Mutilation. It’s all the rage — for middle-schoolers. Six girls, some in braces, lined up in front of a storefront on St. Marks Place after school this week. At least it looked like St. Marks Place. For this once-grungy stretch of the East Village, where a 7-Eleven recently joined the hodgepodge of bong-selling head shops, has turned into the mecca for a special form of self-expression:
St. Marks is the body-piercing capital of North America. If you have a child, you just might want to check her belly button.
Kids lined up in front of one of a dozen shops that ink tattoos and pierce virtually any stretch of skin on the human body, from morning until midnight. So I asked one young lady awaiting her turn to plunk down $20 to the burly piercer, “How old are you?’’
Eighteen? Sixteen?
Good lord — 14?
“Twelve,’’ Debra whispered. Then she giggled.
“It’s cool,’’ she explained. “But my mom would kill me.’’
Then Debra continued shopping for a hook to stick in and out of her lip. Her young pals disappeared to get pierced in places you don’t want to think about.
Suddenly, the owner of Village Dream, a tiny shop at 3 St. Marks place, piped up.
“It’s legal!’’ he protested. “Totally legal.’’
Legal to sell a pre-pubescent a $25 hole in the navel? How about a forked tongue?
Well, guess what, New Yorkers — the man is right!
New York has a minimum age to receive a tattoo: 18. And to drink alcohol: 21.
You must be 18 to legally purchase a pack of smokes. At 16, you may apply for a learner’s permit to drive.
But the minimum age to get your skin, mouth or private parts breached by a potentially infection-causing needle:
Zero.
That’s right. In this wildly regulated city, where a birdbath or shared pot of cheese is considered a dire risk by the Health Department, there is no minimum age for turning one’s body into a pincushion. Setting a minimum requires action from the state Legislature, which has done squat. City health police could scream. But they’re too busy chaining up Matilda the Cat at The Algonquin hotel to mind the kids.
“There are no statewide regulations now in place related to body piercing,’’ said Peter Constantakes, spokesman for the state Department of Health.
Meanwhile, merchants need licenses to operate tanning beds or cut hair. But while the state’s Web site warns customers about dirty needles, no permit is required for piercers. Any old grimy soul can legally cut into skin and insert metal studs in places the sun don’t shine. All an operator needs is to put out a shingle. And pray he doesn’t maim anyone.
This outrage first came to light last May, with a story on Fox 5 TV. But then, something strange happened.
As word spread like cancer that all a kid needs to get pierced is $20 and a high threshold for pain, the average age of piercees has plummeted.
Sixth- and seventh-graders are regular customers, piercing providers told me. But in the Wild West of body decoration, no records are kept. No one knows how many kids are at risk, and how young.
From the heavy foot traffic I saw on St. Marks Place, multiplied by thousands of piercers operating in the five boroughs, the numbers are downright scary.
It’s also unknown how many kids suffer potentially permanent damage. Many hide piercings from parents. But some adults are complicit in their kids’ quest for self-alteration.
“A mother came in with her 13-year-old daughter asking for her cheeks pierced. Thirteen!’’ said Mitchell Konevsky, manager of Addiction Tattoo on St. Marks, which turns away customers who can’t prove they’re 18.
“You can get infections. A younger person who’s not fully grown is getting a piercing from someone who’s not a professional,’’ he said. “They should definitely make a law. We have 16-year-old girls who want their nipples pierced!’’
Konevsky knows that the kids he turns down just go down the street to another piercing parlor.
Girls and a few boys lined up in front of 1st Rich Body Piercing at 1 St. Marks Place on a recent afternoon. They traveled from Brooklyn, which my informal head count reveals has overtaken Manhattan as the place where more kids are pierced than any other. They flock to St. Marks because few questions are asked here.
“She’s getting her tongue pierced,’’ reported a boy without a hint of shame.
How old are these girls?
“Fourteen,’’ he said. “Well, 13.’’
How low can it go? Until adults act, we’re bound to see mutilated preschoolers.
All NY parents haunted by Etan
Etan Patz’s parents have waited more than three decades for the child to come home. But the little boy remains lost.
Etan was 6 in 1979 when his parents, Stanley and Julie, allowed him to walk to his SoHo school-bus stop alone for the first time. He was never seen again.
Manhattan was very different back then. SoHo was just another gritty neighborhood, not the pricy, boutique-choked enclave it is today. Even so, it was inconceivable that a small, blond boy could just vanish.
The case still haunted the city as cops and FBI agents dug up a SoHo basement for days, searching for Etan’s remains, but came up empty. Since Etan’s disappearance, New Yorkers have learned to watch their kids like diamonds, as the mystery of what happened to the boy remains unsolved.
Maybe forever.
Edwards om alone
Karma’s coming back to bite them.
John Edwards lost the presidency after his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter, called “flaky’’ by a fellow yogi at her “$5 Karma’’ yoga class in North Carolina. Edwards himself called Hunter a “crazy slut,’’ a former aide testified at Edwards’ sensational trial.
Edwards is charged with funneling $1 million in campaign cash to hush up his baby mama, while wife Elizabeth lay dying of cancer. Now, Edwards’ romance with Hunter is kaput. The pair barely speak while passing their 4-year-old daughter back and forth.
Was it worth it?
Kidney boss’ unkindest cut
Your boss might expect you to donate an arm and a leg to your job. But Debbie Stevens of Long Island was asked to donate her left kidney so her boss, Jackie Brucia, could get a lifesaving organ transplant. Then, Brucia repaid Stevens’ generosity by firing her from the Atlantic Automotive Group, Stevens claims in a bombshell state Human Rights Commission complaint.
The unemployed Stevens now feels she has no choice.
“Give me my kidney back!” she demanded. These things aren’t easy to come by.
At lease, try to be fair
You don’t have to be poor to win one of a million rent-regulated apartments in New York, just connected or lucky.
Dashing the hopes of landlords and unlucky tenants, the Supreme Court this week declined to review the insane state of city rents. This means rent-stabilized flats will continue to be passed down to future generations, while the rest of us pay inflated prices to make up for the loss.
They say life’s unfair. This is especially true in New York.