Born in Birmingham, AL in 1968 to a single mother, Jeffrey Scales spent his first four years in the state foster care system before the first of many self-described “blessings” altered the course of his life. Known for his head-turning bagger motorcycles and matching bespoke suit designs, his larger-than-life monikers – ‘Meatloaf Scalesa’ and ‘Rock Boy’ – and his ‘push forward, no matter what’ attitude, Scales’ life pivoted the day his birth mother returned to Jefferson County to reconnect with him. Together again, they boarded a Greyhound bus and moved to the New York borough he has now called home for more than four and a half decades: Brooklyn.
Sitting in his current Bed-Stuy-based barber shop, El Domoliek's Upscale Grooming Salon, and channeling an almost Isaac Hayes presence – shaved head, salt and pepper beard, heavy-rimmed glasses and a deep yet gregarious voice – Scales looks on those early days growing up in East New York as the building bricks that formed the man he is today.
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