Pompadour and Circumstance : Jake Bricks and his barbershop in Orange draw hundreds of rockabilly regulars--plus bands from as far as Europe--for the flattops and ducktails of the nearly bygone ‘50s.
Jake Bricks was smoking a Marlboro Light in front of his barbershop, the nicotine density of his cigarette being the only giveaway that it wasn’t 1956. Otherwise, the Pom-Aid in his hair, sharp clothes covering colorful tattoos and the pin-up bedecked shop behind him all belong to the era when fins were in.
As he stood to greet me, I couldn’t help but notice Bricks casting a quick, appraising look at my hair and shoes and sensed a quick summation on his part that I’m beyond rockabilly redemption. You could rub chicken grease in my hair until the moon turned blue and I’d still look like an ex-hippie.
Fortunately, Bricks has a large clientele who are not patchouli-afflicted. Just off the Orange Circle at 110 N. Olive Ave., Jake’s Barber Shop is a magnet for some 1,000 regular customers--not to mention touring bands from as far as Europe--who are desirous of the pompadours, flattops and ducktails he dispenses.
“Whatever you do, please don’t call me a hair stylist in the paper,” he asked. “I don’t wash hair. I don’t trim long hair. I don’t do women, plain and simple. This is a regular old-time, old-fashioned barbershop.”
As we talked, he went to work on the pomped head of his friend and customer, musician Robert (Big Sandy) Williams. His preferred hair goop, by the way, is a supply of new-old-stock oleander-perfumed Kincaid Pom-Aid.
As a kid, Bricks, 23, was no great fan of barbershops.
“I had the John John haircut, and only went in every six months. I didn’t like going. Then, when I got into the rockabilly scene when I was in seventh grade, I started getting into haircuts. I went from going every six months to every three weeks.”
The initial blast of rockabilly music happened too long ago to have even interested Bricks’ parents. Instead, like most of the music’s young fans, he was introduced to it by the Stray Cats and other revivalist bands in the ‘80s.
“It was pretty much the Stray Cats and the kids at school that got me into it. It seemed my whole junior high was kinda rockabilly at the time. Before that, when I was in elementary school, I thought I was into punk rock, Black Flag and all that. I cropped my hair and stuff, wore camouflage and boots. Then I went to a dance and saw this group of kids dressed different, and I think, ‘What kind of punk rockers are those?’ And my friend says, ‘Those aren’t punk rockers, they’re rockabellies.” So for like a year I thought it was called ‘rockabelly.’
“Then in seventh grade I saw all these kids like that. So I go, ‘Hey, how do I become like you?’ They told me where to go and I got an argyle sweater, dress shirt, big giant wingtips, rolled-up jeans, Vaseline in my hair. It was the look, and that was it for me.
“I have seen all my friends change and go to different fads in the ‘80s, from new romantic to mod to punk rock. I kinda just shook my head, because to me rockabilly is forever,” he said.
Some have speculated that in emulating the clean-cut ‘50s, kids were trying to irk their hippie-era parents. Bricks claims that wasn’t the case with him, though he does acknowledge the generational difference.
“My mom grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so she liked the Doors and Led Zeppelin. I’ve got a picture of her with that hippie-flower child look, with the boots up to here, the miniskirt, the flowered shirt and long, long hair parted in the middle.”
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Bricks was something of a pugilist in his youth, and his look only added to his confrontations.
“I went to like 13 high schools. I got kicked out of the first high school for fighting, and after that it just kept happening because I was the only rockabilly around. Somebody would grab my hair or pick on me. I attended Westminster High for a total of two periods. A bunch of guys came up to me when I was opening my locker, and one just gave me this big big sock in the jaw. I picked him up and threw him against the locker, and his friends jumped me. I got kicked out for it. I got cast as just a bad kid no matter what I did.
“Nowadays I stay away from that stuff. If anything happens I talk it through with people. Besides, if I break my hand, I can’t work.”
Between bouts in school, Bricks was in his local barbershop so often that the owner encouraged him to go to barber college. After graduation he went to work in the shop, with the barber telling him, he says, that the shop would be passed on to him. Instead he and the barber had a falling out over the clientele Bricks attracted, and he opened his own shop 25 months ago.
“It’s hard to go out on your own,” he said. “I had to sell my car, almost lost my wife, everything, getting this place open. You shoulda seen it when I leased it. Everything in here was corroded, and brown, like an ugly leather ‘70s color, walls, ceiling, floors, cabinets.”
The shop now is tiled in black, white and turquoise linoleum. The vintage chrome and white enamel Belmont barber chairs have been reupholstered in black Leatherette with turquoise piping. Raucous rockabilly music blares out of his small stereo (Bricks also sells rockabilly records and CDs at reasonable prices). The walls are decorated with ‘50s girlie pinups, bamboo-framed paint-by-numbers oils and photos of some of the famous and semi-famous heads he’s had the pleasure to have known.
Along with Big Sandy and his group the Fly-Rite Boys, Bricks has taken his trimmer to X’s Billy Zoom, the Dave and Deke Combo, ‘50s star Sonny Burgess, a number of local and European rockabilly and country bands and even British star Morrissey, whose locks he likely could have bagged and sold. Whether his customers are rock gods or old-timers in their 70s coming in for a trim, Bricks charges $8.
The one head he’d really like to get ahold of is Sid King’s. In the ‘50s the Texan headed the rockin’ Sid King and the Five Strings. Today King is a barber, and Bricks once made a pilgrimage to Richardson, Tex., to meet him. “I got my hair cut by him, and it was great: I talked barbershop and music with him,” Bricks said. Now he’d like to be able to cut King’s hair sometime. “To me it’s just a great honor to meet these guys. I get down and worship them on my hands and knees.”
While we talked, an ‘80s-maned man and his young son came in for cuts. Bricks kept discouraging them until they left. It wasn’t just that their hair was beyond his interest. “I try to stay away from little kids as much as I can. Parents always say, ‘They’re really good; they don’t move around or cry.’ Then they squirm and cry like crazy.”
Once kids are a bit older, he often tries to recruit them into what he calls his “rockabilly army,” getting them interested in the music and lifestyle of four decades ago. Like his shop, his home is appointed in ‘50s furniture. He drives a ’58 Oldsmobile. “I was born and raised here in the old part of Orange near the circle. I’m so glad I have a shop right here. I’m fascinated with these old brick buildings, the signs on them you can barely read anymore. The place is great. It’s just a shame the way they do things now. You drive up the 91 (Freeway), and everywhere it looks just like they stuck little Monopoly pieces all over.”
He thinks the solidity and high-octane fun of the ‘50s has a lot to offer ‘90s kids.
“The generation I grew up in, the early ‘80s, there were 10 or 12 different fads in that little decade there. But the whole ‘50s were the ‘50s, and the ‘60s pretty much stayed the ‘60s. There wasn’t so much change in five years. That’s why you see these kids now running around doing the gang-banging stuff. There’s no new styles for them to get into because they’ve all been used up.
“I consider my shop an outcast-of-society-type shop, for the unwanted. When I used to go to this other barbershop, some people were afraid of me, staring at me. But in here you don’t get that. Greasy hair, tattoos, whatever the style, freaky or whatever, they don’t get stared at or made fun of. I even have a few old guys who come in here, in their 60s and 70s. They’re really cool guys. They were punks when they were young, and we carry on conversations that aren’t just about golf or fishing,” he said.
Outcast or no, Bricks’ business has prospered when few others do. And there aren’t many barbershops so popular that they sell out of their trademark T-shirts, as he has. His old shirts read, “Hip Cuts 4 Hep Catz.” His next batch, he says, will proclaim, “Custom Chops and Greasy Mops.”
He said, “It’s funny, in barber school I was the only one out of 100 students who paid attention when this old guy was showing how to cut a proper ducktail. These kids in school with me used to make fun of me all the time for wanting to be a regular barber instead of a hair stylist like them. Now, who do you think comes knocking on my door looking for jobs after making fun of me all this time? I’ve had three or four of them. I tell them, ‘Get outta here. I don’t want you working here. You’re a hair stylist , remember?’ ”