Pangea Piercing Owner Announces ‘Final Closing’ After Continued Protests

After months of criticism and protests, an embattled piercing shop owner says he’s closing for good.

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce the final closing of PANGEA,” states a notice now posted in the window of Pangea Piercing, 211 E. Liberty St., in downtown Ann Arbor.

“With organized Communists harassing my clients and attempting to doxx them, and a local media that’s all too comfortable taking rumors as facts, there’s just no way forward for me.”

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Potts initially closed his shop in August following allegations that he has a history of sharing white supremacist views with customers. He denies being a racist, but his critics believe otherwise.

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Members of two activist groups — BAMN, which stands for By Any Means Necessary, and Stop Trump Ann Arbor — protested at city hall this week to call on City Council to help shut down the shop.

The controversy started on Aug. 21 with a social media post from a customer describing an encounter with Potts.

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Potts has described the allegations as “pretty ugly” and said he believes they were twisted and embellished.

In explaining his encounter with the female customer who made the social media post that went viral, Potts said he had a conversation with a “blond and blue” graduate of Pioneer High School and expressed “how I have great sympathy for someone in her shoes, since I’ve heard from numerous others that it’s real tough at that school for, you know, blond white girls, to the point that most dye their hair to avoid abuse, abuse that mostly comes from other white people.”

Potts said he’s “somewhat sympathetic to the plight of the pasty” and expressed “how awful that is that we’ve been taught to hate ourselves and how it would be nice if we had some kind of greater solidarity.”

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“I guess bullying and scapegoating actually IS something that’s acceptable, so long as enough people agree,” the closing notice states. “Now that I’m officially ‘the Other,’ it’s socially acceptable to attack me. {snip}.”