Flex install in the Twin Cities (Minnesota, USA)?

Despite what my username may suggest, I am based in Minnesota and am looking for someone to install a flexClass I was able to snag. My NeXT was installed while I was on a trip out east by one of Dangerous Thing’s suggested installers, leaving me devoid of an installer near my home base. When I tried a local piercing place for the NeXT install, I was told that Human RFID implantation is illegal in Hennepin County (for consent reasons, I gathered). I haven’t found out more, but am wondering if anyone in the area has any suggestions of any places in my vicinity to try.

Well I’m not familiar with the laws in that particular county, I’m sure it’s an exaggeration. At worst I’ve seen piercing laws be so narrow and exacting that it excludes chipping plants… But it doesn’t explicitly make them illegal to perform. Like, if a doctor were to do it for example.

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I was just doing a search for laws in Hennepin county regarding human RFID implants and I couldn’t find anything. I guess maybe I would approach a couple of other piercers depending on how many you have in the area. See if someone else says the same thing and/or check with the county government itself. On the other hand, your username actually makes me think of my football team, Go EAGLES!!!, hahahahahahaha!! :laughing:

2.03 Prohibitions
No individual shall:

Conduct branding, cutting, implantation, suspension, or scarification of another individual;

And

3.20 "Implanting"
Means to fix or set securely an object in or under tissue and includes, but is not limited to, 3-dimensional body art applications. Implanting does not include medical procedures including, but not limited to, pacemaker insertion, cosmetic surgery, and reconstructive surgery performed by board certified medical and dental personnel.

This is specific to Hennepin County but is not mirrored in Minnesota State Law. Medical professionals are explicitly excluded from State Body Art regulations, and my reading of the above is that they can perform any “medical procedure” even in Hennepin County.

Your choices are to look outside the county, or to look for a medical professional.

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This law contradicts itself:

So a small Haworth implant is forbidden body art, but large fake boobies are a medical procedure. No no! Not art!

This is why lawmakers need to stay the fuck away from subjective judgment calls on what people should be allowed to have when what they want don’t hurt nobody else.

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They would claim that the difference is in who performs the procedure. Board certified medical and dental personnel can implant both small implants from Haworth and large ones from Allergan.

I don’t know about you, but I am going to avoid Dentists in Minnesota in case I end up with silicone breast implants.

I didn’t say I agree with the law, just that this is what it says. I also disagree with Oregon law that allows body piercers to put things in as long as they are “non functional”

Yeah but… Unless there are other sections of that body of law you didn’t quote:

So Dr. Boobjob is forbidden from implanting a small Haworth implant too. In other words, it’s not a matter of who does it, it’s just that you can’t do it.

My point is, the difference between a boob job and a Haworth implant - hell, even earrings by the looks of it - is totally arbitrary.

So no individual can implant something but if it is a “medical procedure” which involves something being implanted “by medical and dental personnel” it is not classified as implantation.

Yes, it is stupid. There is more to the law, I was just quoting the relevant sections banning implants. They also explicitly exclude the use of an ear piercing gun by someone who has no clue from the ban. So if you want something done to your body, you have a limited set of choices from clueless in the mall with an ear piercing gun, anything done by a “medical professional”, or a very limited set of piercings performed by a licensed body art technician.

I guess if you can put it in an ear piercing gun then anyone can stick a chip in your ear. :confused:

Edited to add: my guess is that if a Dr implanted a Haworth piece that would be considered “cosmetic surgery”. Alternatively they operate just the other side of the county line.

Hey, there’s an idea: shooting implants into the skin with an air rifle. Technically if you aim it right, an air rifle is an ear-piercing gun right? :slight_smile:

Well see, I’m not sure: it’s the type of job that’s forbidden or exceptionally allowed, not who does it. A Haworth implant job doesn’t become a cosmetic surgery just because a cosmetic surgeon performs it, just as a cosmetic surgery doesn’t stop being a cosmetic surgery if a tattoo artist does it: it just becomes an illegally performed cosmetic surgery.

Anyway, what this all points to is the futility of trying to interpret subjective laws that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

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“no individual” you say? What about one person insert the needle and the other (customer) deploy the plunger and remove? … then no one individual actually performed the “implantation”.

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I’ve been thinking about this quite some time now - what is the difference between body art and cosmetic surgery? Well, there obviously is a difference between my scars and a boob job, but there is definitely some very big grey area… think about Erik Sprague or Dennis Avner, they are (or were) massively modified, and some of their mods, at least in the case of Dennis Avner, were done by methods of cosmetic surgery.
And what’s the difference between making a pointed ear or “correcting” prodtruding ears?

Maybe the difference is who does it - a medical pro or a bodmod pro, but even this line starts to blur. Not that it was a good idea, but that labia removal in Australia was definitely not done by a medical pro. Or a bodmod pro as well, seemingly…

Anyway, I think this differentiation is somehow outdated and needs to be reworked somehow.

Even more silly, if I get the law stated above right, it’s only a problem if one individual performs it on another individual - so this law is totally okay with (potentially) dangerous self-installs, self-cuttings, self-brandings and all that. Ultimately, such laws prevent people to go to professionals and instead, they start trying this stuff for themselves. Not a good result, I think…

This distinction wouldn’t exist if we didn’t have laws that define who’s allowed to do what arbitrarily. Without those laws, I could go to a doctor and have them implant my fun DT toys - or any other crazy human enhancement schemes, at the discretion of the surgeon based on his assessment of the safety of what I want to do. Instead, I have to dive into the world of body modification that I’m totally foreign to.

Don’t get me wrong: now that I know my outlandish artist and his equally outlandish friends, I know they’re good, very pro, very serious, and I trust them. But in all honesty, that’s a crowd I would never have mingled with, had I had the option of going to a surgeon. In fact, I’d say that initial distrust was quite a barrier to entry for me: it took me a while to step inside a tattoo parlor the first time, because I’m really, REALLY not tattoo parlor material.

Hehe, I know that - and you know it’s the exact opposite for me. I deeply distrust doctors of all kind (due to some bad experiences) and would happily visit my bodmod artist or my piercer for anything done to my body. I’d be sooo happy if Arnulf would also happen to be a dentist (as I am stupidly afraid of dentists) or able to do some electroepilation (for I have to visit a cosmetician for that, and she listens to terrible music while working on me and talks that insanely boring “hairdresser-talk”…). :smile:

I still think a good solution would be that doctors, if qualified (!), were allowed to do basic bodmod stuff like implants, while bodmod artist, if qualified, were allowed to do basic medical stuff like implants or anything that doesn’t need a general anaesthetic. That way, everyone could visit the person they feel most comfortable with.

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Well, I had to endure hours of Finnish rap music yesterday at my local installer. It’s okay and some of it is actually fun to listen to, but it’s really not my bag. If I had a choice of background music to listen to, I’d take doctor’s office muzak over hard-core Finnish rap anyday :slight_smile: I did try to get them to play some James Holden once, but that went south in a hurry. Them guys thought I was a little queer :slight_smile:

Yeah, the music at my installer’s places are not really my style as well - pretty fast metal at my piercer’s, and strange, japanese metal or really dark ambient stuff at my bodmod artist’s. Well…
But German Schlager music is definitely some other thing, and while I can endure all kinds of strange music for quite some time, that’s just too much. :smile:

This thread seems relevant and the poster might be able to give you details of who they found to do it also.

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:vault_boy_thumbs_up:

Well that’s not the poster :stuck_out_tongue:
They claimed to end up going to a “medical professional” but yes that would be one of the pieces of hopefully relevant information on the thread :rofl:

I actually tried TheHolyMackerel. The email address for gives me a Delivery Status Notification (Failure) response, and when I try to call them, I get a “This Phone Number Is Not In Service”. Their website isn’t activated (with a note from Wix saying activate now!) I think they’re permanently closed, but at some point, when I’m next over in Saint Paul, I might stop by their shop just to see what’s up.

I think this may warrant a slightly annoyed email to the county board from a constituent. Has anyone drafted up something like that before to use as a template, or should I write my own?

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I’m noticing that the ordinance was implemented in July of 2002. I wonder if pointing out that things have changed in the past 19 years would be helpful in changing it.