Steven Canady’s tattoo shop, Dreamcatcher Soundside Tattoo Studio, is finally legal. Until yesterday the shop was violating the city’s zoning ordinances, which dubbed Dreamcatcher to be an “adult business” and therefore not appropriate for general business areas (re: tattoo shops were deemed equivalent to strip clubs and should therefore should stick to the city’s heavy industrial areas and seedy red light districts if such a thing even exists in Harbinger, NC).
Harbinger’s city board defines adult businesses as “any business activity, club or other establishment which permits its employees, members, patrons or guests on its premises to exhibit any specified anatomical areas before any other person or persons” The board denied Canady a business permit, believing that naked body parts would be out on full display on the shop.
Canady kept Dreamcatcher open anyway, regardless of his lack of permit, and decided to appeal the Board of Commissioners’ classification of the shop in Superior Court. The Court determined that Canady couldn’t legally be denied a permit and last week the Board of Commissioners reflected this ruling by decreeing that tattoo shops not be relegated to industrial manufacturing areas and porno alley.