That No-Frills Haircut Is Getting Harder to Locate

You can’t make an appointment at Jack’s Barber Shop in Garden Grove. You just take a seat and wait your turn. And if you want your hair shampooed, then shaped with a brush and a blow dryer, better look elsewhere.

You can’t buy high-priced men’s grooming products at Jack’s. But you can pick up some slightly used golf balls for 50 cents apiece.

The flurry of urban renewal that brought sleek new shopping centers to the city somehow missed this stretch of Garden Grove Boulevard. The barbershop’s neighbors include a boarded-up restaurant, an adult bookstore and a nightspot that does not cater to families.

Barber Jack Rhodes says he moved here five years ago because the rent is about half the rate his previous landlord charges in Westminster.

“We have a dirty book store right next door,” he said. “Then we have what is referred to as a girlie bar. It really doesn’t (bother me). I’m still going to cut hair the same way if I’m in a million-dollar district or a low-rent district. They don’t bother me. I don’t bother them.”

What Rhodes’ customers get is a little friendly conversation and a crisp, basic haircut. It takes about 10 minutes and costs six bucks. Warren Shoemaker, 66, of La Palma has no complaints.

“At my age, I just want an old-fashioned haircut,” said Shoemaker, who has a small printing business in Garden Grove. “I don’t need it to be styled. He gets me in and out in a hurry, and I’m satisfied.

No-frills, old-fashioned barbershops like Jack’s are becoming more and more scarce in Orange County. Many men are flocking instead to unisex salons that promote themselves as hair-styling shops. At the same time, the new haircutting chain stores, with hefty advertising budgets, are targeting a younger generation raised on fast-food restaurants and multiscreen movie theaters.

Orange County’s real estate boom has also put the squeeze on independent barbers, who find they can no longer afford to rent prime commercial sites.

“It’s really becoming an extinct profession,” said Rhodes, a third-generation barber who began cutting hair in 1938. “If it wasn’t for the volume, I’d really be in tough shape. If you were trying to raise a family, it’d be impossible.”

Rhodes, 67, considers himself semi-retired. He employs two other part-time barbers, both in their 70s. “It’s something I enjoy doing because I don’t have to do it,” he said. “You can’t make money doing it, but it’s fun.”

Barbering--the word is derived from the Latin barba, meaning beard--dates back at least to ancient Egypt and Greece. Even then, historians say, the barbershop was a popular men’s meeting place where advice was sought and gossip exchanged.

In the Middle Ages, barbers assumed a medical role by extracting teeth, treating wounds and performing a bloodletting procedure that was thought to have health benefits. The modern barber pole’s red and white stripes, symbolizing blood and bandages, are reminders of that heritage.

By the first half of the 20th Century, the barbershop was mainly a place for a shave and a haircut. Though an adventurous woman seeking a short haircut might slip in occasionally, the barber shop was primarily a male domain.

The hippie heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s dealt a serious blow to the industry. Younger men let their hair grow long and visited barbers infrequently. Many customers moved to hair stylists who trimmed and shaped men’s hair with techniques previously used only on women.

Many old-time barbers left the business. Others went back to school, learning modern styling techniques to lure back younger customers. Today, even though short hair styles are back in fashion, the old-time barbers are becoming harder to find.

“In a sense, the old barbershop, rather like the old corner drug store of yesterday, is going away,” said Lorna Pasco Hill, executive officer of the California Board of Barber Examiners, the state agency that tests and licenses barbers. “Just like the pharmacists are no long the entrepreneurs in the large numbers they were, so, too, the barbers.”

Hill said the most recent state records show that Orange County has 382 licensed barber shops. The county also has more than 1,800 shops with cosmetology licenses.

Getting a handle on the industry is difficult because both licenses allow the cutting of men’s and women’s hair. The average customer may not know which license the hair trimmer has.

Training differs, however. A barber receives more schooling in haircutting techniques. A cosmetologist learns more about chemicals used for hair coloring and permanent waves. Among the differences: only a licensed barber can shave facial hair; only a cosmetologist can perform a manicure.

“The public, by and large, may perceive that a cosmetology shop serves women, and a barbershop serves men,” Hill said, “but the line is becoming blurred.”

Because the financial aspects have also become more complex, barber colleges should provide more training in small business management, Hill suggests.

Cathy Johnston, manager-instructor at Brookline Technical Institute’s hair-styling school in Anaheim, believes that modern barbers also must be flexible.

“A barber today should be able to do everything. You have to continue your education if you want to stay current,” she said. “When my students graduate, they are able to do all the old-time barber skills that I still treasure, as well as what’s needed for the contemporary styling. Flat-tops came back. You need to be able to do it all.”

Johnston agreed that a shop owner also must have some business savvy. She pointed out that shops have hiked haircut prices because of rising rents and new insurance requirements. And like the movie-theater owner who profits from popcorn sales, the modern shop owner should push plenty of hair-care products as another source of revenue, she said.

Still, Johnston does not believe that old-time barbers ought to throw in the towel. “There’s room for everybody,” she said. “There are shops that do haircuts for men, one after another. There’s a need for that. I’m not snobbish about it at all.”

Also optimistic is Quinton (Red) Carter, director of the barber and hair stylists division of the Los Angeles County unit of the United Food and Commercial Workers. “The trend among males is back to the tapered haircut,” he said. “The old-fashioned barber shop is very busy because they know how to do what these people want. They know how to give a tapered haircut and a flat-top.”

But he added, “Rents are horrible today. The day is coming when most beauty- and barbershops are going to be relegated to side streets, not main streets, because the rents are too high.”

That’s a key concern facing Hank Mascolo, who has been cutting hair on Plaza Square in Orange for nearly 35 years. Unlike some old-time barbers, he’s not worried about neighborhood blight. His business, Hank’s Barber Shop, fits in neatly with the restored town-square flavor that the city encourages in the old business district.

In the mid-1950s, Mascolo’s rent was $70 a month. Today, he said, it is more than $500.

“If (the landlord) keeps raising my rent, there’s no way in the world I can stay here,” the barber said. “I feel that the rent is too high. But then I can’t tell my landlord that because he won’t listen. He doesn’t know that you can work here, and it’s feast or famine. You can work your tail off, and there are other times that you can sit on your butt and wonder what’s happened to everybody.”

One of Mascolo’s customers, Larry Roaden, who has an antique shop down the street, is sympathetic. “I don’t think he has more than a couple of years left in this building,” Roaden said. “When a lot of these shops were started, the rents probably were reasonable, if not low, because it was a small town. Now it’s a small-town atmosphere in the midst of a large, wealthy county.”

Still, Mascolo, unofficial mayor of the Plaza, is doing his best to maintain the shop’s old-time appeal.

His prices have gone from 75 cents a haircut to $8 over the last 30 years. But he still uses barber chairs that are more than 80 years old and a manual cash register made in 1887. Collectors have offered large sums for the furnishings, but the barber is not selling. “Everything’s antique, including myself,” quips Mascolo, who is 64.

Instead of the latest high-fashion sprays, Mascolo applies vintage hair products such as Wildroot and Brylcreem. In an increasingly rare practice, he uses lather and a straight razor to cut around a customer’s ears and across the back of the neck. Like most old-time barbers, he seldom shaves facial hair today because it is time-consuming and because most men now prefer to shave at home.

Mascolo first worked as a commercial fisherman. When the fishing industry took a downturn in the early 1950s, he went to barber college. Afterward, he worked for long-time Orange barber Charlie Caster, then bought Caster’s shop when the older barber became ill.

Mascolo has always maintained a friendly rapport with his customers.

“I talk to them about anything they want, especially when it becomes political,” he said. “When anybody runs for office, I usually keep a poll of it. Generally speaking, I’d say 99% of the time, I’m right about who’s going to win in a local election. A lot of people who are running for office come to me and ask how they are doing. And I usually tell them.”

Customers also confide about personal problems. Mascolo said he had to persuade one customer not to commit suicide. The customer returned about a year later to tell Mascolo that the barber’s words helped alter his decision.

About 15 years ago, Mascolo went to Golden West College in Huntington Beach for a semester. “I had to go back to learn how to style long hair,” he said.

More recently, Mascolo hired a second barber to work in the shop, a woman with hair-salon experience. As another modern touch, Mascolo now offers appointments on Wednesdays, charging an extra dollar for the service.

Still, Mascolo rarely uses shampoo or a blow dryer, sticking closely to his original skills. “This trade here, as an old-time barber, is eventually going to fade out,” he said. “You’re not going to find old-time barbershops anymore.

“If I wanted to use the words, ‘Hank’s Styling Shop,’ I could charge twice as much. But I don’t because I don’t figure I’m a stylist. I figure I’m just an old-time barber.”

A few miles to the west in Garden Grove, Jack Rhodes makes even fewer concessions to modern barber trends. He cuts hair just the way he did in Santa Ana from 1938 through 1950. An old newspaper clip from the era hails Rhodes for breaking an unofficial barbering record by providing a shave, haircut, shampoo and tonic in four minutes.

He left the profession for other business ventures, including a fire-alarm company and a pawn shop, but he kept his barber license active and began cutting again in 1980. “I missed that era of style shops,” he said. “When it started changing back to my routine, I came back to it. This is my retirement.”

The closest thing to a blow dryer in Rhodes’ shop is a rubber hose attached to a reverse vacuum cleaner. He uses it to blow hair trimmings off his customers. On request, Rhodes will use a bit of hair spray to keep a customer’s cut in place.

A visitor asked the barber why his spray was Miss Breck--a women’s brand. “I buy that over at the 99-Cent Store for 99 cents,” Rhodes replied. “That’s the best answer I can give you.”

The used golf balls sold at the shop are dredged out of golf course lakes by a swap meet vendor. Rhodes allowed the vendor to place the bin in his shop, but the barber didn’t seek a share of the revenue.

Unlike Mascolo, Rhodes no longer uses a straight razor. “I haven’t done a shave since I’ve been back,” he said. “The fact is, with this AIDS going on, I’m thrilled not to have to use a straight razor on anyone. With rubber gloves, I imagine shaving would be a very, very tough chore.”

Rhodes is amused by the prices charged by his high-rent colleagues. “I heard one fellow on TV the other day saying he was getting $75 a haircut. You work on one haircut and go on home.”

Charging far less in his low-rent, old-fashioned barber shop, Jack Rhodes still attracts a loyal stream of customers.

“It’s the barber, not the shop,” said Charlie Watters, a retiree from Westminster. “It wouldn’t make any difference to me if he was in a rat hole. I’d still go see him. I’m comfortable with him.”