NOT-SO-PERMANENT INK TATTOO REMOVAL A GROWING CONCERN LASER PROCESS GIVES PEOPLE OPTION PREVIOUSLY UNAVAILABLE.

Byline: BRAD A. GREENBERG Staff Writer

Alexis Fedorowych had buyer's remorse.

It set in shortly after the ink did. The thrill was gone, and what remained was a cartoonish stain on her rump.

It was Calvin of the famous comic strip. He bore a striped red-and-white shirt and a mischievous smile.

Fedorowych lived with the inch-tall mistake for years, always a bit embarrassed the first time she exposed it to someone.

"I was 17, and I was in college and I was stupid," the 32-year-old Hollywood woman said. "It was all my roommate's fault. She convinced me."

But then she heard about Dr. Tattoff. Suddenly, a solution.

The tattoo removal clinic provides a way for people to live with - or, actually, without - their regrettable body d cor decisions.

Such treatments have been around since 1964 with increasing degrees of success, but Dr. Tattoff is streamlining the process.

Last month in Encino, Dr. Tattoff opened its third tattoo removal and laser treatment center. It was promoted as "giving Valley residents what they have been waiting for - the benefit of looking like a celebrity without having to pay to live like one."

The press release mentioned "the difference a bad or outdated tattoo can have on someone's life, career and self-esteem."

The clinic is open Sundays and Monday nights, seeing about 25 patients a week.

Bobby Magnante of Yoni Tattoo in Tarzana said tattooists appreciate laser removal because it opens acreage for new tattoos.

"It also gives people the option right off the bat, `Oh, if I don't like it, I can always get it taken off,"' Magnante said.

Dr. Tattoff opened its first clinic in Beverly Hills in 2004. The waiting room is much more hip than that of the family physician. There are two computers with Internet, a flat-screen TV that on a rainy day was showing "The Breakfast Club" and a high-brow magazine collection.

The clinic was conceived by CEO James Morel. Living in Manhattan in 1996, it took Morel three days of calling people who knew people to find someone to remove a tattoo too "terrible" to describe.

"I thought there must be other people out there who wanted to get a tattoo removed and didn't know where to do it," said Morel, who wears black Dickies-brand scrubs, though he doesn't perform laser removals.

Morel, who founded the entertainment magazine POPsmear, got financial backing from Christopher Knight, who played Peter Brady on "The Brady Bunch" television series.

Business has been good. Dr. Tattoff charges $39 per square inch per treatment. Removing a tattoo, which is done with at least six week intervals, can require a dozen or more treatments.

Sessions are quick for small tattoos - just a few minutes. The laser emits a beam that causes the ink to break, allowing the body to absorb the pigment.

Roberto Colon is six treatments into removing a nautical star from the right side of his neck.

"It was a bad choice of placement," said Colon, 19, of Glendale, who is keeping the tattoos on his elbows, ring finger and right forearm. "It's on my neck. There is no way to cover it up. It's hard to find jobs. And people look at me weird."

Colon has learned, though, that there is pain, too, in getting the ink removed.

"It hurts worse than getting the original tattoo," he said. "But it's worth it."

brad.greenberg(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Grete Van Twist, director of laser service at Dr. Tattoff, uses a laser to remove a tattoo from Alexis Fedorowych.

(2 -- color) Felipe Braunthal shows the tattoo on his back that is in the process of being removed at Dr. Tattoff in Beverly Hills.

(3 -- color) James Morel founded tattoo-removal clinics called Dr. Tattoff. The idea came in 1996 when he had trouble finding someone to remove his own tattoo that was too ``terrible'' to describe.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer