Elsa Weingeist has filed a lawsuit against a longtime East Village piercing shop after an employee allegedly stabbed her tongue repeatedly during a botched procedure.
Weingeist, 25, walked into Funky Town on St. Marks Place last September seeking a tongue stud, drawn by the storefront’s “body piercings” signage. The psychiatric office worker and neighborhood native left in an ambulance instead, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court complaint filed Oct. 16.
Employee Shamim Islam assured her the piercing would go smoothly, the lawsuit claims. What followed, according to Weingeist, was a nightmare of repeated punctures and mounting blood.
“It was mostly just him apologizing that he was messing up and asking to do it again and I could only take it so many times so I told him just he needed to stop after the fourth time,” she told The Post.
Her mouth filled with blood as she dialed 911, she said. Weingeist and a friend departed before police arrived, frustrated by the emergency response time. An urgent care facility then directed her to a hospital emergency room, where she underwent bloodwork and received a tetanus shot.
“It was so painful. It was hard to talk,” she recalled.
The Fashion Institute of Technology graduate spent weeks in recovery. Standard tongue piercings require a single clean pass with a clamp and six to eight weeks of healing; Islam penetrated her tongue multiple times despite using the proper tool, the suit alleges.
Weingeist demanded to see Islam’s piercing license afterward and discovered he had none, she claimed. The wall credentials bore no piercing certifications and no name matching his, she said.
“Nobody in there had a piercing license,” she told The Post. “I had confidence in him [before the piercing] because he had told me that he’d been doing this a long time.”
Funky Town has operated in the East Village for nearly two decades and accumulated scathing Yelp reviews spanning years. A November 2020 complaint accused a piercer of using wrong jewelry, producing a crooked result that infected within days. A July 2025 reviewer described four months of bleeding despite proper care, adding that neither ID nor paperwork was requested and flies swarmed the piercing room. An October 2025 testimonial reported an unhealed piercing eight months later.
A Funky Town employee reached by phone told The Post that Islam resigned shortly after the alleged incident. The worker acknowledged Islam lacked piercing licensure but maintained others in the shop are properly credentialed. The employee offered a blunt assessment of the lawsuit’s motive: “she wants money.” On the procedure itself, the worker was dismissive: “You don’t like [the piercing], take it out it’s not a problem.”
Weingeist is seeking unspecified damages. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which licenses piercing studios, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the New York State Department of Health nor the NYPD.