Joey Nail Salon

This place is close to where I live so I’ve been coming here for years. Recently they raised the prices with no real improvement to the service or salon. The chairs here still don’t work and are uncomfortable to sit in due to broken massage apparatuses poking out of the chairs. The women who work here do a poor job of callous removal and tend to pay attention to one foot then get bored and spend half the time on the other. I would say it’s not worth it for the price increase. Just go to a nicer place with better work.

I have found my official Queens nail place!
Joey just opened a month ago, and they had slid a pamphlet under my door. Usually I just recycle those, but as I have never gotten my nails done in Queens (and usually make a trip to the East Village:
), I saved this one and tried Joey for a gel manicure.
First of all, this is not a relaxing place, so don’t come here expecting bells and whistles. I can only imagine that getting your nails done here is like getting your nails done while camping, or perhaps while deployed. It’s not clean, the chairs are all ripped, and despite being a brand new salon, everything looked circa 1970. The back table had all kinds of provisions: bananas, rice, bags of random stuff.
As I’m not high maintenance, I totally stayed.
I gazed at the wall and the prices were circa 1970, too! Manicure SIX DOLLARS? Pedicure TWELVE DOLLARS? Gel manicure TWENTY DOLLARS? Fine by me. (Note: I also saw a sign for bikini waxing $ 12 and up. It makes me wonder what kind of sliding scale they operate on but I didn’t go there.)
I selected a nice red, which was very Christmas-​y (or Louboutin-​y*) and sat down at one of the little tables. My manicurist was very fast and swift– very no-​nonsense. She and the two other cosmeticians talked very loudly over me – sometimes shrieking, yelling — and this stressed me out a little bit but I got over it. After one of them left, the others put on some circa 1970s music and things got significantly better.
The nails themselves were done in no time. She did a great job with pushing back my cuticles, but I wish that the paint went all the way down to my skin, you know? I hate it when there’s a millimeter or two of unpainted nail. But so far I have never been satisfied anywhere with this, so I’m not counting this against her. The sides of the nails also have a millimeter or two– but again, this is a common encounter I’ve had. I’m posting a photo– you can decide for yourself, but I give them a B+. (And I can SO hear my British intelligence professor’s voice right now: «A B+ is quite good, remember. Quite good.»)
I was also given a hot towel (nice!) and an arm massage going all the way up to almost my shoulders. (Of course I flexed because I work very hard for my barbell snatches!)
I’ll for sure be back for manicures. At those prices, there’s really no excuse.
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* An aside of fun fashion reading: