In a Faceless World, Not Just a Shave : Nostalgia: Customers are greeted by name and treated to a joke or a story when they get a haircut at Paul Wimer’s traditional barbershop.

The outside world may change, but life inside Paul Wimer’s barbershop never really does.

For 36 years, Wimer has held court at The Office, a city institution where you can still get a haircut for $10 and count on hearing a good story or two.

“People want to go where they are made to feel welcome,” Wimer said as he performed his umpteenth haircut of the week. “The best thing that can happen is to walk in and have someone call you by name. That doesn’t happen at the bank anymore, or at the gas station. But it does here.”

The waiting room remains a gathering place for men to swap stories and read the newspaper. In addition to a haircut, customers can still ask for an old-fashioned straight-razor shave complete with hot towels and coconut oil. And they can always count on a joke or two.

“After I’m done with a shave, I sit the customer up and get him a glass of water to see if his throat leaks,” he quipped.

In its prime, The Office was a bustling 10-chair shop in the heart of the city’s downtown, and Wimer had the front chair. Now, it’s a one-man show in a nondescript strip mall.

But the customers keep coming, some driving from as far away as Dana Point for regular appointments with the 60-year-old Wimer, who describes himself as a “dinosaur.”

“I drive 40 miles to get here because he cuts my hair the way I like it,” said 73-year-old Jack Gardner of Mission Viejo. “I’ve been coming here for 30 years because it just feels right. It’s a nice atmosphere.”

Norm Edelman, also a 30-year customer, agreed.

“It’s a force of habit,” said Edelman, a retired salesman who moved from Anaheim to Huntington Beach six years ago. “We swap stories. If I come home with a bad joke, my wife says, ‘You’ve been to see Paul.’ ”

Jack Harrison, 52, comes in for a haircut and a shave every two weeks. He discovered Wimer’s shop 35 years ago while walking home from Anaheim High School.

“I was on the football team and needed a haircut. I went in and I’ve been coming in ever since,” he said. “Most barbers won’t give you full service anymore. Paul is one of the last great barbers still around. He does things the way they used to do them.”

For years, the shop was a fixture on Lincoln Avenue, across the street from City Hall. This gave Wimer a front-row seat to the local political scene. In the early 1960s, he would watch Gene Autry walk out of City Hall each night during the negotiations to bring the California Angels to the city.

Wimer began working at The Office in 1959, after spending two years in the Army and working for a brief time as a barber in Los Angeles. He became a partner in the business in 1970 and took over five years later.

The shop lost its prime location 17 years ago to redevelopment, something that still rankles Wimer.

“They ripped the heart out of Anaheim,” he said. “There are people who still complain that there is no center of the city.”

But redevelopment wasn’t solely responsible for the decline in business. Longer hairstyles and the electric razor made their dents.

“In the old days, people were shaved every other day,” Wimer said. “They’d have their own mug and leave it in the barbershop with their own brush. Most people today who get a shave get it for the relaxation. The thought of paying $9 for a shave doesn’t seem economically sound since you can buy a can of shaving cream and a razor for a lot less.”

To survive, Wimer occasionally has had to change with the times--within limits.

“I’ve been asked to do my share of Mohawks, which I don’t do,” he said, laughing. “But, it’s really run the gauntlet from hair down to the shoulders to shaved off the head. I’ve been through ponytails, feathered hair and all the rest. The kids today are rediscovering flattops and they think they invented them. They don’t realize that their grandfathers did.”

Although shops like Wimer’s aren’t nearly as numerous as they once were, there are still 26,027 licensed barbers in California. But the number pales in comparison to the approximately 300,000 licensed cosmetologists.

Still, the profession has remained steady over the last decade, said Don Knauss, former president of the National Board of Barber Examiners.

“It’s not a growth industry, but we can place every one of our barbers in a job,” Knauss said.

Wimer, who has been married to his wife, Shirley, since a few months after he started work at The Office, has three grown sons and five grandchildren, all of whom go to him for haircuts. He has no intention of retiring, although someday he plans to cut down on the approximately 50 hours he works each week.

Former Anaheim Councilman Irv Pickler, a customer for more than 30 years, jokes that he plans to remain a regular at The Office even though he has less hair to cut than he once did.

“I think shops like Paul’s are what is missing in a lot of communities,” Pickler said. “Anaheim has grown to more than 300,000 people, so it’s nice to have something that brings you back to the years that a lot of us remember.”