Afrocentric Cuts a Stylish Business

Inside 732 Broadway, a shop no bigger than a family room, Colin Jones and colleagues are turning heads around. And around.

Welcome to Afrocentric Barbers.

Business is booming at Jones’ Afrocentric barbershop, drawing heads from across San Diego County. Open for just a few months in a less-than-vital strip of downtown storefronts, Jones and three partners take turns dispensing the look --the fade, the flattop, the slope, the twist and dreadlock combinations.

The look has spread through American popular culture by way of rap and hip-hop artists and athletes. Differences in hair texture aside, the aesthetic has been adopted by many whites, Latinos and Asians. Afrocentric cuts them all.

Averaging 30 cuts a day and up to 60 around payday and on weekends, the shop has turned a healthy profit since April, said 25-year-old co-owner Jones. There has been no paid advertising; the customers flow into the business on the strength of friends’ recommendations and praise coming from walking testaments to Afrocentric’s quality. A second business, one that caters to women, is in the works.

Jones’ example flies in the face of dismal reports about new business failure in these lean economic times. Figures for black-owned businesses in San Diego have been even more discouraging, said Harold K. Brown, president and founder of the San Diego Black Economic Development Task Force.

According to Census and Internal Revenue Service records, the average annual revenue of black businesses is about $34,000, well under the county-wide average of $43,000, Brown said. Statewide, the average for businesses is about $50,000. Jones declined to discuss profits to date, but at an average $9 a cut, 30 cuts a day, six days a week, the business stands to go well beyond those figures in its first year.

Early on, he had doubts about whether his future laid in his clippers. He left the Navy in 1991, after a six-year hitch, three years of which were spent as the ship’s barber on the Aircraft Carrier Ranger.

He continued to cut hair for African-American friends and acquaintances out of his home, as he considered career options. Law enforcement interested him. Or maybe working on motors. Jones’ friends were dismayed.

They dissuaded him from becoming a police officer or a mechanic, and convinced him he could make a living cutting hair. Later they convinced him he could be his own boss.

Jones started the business with $6,000 in savings and loans from friends and customers. Renovation in the storefront, including construction and painting, was done by Jones and friends, all African-Americans.

“Color should be the last reason stopping a person from doing business,” Jones said. “It’s a given racism in this country puts up obstacles. The difference is whether you take no for an answer, or figure out ways around the obstacles.”

Before starting Afrocentric, Jones built up his following while working for a year and a half at a Latino-owned chain of barbershops. He moved on to a new African American-owned barbershop on Broadway, two blocks west of his current shop. After six months, spent cutting and observing the management of the shop, he decided he could run a tighter operation.

He met two cutters, one who goes by the name Quik, the other Eddie Lamar, who became co-owner of Afrocentric. Both shared Jones’ goal. Work hard and get paid for their labor. At a business of their own.

“It’s a myth to say blacks can’t work together,” Jones said. “We know it can be done.”

Quik, 24, who learned to cut hair as a teen-ager in his aunt’s beauty salon in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, said the shop’s popularity is generated as much by the attitude of the barbers, as by the styles they are responsible for.

“This is successful because we treat each other like we are family,” Quik said.

Quik specializes in design-laden coifs, created with free-hand strokes and a vivid imagination. He uses a collection of electric shears that he carries with him everyday in a book bag.

Most of the cuts coming out of Afrocentric are variations on the standard fade, a gradually blended style starting millimeters from the scalp. The flattop is a revival cut from the ‘50s. The slope is a flattop set at a rakish angle. Twists are small tangles of hair, precursors to the more familiar dreadlock.

Virtually all the cuts are done with electric shears, using a technique akin to sculpting. The method differs drastically from the comb-and-scissor approach to straight hair, Quik says, and every African American has, or has heard, stories about a horrible hair job done by someone who did not know how to cut black people’s hair.

And so, Quik says, Afrocentric has tried to create a place where African Americans feel they belong--comfortable and confident their hair is in good hands.

Julius Lester’s novel, “To Be a Slave,” sits in the book rack with a copy of Jet magazine. On the cover is a photograph of Dr. Mae Jemison smiling above the words, “First Black Woman in Space.” A headline on the Nation of Islam’s tabloid newspaper, The Final Call, reads, “Louis Farrakhan Speaks: The Black Man Must Turn Inward.”

A portrait of Malcolm X peeks from behind two 12-inch woofers that pound the bass line to the Isley Brother’s, “No Axe to Grind.”

Late one night, Sherilynne Thomas was driving through downtown, and heard singer Mary J. Blige’s “What’s the 411,” cranking from speakers inside a shop. When she saw the profile of an African-American man on the sign for Afrocentric, her first thought was she had chanced upon a new nightclub.

Upon closer inspection, she realized she had found the place to take her boyfriend for his next cut.

“I looked up and saw this picture of African strength, and I knew this is a place we were going to check out,” Thomas said.