Jumbo schreiner visits fineline

In 2012, we were approached by a German television company about filming a segment for “Crazy Jobs” back when Fineline was still a street shop. This was probably one of the last times my dad, Mike Bakaty, was captured on video before he got really sick.

“Crazy Jobs” was hosted by Jumbo Schreiner, a German actor and television presenter. The concept is that Jumbo travels to different cities checking out interesting jobs, and spends the day learning how to do them.

While in New York, he spent time working as a sanitation employee and also scalping tickets on 42nd Street. At some point, he wound up in the Lower East Side at Fineline to learn about tattooing.

The old man agreed to let Jumbo be an apprentice for the day. I helped walk him through the process and setting up. Jumbo had a grapefruit to run some lines on. It was kind of comical seeing him put my medium-sized gloves on his extra large hands.

Dad mentioned that one of the responsibilities of being a tattoo apprentice is doing office work and maintenance, things like cleaning the shop, cleaning the bathroom, getting coffee—stuff like that. So Jumbo ended up mopping our bathroom for us.

At the end of the whole filming process, Jumbo said that it was customary for him to be paid on camera. Dad just happened to have $12 in his pocket. So that's what he gave him. We ended up giving Jumbo the grapefruit, too.

His response was, “Oh, good. I'm hungry.”

The whole thing was a lot of fun. Jumbo’s a very sweet guy. And a really big dude.

Whenever I have German customers, I’ll mention this show or have them watch the clip. It’s also neat to see myself as a younger man and to see my father again.