A rock shattered the window of a Mission District tattoo shop that has been the target of a graffiti campaign after it became known that the shop owner’s boyfriend was a Donald Trump supporter.
The Form 8 tattoo parlor at 3049 22nd St. at Shotwell Street had a large rock thrown through one of its windows between Thursday night and Friday morning. A window facing Shotwell was broken, shards of glass pointing outward from the shop. The rock presumably used for the deed was on the floor inside, surrounded by fragments.
Ben Volt, the shop’s co-owner, said an employee had opened the shop on Friday and discovered the rock inside. He spent the day cleaning and repairing the damage, he said, adding that he had not yet filed a police report.
The vandalism against the shop, he said, was misplaced.
“None of us in the shop are voting for Trump and we’re not Nazis,” Volt said. “There’s a lot of people telling us what we are, but not a lot of people asking us what we are.”
Last month, the tattoo shop was vandalized with graffiti reading “Fuck Trump” and “KHY,” an acronym for “Keep Hoods Yours” and also the name of a social media user who has been posting pictures of the tagged shop and first discovered the Trump connection.
The user denied that they had anything to do with the previous graffiti and that they only posted pictures they received in messages.
Keep Hoods Yours first posted that Johnny Wilk, the boyfriend of shop co-owner Ben Volt, had an active Instagram account that enthusiastically praised Trump and was harshly critical of Hillary Clinton, comparing her to Hitler at times and seemingly advocating for her imprisonment.
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Another post featured the Theodore Roosevelt quote: “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country.”
At the time, Wilk was working part-time at Form 8 manning the front desk. After the September graffiti incident, Volt said he was let go.
Volt said it was unfortunate Wilk’s actions were still haunting the shop.
“This is not who we are,” he said. “We’re being misrepresented by one bad employee.”
Volt also removed the tattoo shop’s logo, which Keep Hoods Yours and others on social media said was reminiscent of a swastika. The placard hanging outside the tattoo shop with the logo has been painted over white, and Volt told Mission Local last month he would change it.
When I read about rocks that break windows, political hatreds and references to the Nazis it conjures images in my mind of Kristallnacht. It wasn’t necessary to damage this store. Misguided anger from the Trump campaign just fans the flames of polarization in the Mission. We can do better than this in La Mission, right?
This store has nothing to do with Trump. Please change your biased headline.
Someone should not be kicked out of the country but giving them a benefit to learning english is smart. I have seen many old chinese people and i dont care what language they speak but they are always struggling and having a clearly stressful time in a given situation due to their inability to communicate. To make progress this must be superseeded by ones desire to communicate with the people around them. I think its fucked to move somewhere and make mo effort to learn thr language nor should they be deported. Happy medium is accepting this but spending no resources to help out such a lazy person.
What a bunch of clowns the vandals are. They are attacking this shop for the sole one of the artists supports Trump.Just because someone likes Trump doesn’t make them a bigot, racist, xenophobe, or whatever new word the social justice warriors use to try suppressing opposing views.
Also, anyone saying their logo resembles a swastika is about as stupid as they come. Their old logo was a black and white cross. It didn’t look anything like a swastika. The fact the vandals are using the cross logo as a reason to oppose the shop shows they are stretching to find any BS way to make their voices heard. This proves their views and concerns are illegitimate.