February 24, 2005 6:12 AM

You know, if you put one of those things in your shoulders, we could hook you up and run you through a car wash

Glasses get piercing stares: Tired of frames that slip, artist creates alternative

It’s another chapter in Man’s continuing evolution. Time was when correcting poor eyesight meant balancing a pair of glasses on one’s nose. For one visionary, though, that was no longer good enough, so James Sooy began to look for a better way. After some trial and error, he hit on an idea that, will, makes me glad I just went ahead and got LASIK surgery last year.

Kids, do NOT try this at home….

Of course, if you CAN handle having a metal rod installed by having the skin on the bridge of your nose pierced, well, knock yourself out, cowboy. Surprisingly, the cost once the piercing is completed is very affordable…but not, you CANNOT take that as an endorsement of any sort.

Feeling the need to rebel after my divorce, I got my left ear pierced. That was enough self-mutilation for me. I’m not necessarily adverse to pain, but I have a difficult time understanding the concept of enduring the pain of having something permanently INSTALLED in your person- particularly something that is going to make you look like an extra from a Star Trek episode.

Gross. Weird. Freaky.

James Sooy hears it all.

But when you stick a barbell through the bridge of your nose and screw prescription lenses to it, the 22-year-old Dallas artist admits, you come to expect some criticism.

Beauty is, after all, in the eyeglasses of the beholder.

“Since I’ve been wearing glasses so long, it was kind of odd,” said Sooy, who created the “pierced glasses” that he now sports. “I’d reach up to take them off and I’d realize they were stuck on there.”

After years fighting frames that seemed to always slip down his nose, Sooy got a bridge piercing ó a relatively common piercing through the bridge of the nose. In December, he and his friend Oliver Gilroy affixed the prescription lenses to it.

Shortly after, Body Modification Ezine featured Sooy and the glasses….

Sooy said he received 15,000 hits on his Web site the week after the article came out. Now he has created another site ó www.piercedglasses.com ó to promote the idea, which he hopes to market.

“I even had one eye doctor who said he was interested in helping us kind of work this thing out,” Sooy said. “I would hope that anyone could go into a LensCrafters and pick out a pair if they wanted to.”

OK, this is creepy, but how often does it happen that a visionary who is initially seen as a freak ends up wildly successful- and filthy rich? Steven Jobs, Bill Gates…no, they didn’t pierce the bridge of their nose and have a rod installed, but they did chart a different path, and our world is a different place for it. Am I saying that the same thing is going to happen to James Sooy? Not at all, but if this idea doesn’t catch on, he’ll probably be able to rent himself out as an antenna.

Of course, there is the down side. When Sooy sets off an airport metal detector…well, imagine trying to explain why you have a metal barbell installed on the bridge of your nose. (Well, I can also be used as a coatrack….)

And just consider the jewelry possibilities. Or not.

When I lived in Portland, OR, KGON radio used to pass out bumper stickers that said IF IT’S LOUD, YOU’RE TOO OLD. The same principle may well apply here. If it seems to freakin’ wierd, you’re too damn old. Yep, that would be tough to argue with. I guess I’ve just come to believe that it generally isn’t a good idea to push sharp objects through your skin, regardless of which body part you might be talking about.

Just consider the possibilities if this becomes a trend. People will be going to LensCrafters to get their bridge pierced. Yikes….

Whatever happened to just getting contact lenses??

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 24, 2005 6:12 AM.

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