For the past 6 years Joe Lathe-Vitale has owned the tattoo parlor “Have Fun Be Lucky” on W. 36th street in Baltimore, MD. The only one in his area. Unfortunately for him, there is a new kid in town. Dave Wah introduced himself at the meeting of Hampden Village Merchants Association, a week ago, and announced that he wanted to open a tattoo parlor and art studio overlooking the avenue. This new shop, “Stay Humble” would be opened across the street from “Have Fun Be Lucky”.

Lathe-Vitale shat a brick and asked for the association to oppose Wah’s enterprise. He is claiming that it is unfair competition. "You can't just have a business and then fight off anybody else," Wah said. Lathe-Vitale’s argument is: "If you have a specialty Italian deli, people go there because it's a specialty Italian deli," he said by way of example. "If you put five of them on the same block, it just doesn't make business sense." He then added, "I think as a merchants' association, their primarily goal should be the well-being of the people in the association, not just to welcome new merchants."

Ray, owner of Atomic Books and Hampden columnist for the Baltimore Messenger said "The sense I got was that most merchants think we shouldn't be resisting small independent business competition. It's not like this was a big, corporate tattoo chain. Should we try to stop more pizza places from moving into the neighborhood? That doesn't make any sense to me."

I totally get where Lathe-Vitale is coming from, he feels a certain way about the idea of any for of local competition. The truth is, all (true) artists are different. Wah’s shop will have a completely different look and feel. He has already spent $28,000 to renovate the space.

"I totally get it," Lathe-Vitale said. "I don't want to be the boy who cried."

But he added, "I'd be foolish if I didn't fight for what I've established in the past six years."
Does Wah deserve to have his parlor declined by the association? Or Do you think Lathe-Vitale needs to suck it up and step up his game?

Source: Baltimore Sun

Yep, me thinks old Joe needs to imbibe a bucket of concrete. Competition should make him strive to make his shop better than the new one. That's a good thing.

A. The title of this thread reminded me of this:


B. I want to agree with everyone else here and say that if he does good work, he'll be fine. But I also know that there are A LOT of stupid people in the world, and those people are perfectly content to get terrible work done as long as it is cheap. This guy's established business really may take a hit. I still think that means that he needs to figure out a creative way to make it work instead of whining about it though.