Amsterdam Tattoo Expo
Amsterdam, I think you either love it or hate it. I’m not going to lie- its not for me. The gig was great… but the city… nope. When we were booked to do Amsterdam tattoo Expo I immediately booked us a hotel for a few extra days after our shows so we could have a quick city break together. One of the things people don’t realise about this job is that it seems we get to travel the world, but that’s basically it… we travel the world but don’t see it. We see the plane, the taxi the hotel, the stage, the taxi then the plane home. So I made up my mind to have some days with my man just for us. The convention itself was great, we were well looked after and ours shows were super popular, the expo is really good at the RAI and there’s lots to see and do. The other entertainment was interesting, we are used to there often being a Burlesque performer or fire artiste at tattoo conventions but in Amsterdam its the extreme, male and female strippers who perform fully nude. Its an interesting challenge staying upright whilst performing when the stage is covered in baby oil… its surprisingly harder than paraffin overspray and that is super slippy!
As I said thought the tattoo expo was awesome, the other artistes were friendly, there were cools shops selling custom products, amazing tattooists from allover the world, an awesome retro barbershop and we spent time with Matt Gone (a guy who has multiple Guinness world records for the tattoos allover his body), he even had his palm tattooed whilst we filmed it for him. He’s a cool guy. Check out our photo together below, me and the human chequerboard.
The rest of our trip was disappointing, its almost overkill out there with their promotion of the ‘sex, drugs and rock n roll lifestyle’ of the Dam. The one thing I would recommend is that we visited the Anne Frank House which is an emotional rollercoaster. Booking has to be done in advance and its easy to see why once you’re there. Its truly unbelievable and honestly horrifying. Even after all these years and after they have intensely modified the building to become a museum its still haunting and I really suggest a visit. Though you will need to cheer yourself up afterwards.
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