San FranciscoShopping

Beauty shopping in San Francisco

  1. A

    Black & Blue Tattoo

    This women-owned-and-operated tattoo parlor gets it in ink with designs that range from graphic armbands to shoulder-to-shoulder spans of the Golden Gate Bridge. Check out the artists’ work at the shop or online first for ideas, then book a consultation with the artist whose work interests you most. Once you’ve talked over the design, you can book your tattoo – you’ll need to show up sober, well-fed and clear-headed for your transformation.

    reviewed

  2. B

    Lyle Tuttle Tattooing

    This shop was started by tattoo legend Lyle Tuttle, who inked San Francisco, and celebs like Janis Joplin, Cher and Joan Baez. Since his retirement, the shop's owned and operated by Tanja Nixx, who's developed a following of her own for full-color flying carp and Day of the Dead sugar skulls. Tuttle's shop worked with the SF Health Department to set industry standards for safe, sanitary practices, so you're in good hands here.

    reviewed

  3. C

    Spring

    Spring has sprung a fresh new idea: housework shouldn’t mean an instant headache from noxious cleaning fumes. Instead, this store thoughtfully provides all the nontoxic lemon and lavender products you need to clean up your home and your environmental act. The bamboo-fiber bedding is pricey, but Caldrea cleansers and Farmaesthetics soaps in ‘sweet pea’ and ‘cornmeal chamomile’ smell scrumptious and are priced to move.

    reviewed

  4. D

    Nancy Boy

    All you closet pomaders and after-sun balmers: wear those products with pride, without feeling like the dupe of some cosmetics conglomerate. Clever Nancy Boy knows you’d rather pay for the product than for advertising campaigns featuring the starlet du jour, and delivers locally made products with effective plant oils that are tested on boyfriends, never animals.

    reviewed

  5. E

    Sumbody

    Tans are too LA; in SF everyone is after that dewy, fogged-in-for-months fresh face. This Sebastopol-based company uses natural ingredients like rice bran and honey in the aptly named Rice & Shine facial wash, kava kava in the narcolepsy-inducing Knockout Bath Melt, and coconut cream in sea-salt scrubs that leave you as emollient as a Pier 39 sea lion.

    reviewed

  6. F

    elizabethW

    Thermometers permanently hover around 70°F in San Francisco, but local scent-maker elizabethW supplies the tantalizing aromas of changing seasons without the sweaty brows or frozen toes. Sweet Tea smells like a Georgia porch in summertime, Vetiver like autumn in Maine. For a true SF fragrance, Leaves is as audaciously green as Golden Gate Park in January.

    reviewed

  7. G

    Benefit

    Get cheeky with BeneTint, the dab-on liquid blush made from roses, or raise some eyebrows with Brow Zings tinted brow wax – they’re two of Benefit’s signature products invented in San Francisco by the twin-sister team. Surgery is so LA: in SF, overnight Angelinas swear by LipPlump and Lindsay Lohan dark-eye-circles are cured with Ooh La Lift.

    reviewed

  8. H

    Braindrops

    New Yorkers and Berliners fly in for original custom designs by top tattoo artists here – bring design ideas to your consultant, or trust them to make suggestions. Piercings are done here gently without a gun, with body jewelry ranging from pop-star opal belly-button studs to mondo jade ear spools.

    reviewed