[From the PiPress:] After 50 years of cutting hair – and listening to customers – in West St. Paul, Roy Oakes is closing his old-style barbershop for good. The best quote: “When the Beatles came, business was slow,” Oakes said on a recent weekday morning while crafting a flattop on a customer at his South Robert Street shop. “I went from two chairs to one. So I was never a big fan of the Beatles craze.”
I will have to admit it’s been … 16 or 17 years since I’ve been to a barber. Growing up, my father would cut our hair. I wore my hair long for many years, from high school until I moved to Singapore, then cut it really, really short and could almost do a haircut myself. (My ex- would do it. After we split, I started growing my hair long again.)
But I never really got into the whole barbershop “culture.” The nearest I ever came to regularly visiting a barber was for a couple of years in the ’80s, when I lived in downtown Minneapolis. The barber was a rather interesting guy who would spend his down-time putting jigsaw puzzles together. His shop walls were wallpapered with jigsaw puzzles.
15 Reader Comments
3:39 pm
But I never really got into the whole barbershop “culture.”
It’s a black thing. You wouldn’t understand…
3:50 pm
I have gone to the same barber (Pete’s Como Barber Shop at 15th and Como) for about 15 years. He knows me by name, and he knows how I like my hair cut. Visiting the same person every couple of months for a long period of time, you get to know them. Further, the haircuts are basically the same. If you go to someone different each time, you never know how it will turn out — which was what happened before I found Pete.
3:52 pm
It’s one of those lost cultural landmarks, from back in the days when everything was still very neighborhood-oriented — even in the ‘burbs. Growing up in Richfield, we had a local butcher (the original Kenny’s market on Penn Ave.), the local barber near Southtown my father would visit for a trim every (or every other) Saturday morning, church and school were both within walking distance (i.e. under 8 blocks away), etc. I’m not entirely nostalgic for that time but it bears remembering that we didn’t travel as far for many things back then as we do now.
3:54 pm
My family used to go to this guy when I was a kid. This shop will be missed.
5:45 am
What is up with three paragraph posts?
9:59 am
I love old-time barber shops and it’s always sad to see them go. I went to that guy on Harvard Ave. in Stadium Village for awhile, although he was a little nuts.
I swear once, taking the 21 down University in the Midway, I saw a tiny little storefront barber shop with two chairs, velvet flocked wallpaper and a portrait of FDR on the wall. Did I dream it?
10:27 am
I still go to Nick’s Barber shop on 29th and Johnson. I don’t think that small town feel has left entirely. I have a barber and a coffee shop I can walk to that both know me. There is a decent butcher a few blocks north, a nice Vintage clothing store, a pharmacy a few good restaurants and a bakery all within a one block radius.
10:28 am
Oh they got the Playboy right in the magazine rack with the SI also.
10:51 am
Andyst, I bet you really did see that. Sounds very St. Paul to me.
10:58 am
“I went to that guy on Harvard Ave. in Stadium Village for awhile, although he was a little nuts.”
And routinely approached you with razors and scissors.
Never liked going to barbershops — chopshops — as a kid. Always thought I walked out looking goofy so I don’t miss them much. I’ll take the salons with stylists and copies of Esquire magazine.
11:09 am
There is a decent butcher a few blocks north,
Is that Redi Meats, on Johnson, Dougie?
11:46 am
Yep!
12:09 pm
I’ve been meaning to check that place out.
12:13 pm
Redi Meats got seriously vandalized a few years back by anti-meat activists, as I recall.
Never heard of that happening to a butcher shop before or since…
2:51 am
yeeehaa