Hairy situation: Beverly Hills takes pride in...

Hairy situation: Beverly Hills takes pride in its glitz, but its landmark barbershop embraces old age enthusiastically. “We still have our 1950 barber chairs,” said William Gornik, the owner of Gornik-Drucker’s. And its employees are called barbers , not hairdressers or haircutters or stylists, and none of them go by one name.

Former President Ronald Reagan and various Hollywood celebrities are still customers, but one of the 57-year-old shop’s oddest claims to fame is it once was Barbershop to the Mobsters.

Harry Drucker, the 88-year-old founder, is fond of telling the story of sometime rivals Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen “coming into the shop at the same time,” says manager Melody Pepaj. “And people were afraid they were going to pull out their guns and start shooting. Mr. Drucker asked Cohen not to come in any more.”

Siegel was a problem enough, especially with his receding hairline.

“He had a pathological fear of losing his hair,” writes Dean Jennings in “We Only Kill Each Other.” “And at Drucker’s . . . the diplomatic barbers ritually assured him they could see new growths here and there.”

Drucker’s was, in fact, one of the last places Siegel visited on June 20, 1947. Later, freshly coiffed, he returned to his girlfriend’s house, where he was shot to death by rival gangsters.

“The next day,” Pepaj said, “Mickey Cohen called up and made a reservation.”

But go easy on the pepper: Dick Adler noticed that a company describing itself in an ad as a “worldwide leader in (the) herbal food industry” is searching for a “seasoned writer.”

While you’re chewing on that one, we might add that the company is based on Abalone Avenue.

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Question of the Week: It’s a query on a billboard near the L.A. Convention Center. We’re speechless, but would be interested in faxed or mailed reactions from readers. We still have many truly tacky gifts in our Cave of Wonders to give away.

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To Oxnard and back: After we mentioned that guidelines for L.A. City employees peg the cost of a round-trip flight from L.A. to Oxnard at $442, we heard from David Weissmann of United Express.

“Two airlines, United Express and American Eagle, fly a total of 14 flights a day in and out of LAX to Oxnard,” Weissmann said. “In the two years I have been in Oxnard I have never seen air fares as high as $400. In fact there is a fare available for $59 each way (about the same or less than most door-to-door shuttle services).” Are you listening City Hall? (Probably not.)

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We admire their stubbornness: Louis O’Brien and Joseph Feinstein each notified us about a for-sale ad for two grave sites at Hillside Memorial Park. The anonymous couple who placed it described themselves as “two lovely people, who since, they can’t take it w/them, ain’t going.”

miscelLAny:

To our list of celebrities who have sites named after them, Judy Brooks points out we forgot about Ol’ Middle-Aged Blue Eyes. Yup, Desert Hospital of Palm Springs has a Frank Sinatra Jr. Room.