Getting Through College Close Shave for Students : Only Those With Steady Hands Will Make the Final Cut

For a visit to the barber college requires the cold, naked valor of the man who walks clear-eyed to death. --Ernest Hemingway

The corner movie theater is featuring “Too Naughty to Say No,” and the only bookstores around are the kind that have 20-minute browsing limits. Tattooed men and women scavenge the trash for something edible or useful, and, in the middle of the block, a man is asking passers-by for change and a cigarette.

It is an unlikely place for a college, but then, this is no ordinary college. The professors are a couple of guys named Frank and Rocky, and students spend more money on razors and cutting tools than they do on textbooks. Bloodletting is part of the learning process.

“Sure, it was hard putting a straight razor up to someone’s skin at first,” said Mary Jane Bovenzi, 24, a student at the Independent Barber College on 5th Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. “Actually, I cut them more now than I did at first--I guess I was more worried about it then.”

While you can still get a haircut and shave there for next to nothing, a visit to a barber college is not a barbarous affair, says instructor Jack Roccoforte Jr., simply Rocky to his students for the last 30 years. “Even experienced barbers nick their customers once in a while.”

A spot test of one of the college’s would-be Figaros revealed him to be careful--so careful, in fact, that a 15-minute shave left a reporter with a bloodless but still stubbly face. “It wouldn’t pass the credit card test,” said another student disapprovingly.

“Most of the students are too scared to cut anyone,” said Frank Chirco Jr., owner of the school, which was established in 1926.

Barber colleges may seem like an anachronism in an era of $50 trims and tri-color Mohawks. But business is “healthy,” said Chirco, and his students, whether they call themselves barbers or hair stylists after they leave, will be prepared for the most outrageous demands.

“We teach our students that it’s their professional responsibility to advise the customer what’s in style and what they’d look good with,” said Chirco, a fourth-generation barber with familial roots in Sicily. “But we also teach them that the customer is always right--it’s his prerogative to wear his hair any way he wants.”

A morning trip to the school found a dozen students in yellow smocks clipping, cutting, cropping and curling the hair of customers seated in two long rows of red barber chairs--all under Roccoforte’s watchful eyes. The price board says $2 for a haircut and $1.50 for a shave, but the school provides the services free to many transients. “It’s a little bit easier for someone to get a job when they look decent,” Chirco said.

Botched haircuts are rare, Chirco said, and are usually the result of poor communication between the student and customer, not inexperience. “The customer may say he or she wants short hair, but what is short?” Chirco said.

One customer, who said his name, hometown and profession were “confidential,” said he came to the barber college “because I’ve been through schooling myself, and I figured I’d give them a chance. Besides, it always grows back.”

Jonathan Burt, 39, of San Diego, said he has his hair cut “very seldom,” but when he does, he comes to the school. “I’ve seen the results, and they’ve never messed up.”

If a student does run into a problem, “we just ask Rocky for help--he can fix anything,” said Bovenzi, a former model who plans to open a barber shop with her aunt--herself a graduate of the school 12 years ago--when she gets her license.

Many of the students come to the school because a parent or relative is in the barbering business, and they need the 1,500-hour course and a state license before they can carry on the family tradition.

“My grandfather owns a shop in Point Loma,” said Alex Moreno, 23, “and he said I could keep half of whatever I bring in. He charges $7 a haircut--there’s no other business in town where I can make that much.”

Another student said he plans to work with his father only until he can scrape up the capital for his own shop. “I’ll hire a few cosmetologists, we’ll do pedicures, leg-waxing, the whole thing,” said Roderick Aguillard, 24. “I don’t think there’ll be a big demand down here for the kind of services I want to offer--I’ll have to move on, to L.A., maybe.”

The students pay $1,200 tuition for the course, which can be completed in about 10 months if they attend full-time. Tools and books are $300. The students earn only tips, which might amount to $10 to $15 a day, Aguillard said.

Dispelling a popular myth, Roccoforte said the students do not learn to shave by practicing on a balloon. “We let them work on a mannequin for a week or so, until they’ve learned the strokes and the manual dexterity. Then we let them start on the public--that’s the only way they really learn.”

But even 1,500 hours of tutelage can’t produce a complete barber, Roccoforte said. “It takes five years before they’re ready to tackle anything that sits down in the chair.”