Eddy Wertwijn gives his daughter a big hug. They both cry. “Holy shit, who does something like that?” he wonders.
When Wertwijn came to his studio in De Rijp yesterday morning, the window had been smashed and the floor was littered with glass. The only thing taken was the display case with old tattoo machines. On surveillance footage he saw two people in balaclavas getting into a car.
Tattoo Peter opened Amsterdam’s first tattoo shop in St. Olofsteeg in 1955, making him the founder of tattoo culture in the city.
Terrible
“I think it’s terrible,” says Wertwijn. “I cannot understand why people are disrespectful to the oldest tattoo shop in the Netherlands. And for what? To resell it? It’s mine. I want to pass it on to the next generations. That is the most important thing.”
Because that is Wertwijn’s dream: opening a museum about his father’s history. “So I’d like to say to whoever took it, please give it back. I’ll put it in a safe and send the key to me in the mail. I don’t give a damn. I just want my stuff back.”