Forevermore Tattoo Parlour

Forevermore is my go-​to recommendation for all things tattoos and piercing in Glasgow.
I discovered the place after a few bad experiences whilst trying to get a tattoo priced up a few years ago, and their friendly/​casual/​non judgmental service style really sold Forevermore to me as a place I could feel at ease (crucial when there’s needles and flesh involved).
Over the years I’ve been in for a few piercings with Lola, who I can’t praise enough. She puts you at ease and is great with aftercare.
Lola has given me 3 piercings now (2 nose, 1 tragus) and I’ve had a tattoo from a guest artist over from Italy for the week, whose name I forget, but was very friendly and gentle with a tattoo newbie! Each time I went in alone, was made to feel at home and seen almost immediately, and everything has turned out clean and healthy looking. No room for complaints here!

I’m still chuffed from a great encounter at Forevermore earlier this week. I got a fabulous tattoo and was very impressed with the shop overall. But first, I have to bore you with the back story…
I have been needing a cover-​up tattoo on my right arm for several years now, ever since it became painfully apparent that not even lasers were strong enough to get rid of my turquoise and green high school mistake. For a long time, I couldn’t think of what I would possibly want on my arm that I’d be happy with until last summer, when inspiration finally struck. I drew up the art and started shopping around for a place to get a good cover-​up. This step turned out to be MUCH more annoying than I expected. I tried three different tattoo studios, two of which ignored my emails and one that made me wait six weeks for a consultation, then forgot to schedule me in on the day and ultimately dished out a bunch of empty lip to me about why my tattoo wouldn’t work (that was Custom Ink, by the way — not impressed at all with the snobbery there).
At this point, I was about ready to give up on the whole tattoo idea until my next trip back home to Seattle, but as luck would have it, I recently received two recommendations for Forevermore within just a few days of each other. It seemed serendipitous; I couldn’t let it go uninvestigated.
I popped in to Forevermore on Monday morning while I was running some errands in the city centre. I had my art with me and I told them about the cover-​up I wanted. Instead of giving me flannel about booking a consultation, etc. etc, they asked to see my art and my old tattoo and immediately handed me off to Sergi (their regular guest artist), as what I had drawn seemed like a good match for him. Sergi looked at the art and said it seemed doable. When did I want to get it done? Uh… how about last Christmas? That was what I had in mind when I first prepared the art. But in the absence of a time machine, I said, «as soon as possible!» When Sergi responded with, «how about tomorrow?» I nearly fainted. Seriously, this silly saga has gone on SO LONG that the possibility of actually being tattooed within the next 36 hours seemed completely unreal to me.
Somehow or another, I got over my disbelief and booked in for Tuesday afternoon. I spent the next day in a haze of cautious excitement — surely I can’t be getting tattooed TODAY! But at the appointed time, I reported to Forevermore and within a few minutes, the needle pounding away at my right arm told me this was definitely happening. The whole thing took about two hours, but I already knew within the first few strokes of the lining that everything was going to be great. Sergi put me right at ease — this was my first tattoo in 15 years and his laid-​back, yet capable demeanour was the perfect combination for someone like me with a few pent-​up jitters. Periodically throughout the process, he gave me a few chances to check out my arm in the mirror to make sure things were still progressing the way I had hoped — they definitely were, and I appreciated that.
Two hours later, I had exactly the tattoo I wanted. Soreness and all, I was chuffed to bits. The colours look great, it’s quite a successful cover-​up, and most importantly, I’ll be proud to show it off once it heals. One thing I learned about my earlier experiences with tattoos is that if you put them somewhere visible, EVERYONE will feel entitled to talk to you about them. My mistake with those first couple of tattoos was getting work done that I didn’t really care to discuss (because there was nothing to say about them). Now I have an actual talking point on my arm and I’ll be glad to discuss it with all the nosy people who will inevitably ask, «what’s your tattoo all about?» I can hardly wait.

Well, I’ve been back again and a few things have changed since my last review so I thought I best update it and bring it into the FUTURE, I mean present of course.
This place still rocks my lil’ world, nae change there my friends. Just a few new faces around. Fiona, the shop manager and piercer no longer works here and neither does Stephen. Instead we now have the lovely Lorraine as shop manager, Lola Perry is now the resident body piercer (they still do the 1^st Saturday of the month all piercings £15 deal too), there’s a couple of new tattoo artists too ~ Kyle Smith is the shops new portrait/​realism artist and the new apprentice is Roberto Poliri. As well as the new, resident, faces they also have an exciting guest artist for once a week every month. If you go to their website or Facebook page they usually have all the deets of who’s coming to visit. I was gutted I missed the amazing Allan Graves, damn. But he may visit again, yay!
My usual tattoo artist David Pozo (Forevermore’s owner) has now moved from Glasgow to warmer climes but luckily he still comes back to tattoo for one week every month in the shop. Phew. I was worried he’d gone and left for good but thankfully no.
I was in Forevermore recently and I was lucky enough to catch David on one of his weeks in jolly Glasgow town and I’m so glad I did ~ needless to say I left the shop a very happy bunny with another super piece of tattoo art on my arm, cheers David!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again ~ if you haven’t been to Forevermore then please do check them out. They be damn fine and you knows it!