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Barbers revel in tradition
By SARAH GOODWILL
Eagle Staff Writer
Despite poor road conditions and a heavy
snowfall last week, Tony Sequette's barber shop was anything but dull.
Instead of trimming hair and clipping
beards, the longtime barber and a few old friends filled the shop on Eau Claire Street,
sharing homemade meatball sandwiches and cherry pie.
"We hang out here every day,"
said Tom Burnatoski, leaning back in one of the
two cushioned barber chairs. "I run the place," he joked.
Though
customers walk in and count heads to determine their wait for a cut, Sequette said the shop regulars are as much a fixture in
the shop as the antique cash register and barber chairs built with Armco
steel.
"My customers are trained. They come
in and say, 'You're (just here) for coffee; you're for coffee; you're for
coffee, I'm next.'"
At Frank Lapa's barber shop in Grove City, a staff of
three, barbers share a camaraderie that makes customers feel right at home.
“All we are is barroom chat without the
alcohol,” said Georgi Long, who worked as Lapa's
secretary for 10 years before learning barber skills as an apprentice to
Lapa.
Barbers like Lapa, who pass their capes and clippers
to the next generation, keep the industry going strong.
"It's not a dying business,"
said Gharles Kirkpatrick, executive director of
the National Association of Barber
'Boards of America. "Everybody's got to have a haircut."
Though the striped barber pole still
identifies the tonsorial trade, the shop locations, appearances and
operations have changed to keep up with changing cultures and styles.
"They don't all look like a '57
Chevrolet," Kirkpatrick said. "Things change at the barbershop."
Keeping it in
the family
For Jack Thomas, opening his East Jefferson
Street barber shop eight years ago was a life
change.
After leaving a career in the Marine Corps
in 1992, Thomas worked in several other jobs before picking up the trade shared
by his father and grandfather.
The resulting shop reflects both Thomas'
military-trained efficiency and his quick wit.
To keep track of waiting 'customers,
Thomas discourages would-be loiterers. Despite keeping visitors to a minimum,
the shop is not lacking in personality.
"You want me to leave your ears where
they are?" Thomas asks customer Ed Lloyd as he takes the seat of honor
on a recent Friday.
Like Thomas, Dan Fritch of Evans City has followed in his family's
legacy of barbering.
Fritch operates Eppinger's
Barber Shop in Zelienople, the
business opened by his step-grandfather in 1911.
Classic Clipping
Tradition
Fritch said the majority of his customers
come in for variations on a traditional cut known as a taper or fade.
"We seriously believe that a classic
tapered haircut is best on everybody," said Fritch, whose stepfather
Bill Eppinger, now 68, still works alongside him
part-time.
Working with electric clippers, Fritch
trims hair gradually shorter as he reaches the neck. The technique, he said,
makes grow out less noticeable.
"The stylist creates a line. A barber
does everything in his power not to do that," he said.
While Fritch specializes in the classic
cuts offered for years at the shop, Lapa keeps his eye on changing styles to
please his customers, many of them Grove
City College
students.
"When the '60s came in, I learned to
work with long and short hair," Lapa said.
In addition to the pictures some customers
bring in, Lapa and the two other barbers in his shop make use of instructional
videos and attend barber shows to stay updated on the latest styles.
"I think we've been stereotyped that
we just do buzz cuts, but whatever they want, we do," Lapa said.
(cont. in next column)
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(cont.
from first column)
Skills and
Service
While salons far outnumber barbers in the
yellow pages, customers at barber shops are searching for a specific method
of cutting.
"The older generation - they would
be lost in a beauty shop," Fritch said. "A lot of guys, they don't
want to go through dunking their head in a shampoo bowl".
While working with clippers on dry hair is
quicker than a shampoo and cut, Lapa said working with dry hair also helps
him see how a customer's hair grows and how it will look when finished.
"It's a more natural way of
cutting," he said.
Other services customers might not find at
the salon include the trimming of eyebrows and nose and ear hair, part of the
grooming Lapa offers.
Fitch said for his customers, the focus is
on grooming, not fashion.
“To a guy, it’s a haircut. It’s about making it easier again.”
Convenience
and culture
While Fritch has carried on the traditional
cuts his predecessors offered, technology has brought new conveniences to his
customers.
In addition to calling in for a 15-minute
appointment, Fritch’s customers can visit his Web site to see what times are
available.
A handheld computer sits beside Fritch’s
appointment book, allowing him to quickly update his Web site as new
appointments are booked.
The need for speed is a change Thomas also
has noted among his customers.
"Today's society is an information
society. It's an instant gratification
society," he said.
Though many like the ability to walk in
without an appointment, he said some customers get anxious while waiting or
even while in the chair.
"They don't hesitate to say to you,
'Can you cut faster?'"
Many mornings, a large green arrow hangs
from the ceiling, pointed at the barber chair. Attached is a sign that
declares the barber working below takes a 15-minute lunch break at 1 p.m.
Despite the warning, he said
many customers are surprised when Thomas takes a break from waiting customers
to grab a bite.
Opening before 7 a.m., Thomas has set a
closing time of 4 p.m., though he is often in the shop until 5 or 6 p.m., finishing
up waiting customers.
"I lock the door at 4 p.m. If I don't lock the door, they'll still
come in."
To recover from the influx of customers,
Thomas has set a schedule of opening Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,
allowing a few days each week to recover.
His humor and skill have created many
return customers who have begun to worry about the 56-year old barber's
retirement.
"I won't even go to any
barber. I just go to this one," said Larry Seibel of Butler, who visits Thomas regularly to
maintain his "high and tight" style -- a close, military-style
shave on the sides with some length on the top.
Like Thomas, Sequette's
return visitors have set unofficial bans on his retirement.
"I can't close this place," said
Sequette, who allows his friends to spend time in
the shop even while he is on vacation.
One such friend, Roger Henderson, said
that his wife personally thanked Sequette for
allowing him to spend time in the shop during his absence.
“She doesn’t appreciate me being
underfoot”, he joked.
Sequette doesn’t
mind admitting that he will never be able to retire.
“What would (Sequette’s
wife) do with all of us at her house,” joked Burnatoski.
As the pole turns
While many barbers and their customers see
the hometown barber as an endangered species, statistics show growth in the industry.
Throughout
time, however, changing styles have taken their toll on the barber.
"In military time, short hair for men
has always been in," Kirkpatrick said.
He noted that popular culture icons like
Elvis, and later the Beatles, led many men to start letting their hair grow
longer and turn away from the barber shop.
The change was reflected in number of
barber shops in the country. In the
‘70s, he said, there were about 195,000 barbers in the country, down from
340,000 during World War II.
Kirkpatrick
said growth resumed in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, naming Tom Cruise’s
role in “Top Gun” as one of the icons that led the change.
Growth has also
been strong in barbershops catering to the hair texture of African Americans,
bolstered in part by the movies “Barbershop”
and “Barbershop II”.
Today, there
are 235,000 barbers in the U.S.,
and the number is continuing to rise.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, the
number of licensed barbers in the commonwealth stands at 3,113, up from 2,899
in the 2006-07 fiscal year.
While other
businesses cut back jobs because of outsourcing and increased technology, the
fields of barbering and cosmetology are unaffected.
“We manufacture
what we sell”, Kirkpatrick said. “We
don’t have to worry about anybody flying to china to get a haircut”.
Barber Georgi Long, center
left, works on customer Toby Norman of Slippery Rock, while Frank Lapa cuts
Lew Brandon's hair at Lapa's Barber
Shop on Broad Street
in Grove City.
Long describes' the shop with three barbers this way: "All we are is a
barroom chat without the alcohol."
JACK
NEELY! BUTLER
EAGLE
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Butler Eagle Article – Classic Clipping
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