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Custom choppers

Paul Faucette is one of the area's most sought-out customizers: He makes gold teeth - "grills."

By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published December 12, 2005

[Times photos Brian Cassella]

Reggie Bass shows off his newly purchased “grill,” which has four open-faced upper teeth.

	Jose Melendez tries on his new grill and shows it to Kristin Faucette to make sure it fits correctly.

My teeth are mind-blowing, giving everybody chills

Call me George Foreman, 'cause I'm selling everybody grills

- Paul Wall in Nelly's Grillz

TAMPA - "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 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 doesn't know 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 divide the shop. Faucette and the merchandise are on one side; customers stay on the other.

Faucette does business through the bars. He's nervous about being robbed; 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 says, still grossed out by the memory. At the time, Faucette was working at a flea market in Tampa, doing jewelry repairs.

He overcame his disgust, disinfected the grill and fixed it.

After awhile, 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 walk into the cage, repeat customers. Mike Thomas, 28, wears 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 says of Faucette. "This is our Paul Wall right here."

Paul Wall, the Houston rapper, designs grills as a side business. Watch a rap video, 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 asks Thomas, through the bars.

But Thomas is just there to window shop. Faucette pulls out a tray of samples, and the three men wrap their hands around the bars, craning close, oohing and ahhing.

Faucette shows them his latest design: a double row of diamonds, invisible-set, stretching across the front teeth.

"Damn, that's tight!" Thomas says. "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 retainer.

Rappers and professional athletes started to wear them: another symbol of wealth and success, like the tricked-out car, 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 has one other worry.

"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 sidles 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 says, 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 hands him his grill, he pops it onto his upper teeth and looks into the mirror that lines one wall of the shop - the only wall that isn't covered in bars.

In his mouth, the gold shines. It's the color of wealth.

He leaves the shop wearing it.

- S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com

This story was previously published in the Brandon Times.

[Last modified December 9, 2005, 11:42:05]