Oakland may not be the place to park but it is definitely the place to get your nails done.
People come from all over the Bay Area to pamper themselves done at one of the dozens of salons in the East Bay city. The San Francisco Chronicle says there are at least 18 nail boutiques between Interstate 580 and the Piedmont border.
But the Mecca of manicures may soon have to find a new address if the Oakland City Council has its way. Oakland wants to regulate the nail salons, and possibly issue a moratorium on new ones opening, because some council members believe the city is too dependent on them.
"Right now we have absolutely no controls or regulations over nail salons, which have proliferated and, I think,
become a problem," Vice Mayor Ignacio De La Fuente told the paper. "I wouldn't be surprised if Oakland has 1,000 of them."
The city's Agency and Council Community & Economic Development Committee took on the issue last month where they discussed charging close to $3,000 for a permit to open a new salon.
The move would price out several mom and pop shops in an industry where up to 80 percent of nail salons in the state are estimated to be run by Asian immigrants, with a large portion of them being Vietnamese.
Stricter health and safety regulations would also be difficult to enforce since several owners do not speak English as their first language and do not know that code requirements are available in several languages, according to Hypen Magazine.
