Memorial Party for Tattoo Legend Mike Bakaty at Bowery Electric Tonight
This image has been archived or removed.
Mike Bakaty’s underground tattoo shop at McGurk’s Suicide Hall on the Bowery, Photo: Bakaty Family
On January 29, the tattoo community lost one of its legends – Lower East Side homesteader Mike Bakaty. The skin artist had succumbed to his fight with lung cancer at age 77.
Now his Fineline family (which includes son Mehai) is throwing a bash to celebrate his life. This “party in memoriam” happens tonight at the Bowery Electric, from 6-9pm.
As previously noted, the elder Bakaty began inking customers out of his Bowery loft at McGurk’s Suicide Hall in 1976, during the height of the prohibition on tattooing in New York City. So the business operated on the underground circuit. The city would not lift the 30-plus-year ban until 1997, the year Fineline went legit with a store at 21 First Avenue. His studio remains the longest-running ink spot in the city.
Here is the party flyer. See you there.
This image has been archived or removed.
Recent Stories
Seward Park Now Bookended by Fast Food Crab Restaurants
Crab cuisine is now du jour in the Seward Park environs, which is bookended by such fast food joints. Two seemingly identical establishments. Seafood chain Crab Du Jour planted a flag at the former La Flaca on Grand Street earlier this year, and should open in the coming days. At the same time, just a […]
Cops Offer Reward for Info on Clinton Street Shooting Suspect
Police are now offering a reward for information in connection with the road rage shooting on Clinton Street last month that injured a 75-year-old bystander. At approximately 11:55am on February 16, a motorist driving what was reported to be a black BMW sedan turned right onto Clinton Street from Delancey, narrowly missing a pedestrian. Cops […]
City Finally Releases East River Park Resilience Study, but with Heavy Redactions
It took three years and the accompanying community pressure for the city to finally release a critical report on the East River Park reconstruction plan, which it initially claimed did not exist. The Value Engineering Study, as it’s called, was the report Mayor de Blasio cited in 2018 when announcing the sudden change in the […]
Unprovoked Stabbing on Worth Street has Chinatown on Edge
In an apparently random attack yesterday evening, a 36-year-old Chinese man was stabbed in the back, and severely injured, by Brooklyn resident Salman Muflihi. The attacker wielded an eight-inch knife in the incident outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse on Worth Street, then surrendered at the entrance of the Manhattan DA’s office on Hogan Place. […]
Uncapped: In Conversation with Clayton Patterson and Cochise
Oh hey, Boogie Faithful, it’s your favorite historian here announcing our new graf-related podcast. We’ve done a few episodes, literally, and for the latest, Clayton Patterson has come out of his Boogie corner. We chatted, we laughed, we discussed some esoteric, anecdotal and priceless Lower East Side history. Local native and artist Jose “Cochise” Quiles also […]
