven off her nipple piercing, which certainly impressed copycats and normalized the apply. Thompson and Physique Electrical get essentially the most consideration media-wise because of the celeb angle, however he’s constructed a robust neighborhood fan base as effectively. Like most practitioners with shut shopper relationships, he isn’t a name-dropper. His longtime shopper listing is on the market on the internet, although, and along with RiRi, it’s stellar to say the least: Queen Bey, in addition to Christina Aguilera, Angelina Jolie and most just lately Doja Cat, simply to call just a few. Scarlett Johansson (pictured under) got here to him for jewellery design and placement.

Visiting the store (which nonetheless provides an array of tattoo artists up entrance and a piercing studio within the again) has grow to be fashionable content material for influencers not solely because of the star energy, but in addition Thompson’s eye-catching star-like placement type, particularly on ears. Different retailers and piercers have tried to repeat his fashionable constellation designs, however he’s the acknowledged commonplace, taking an clever method not solely to the place, however to what – selecting varied weights and shapes that adorn every ear, nostril and physique half he works on. He won’t be the most cost effective, however when puncturing one’s face and physique, who actually desires to stint? You get what you pay for. And similar to the L.A. pioneers of the previous, he’s transferring the artwork of piercing ahead.

“Once I began right here I needed to point out a finer aspect of piercing,” Thompson tells us, as we end up our child’s session and a really participating dialog. “I needed do one thing recent and new. You recognize, after I acquired into this enterprise, everybody mentioned ‘you possibly can’t earn a living within the tattoo/piercing enterprise anymore.’ I’d inform them ‘yeah, you’re proper, ‘you’ can’t, however watch me as a result of I cannot cease.’ When I’m into one thing and wish to do one thing, I’ll simply grasp what I like each day. I’ll outwork everybody. And I’ll give every shopper the identical depth within the first 5 fucking minutes that I get right here, as I do the final 5 minutes earlier than I go away. I give all people the identical and so they really feel it. It’s a part of the expertise.”

Physique Electrical, 7274 Melrose Ave., 323-954-0408. bodyelectrictattoo.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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