No offence to the Australians out there, but something tells me that Sydney isn’t the best place to open up a tattoo studio. Of course, I could be wrong (believe it or not, it has happened before), but it seems like there is a lot of violence toward tattoo studios over there. Typically I’m not too interested in news that revolves around crime and tattoo studios, but in the case of Australia, there just seems to be incident after incident that catches my eye. Check this out:
December 29th, 2010: A tattoo studio in Coogee is firebombed.
January 13th, 2011: A car is rammed through the front entrance of a tattoo studio in Mount Druitt.
March 26th, 2011 : A 40-year-old man is shot and killed inside a tattoo studio in West Ryde.
And now, as of April 19th, someone broke into a Sydney tattoo studio during the night with a sledgehammer. They then doused the premises in some sort of flammable substance and lit the entire place on fire.
Sheesh, those are a lot of bad incidences for the tattoo folks of Australia. Is it due to some sort of fanatical anti-tattoo group? Well, no. It’s actually a result of Australian motorcycle gangs (or bikies as Australians seem to call them). I’m not sure exactly what these guys have against tattoo studios, but my guess is that it’s probably not something very nice. The violence is most likely over turf or something of that nature. I’m not an expert. All I do know is that it’s slightly troubling any time that a consistent streak of violence seems to plague tattoo studios for no clear reason. Really gives tattoo a shitty name and reputation.