Rubbed the wrong way.

Permit fees for tanning salons, massage parlors, massage therapists and cyber carts in the city of Los Angeles are about to go up--way up.

Assuming the Los Angeles City Council signs off next month on the fee increases recommended by the Los Angeles Police Commission, massage parlor operators and massage therapists will see their annual permit fees double, to a maximum of $717. Bath/tanning permits will more than triple to $515. And cyber cafes, until now exempt from any permit fees, will now face an annual permit fee of $171.

While permit fees typically go up by more modest amounts to offset the cost of hiring additional inspectors, the reason behind the huge increases for the massage parlors and therapists is different. Last year, the City Council ordered the Police Commission to raise the fees to recoup the costs of contracting with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health for annual health inspections of these salons and parlors and for administering exams for massage therapists. The city is billed $252 per inspection and $161 per exam; previously, the city had covered the bulk of these costs. With the increases being considered, the city will raise about $375,000 to offset these costs.

As for the cyber cafe fee, Police Commission Executive Director Richard Tefank said the city is simply catching up with the times, treating these cafes like video arcade rooms. Tefank's report did not include an estimate of how much revenue this fee would raise.

The scope of this round of permit fee increases has caught many off guard.

"I'm going to get hit twice, since I have both a massage business permit and a massage therapist permit," said Brian Markowitz, a massage therapist and owner of Human Touch Massage in Venice.

Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached at [phone], ext. 227 or at [e-mail].