A mouthful of work
In two years, Paul Faucette has become one of the region's most sought out gold teeth makers.
By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published December 9, 2005
My teeth are mind-blowing, giving everybody chills
Call me George Foreman, 'cause I'm selling everybody grills
- Paul Wall in Nelly's Grillz
PALM RIVER - "They're called gold grills," says Paul Faucette, without looking up. "Or fronts, golds . . . "
"Plates," says Kristin Faucette, his niece and assistant.
"Plates," Faucette agrees. "Shines. Caps."
He's hunched over the battered jeweler's desk, putting tiny, shiny notches in the tips of a set of heavy gold teeth.
"See?" he says, holding them up to the light. They glitter like diamonds.
Two years ago, Faucette was an ordinary jeweler. He sized rings and reset stones. Today, he has a specialty. He makes ornamental, removable gold teeth.
Gleaming from the mouths of black rappers, circa mid 1990s, gold grills meant money and success. Now they're worn by high schoolers, self-described "rednecks," 60-year-old grandmothers.
To Faucette, it seems everyone wants them. Customers seek him out from as far away as Port Richey and Sarasota. He might make as many as 15 pairs in a week.
Faucette's no philosopher. He can't say why grills are so popular.
"It's just jewelry," he says.
Customers walking into Paul's Gold Grills on Causeway Boulevard find themselves in a cage.
Floor-to-ceiling bars line two sides of the shop. Faucette and the merchandise are on one side; the customers stay on the other.
Faucette does business through the bars. He's nervous about being robbed: Some of his clients are less savory than others, and he keeps a lot of gold in the store.
Gold, of course, is just the beginning.
"The big thing right now is putting stones in them," Faucette says. "To make them different from everyone else's.""Ice," Kristin corrects him. "They call it ice."
You can get a grill with your name spelled in diamonds. You can get grills with fangs, with rubies or emeralds. Depending on how fancy it is, a grill could cost a few hundred dollars - or a few thousand.
Sometimes, Faucette's customers don't have good teeth of their own. Behind the grills, some have chipped teeth, crooked teeth, no teeth. Gold can cover a multitude of flaws.
Faucette has his limits.
A guy called him once, asked him to make a gold grill for his pit bull.
Sorry, Faucette said. No pets.
One Thursday afternoon, Micki Gonzalez, 19, came into the cage talking on her cell phone, which is covered in pink rhinestones.
She picked up her grill. Kristin showed her how to pop it onto her teeth, and how to tug gently to take it off.
For Gonzalez, the grill is just another ornament. The gold in her mouth matched the gold around her neck, her gold bracelets and rings and earrings.
"I already got a lot of gold," she said. "Why not get gold teeth?"
The first time Faucette saw a grill, in the mid 1990s, he didn't want to touch it.
"It's been in someone's mouth," he said, still grossed out by the memory. At the time, Faucette was working as a jeweler at a flea market in Tampa, doing repairs.
He overcame his disgust, disinfected the grill and got to work fixing it.
After a while, he was repairing more and more grills. Then he heard through a friend about another jeweler who actually knew how to make them. The old man was looking to pass on the trade, the friend said.
Faucette could see that the grill business was where the money was. So he worked as an apprentice for two years, learning how to take an impression of the customer's mouth, how to make a mold and pour in the hot gold.
He set up his own shop last spring. His business card has a smiling tooth on it, like the kind a dentist might use, but printed in yellow ink.
Three guys walked into the cage: repeat customers. Mike Thomas, 28, wore the latest grill Faucette made for him: yellow gold, with his first name spelled out in in white gold, M-I-K-E. The "I' is dotted by a tiny diamond.
"This guy makes good grills," he said of Faucette. "This is our Paul Wall right here."
Paul Wall, the Houston rapper, designs grills as a side business. Watch a rap video lately, and you're likely to see a Paul Wall grill in the rapper's mouth.
Thomas and his buddies call themselves "rednecks," but they have watched all those rap videos, and they're crazy for grills. For them, grills are armor for the weekend, for the club, the strip joint.
"We going to do one or not?" Faucette asked Thomas, through the bars.
But he was just there to window shop. Faucette pulled out a tray of samples, and the three men wrapped their hands around the bars, craning close, oohing and ahhing.
Faucette showed them his latest design: a double row of diamonds, invisible-set, stretching across the front teeth.
"Damn, that's tight!" Thomas said. "Man, I might just get something like that for my top. Is that white gold?"
Before about 1990, grills like Faucette's didn't exist. Back then, Faucette says, you could only buy "caps" at jewelry stores and flea markets - a flimsy one-size-fits-all gold cover for a single tooth.
By the mid '90s, however, caps evolved into grills. A grill typically covers a whole row of teeth, and it's custom-made to fit a specific person's mouth, like a golden retainer.
Rappers and professional athletes started to wear them: another symbol of wealth and success, like the tricked-out Cadillac, the gold watch, the beautiful woman.
But others say grills carry another meaning - that they are a defiant reminder of a time when people who couldn't afford dental care had their cavities capped in gold.
"Down South, gold teeth were always a symbol of poverty," Paul Wall told the Los Angeles Times last month. "But the hustlers - gangsters or drug dealers - made them a symbol of respect on an extreme level."
Besides getting robbed, Faucette only worries about one thing.
"Is it a fad?" he wonders. "Is it going to die? How long is this going to last?"
He sighs and shakes his head.
"I wish I knew."
Late in the afternoon, DeMarcus Lewis sidled into the cage.
He's 17, dark and handsome. His grill cost him only $150.
It's plain gold, with notches on the edges designed to look like diamonds from a distance. In theory, Faucette said, Lewis could come back when he has more money and have real diamonds added to the plain grill. However, that rarely happens.
Lewis doesn't say much. He's shy. When Kristin handed him his grill, he popped it onto his upper teeth and looked into the mirror that lines the third wall of the shop - the only wall that isn't covered in bars.
In his mouth, gold shone back at him. It's the color of wealth.
He left the shop wearing it.
S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com