King of Buzz Cut Sets Up Shop on the Hill

Gino Morena of San Francisco is the king of the military haircut, a base barber extraordinaire, a man who has built his livelihood around Army Regulation 1-8.

“The hair on the top of the head will be neatly groomed,” says the Army policy on hair and fingernail standards. “The length and bulk of the hair will not be excessive or present a ragged, unkempt or extreme appearance. Hair will present a tapered appearance and when combed will not fall over the ears or eyebrows or touch the collar except for the closely cut hair at the back of the neck.”

In other words: Cut it off.

Morena is to the buzz cut what Christophe, President Clinton’s Beverly Hills stylist, is to the carefully crafted coif. Morena trims the locks of the top brass in the Pentagon. He set up shop in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm to keep the soldiers properly scalped. From Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert to the United States Military Academy at West Point, the 74-year-old Sicilian immigrant is there.

“I come from Italy and there, you learn a trade in school,” Morena explained. “I learned to cut hair when I was about 8 years old.”

When he arrived in America in 1938, military base barbers were the only ones who didn’t need special licenses. Morena snagged his first job at Ft. Ord in Monterey.

Today, Morena doesn’t wield the clippers much anymore, but his San Francisco-based haircutting empire, Gino Morena Enterprises, handles the heads of thousands and thousands of servicemen and servicewomen at scores of military installations around the world.

Right now, at a military base somewhere, chances are that a young recruit is sitting in one of Morena’s chairs. Locks of hair are piling up on the floor. The air is filled with a hypnotic bzzzzzzzzzz.

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Now, Morena and his far-flung chain are being called on not only to cut more government hair, but to help cut government costs as well.

Morena is adding two civilian shops to his haircutting chain--not just any shops, but the barber and beauty shops at the House of Representatives. In these venerable spots, Regulation 1-8 does not apply.

Members of Congress want a little off the edges. They want that telegenic blow-dried look. They shy away from the military-style buzz.

Morena has become the House barber after the Republican leadership determined that the two taxpayer-funded shops were losing money and ought to be run privately. In the wake of criticism over congressional perks, the subsidies to operate the barber shops had become something of a sore spot.

The Rayburn Barber Shop, a rustic room buried in the basement of a House office building, loses about $50,000 a year, according to GOP estimates, while the more upscale Cannon Hair Salon runs $40,000 in the red.

The fiscal 1996 legislative appropriations bill calls for reducing the cost, and with the help of Reps. William Thomas (R-Bakersfield) and Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), the top-ranking members of the House Oversight Committee, Morena beat out a handful of other barbers in bidding for the shops. He officially opens his revamped cutteries on Oct. 1.

“This is quite a privilege,” said Morena. “A little guy like me came from a little town in Sicily and now I’m cutting the hair of congressmen.”

Morena considers the existing shops decades out of date, more focused toward septuagenarians like himself than the yuppies now so prevalent on Capitol Hill. So he plans complete overhauls of the interiors.

In addition, he has agreed to split any profits with the House of Representatives, so he’s looking for ways to boost business. He’ll add Saturday hours, money-back guarantees and even in-office cuts for lawmakers. (He came up with the idea of in-office haircuts at the Pentagon.) All that at slightly lower prices, which will range from $9 for a basic cut to $25 for a complete shampoo, cut and blow-dry.

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Upscale surroundings? New barbers? Such wholesale change is causing some grumbling among the regulars.

“I’ve been coming here for almost 30 years,” said former North Dakota congressman Tom Kleppe, who served in the House from 1966 to 1970 but still returns for an occasional trim. “Quite frankly, I like the place the way it is.”

Nurney Mason, one of the longtime House barbers now on his way out, says Morena will have to learn the unique nature of a congressional barber shop.

“If he tries to run this like a military place, he’s in for trouble,” Mason advised.

A congressional barber also has to know when to make small talk and when to stay mum.

Mason has a special stool set up near his chair especially for the congressional aides who sometimes accompany their bosses and scribble down drafts of legislation uttered right from the barber’s chair.

“Right here, they’ve come up with more than one law,” Mason boasts.

With more than six decades of haircutting experience behind him, Morena is not nervous about his new VIP clientele.

“It’s going to take some special touches,” Morena admits. “But we’ve tried to treat every soldier as good as a congressman. Now we’re going to have real congressmen in the chair.”