After 40 Years, He’s Hanging Up His Comb and Scissors

His customers say he’s a cut above everybody else. So no wonder they’ve been lined up all week long at Francis Okubo’s tiny storefront west of downtown Los Angeles.

After 40 years of snipping, Okubo is closing his Pico-Union district barbershop today. And his friends have jammed the place hoping for one last trim.

“Make it the shortest I’ve ever had it--this one might have to last another 39 years,” Lester Nakata joked Thursday as he settled into Okubo’s antique barber’s chair for the 473rd time. A chemical plant manager from West Los Angeles, Nakata has been a monthly customer since 1960.

Jorge Mazariegos worried where he and his three sons, ages 7, 17 and 20, will go. No one else has ever cut his sons’ hair, said the Bell Gardens businessman, a customer since 1979.

Ringing up the $7 haircuts on a rickety 1930s cash register, Okubo said he is hanging up his clippers so he can spend more time with his wife, Mary, and their grandsons.

But saying goodbye to those he has watched grow up and grow old is more difficult than he expected, he discovered.

“I’ve gotten close to a lot of these people,” said Okubo, 65, a Carson resident. “It’s kind of a happy day for me. But it’s a sad day, too. I know I’m not going to ever see some of them again.”

Born in a Hawaii sugar cane camp, Okubo decided to go to barber college after a stint in the Army. Cutting hair, he reasoned, was the easiest way for a young man like him to own his own business.

He apprenticed at a barbershop near 8th and Union streets before taking over his own shop a block away in 1959.

The neighborhood was a bustling place in those days. A trip to Okubo’s shop was a monthly ritual for most Pico-Union boys and their fathers. And as his customers grew up and moved away, generations of them kept returning for haircuts.

At the end, Okubo’s regulars were traveling from places like Torrance, Placentia, the San Fernando Valley, Pasadena and--in one case--Las Vegas.

“I feel comfortable with him. That’s why I kept coming back,” said 40-year customer Mitchell Sakado, a civil engineer from Montebello.

“Frank’s the same guy he was 40 years ago, except his hair is gray,” said another original customer, transportation engineer Jerry Omiya of Eagle Rock.

Okubo grinned at those sentiments. “They have no choice but to say that because I’ve got scissors in my hand.”

Others point to Okubo’s kindness. They say that the barber quietly kept close tabs on elderly customers living alone and would notify social service agencies if he noticed that they needed help.

For five years, Okubo regularly drove to Glendale on Sunday--his only day off--to cut the hair of a bedridden customer.

Crediting another customer, a stockbroker, with giving him investment advice that paid off, Okubo did not raise the price of his haircuts during the last 10 years. “I decided I wanted to reward my customers for my good luck.”

Okubo was more of a friend than a barber. And a good friend, at that.

As 21-year-old Rafael Lemus sat in the barber’s chair for the last time he chatted about family matters before asking Okubo’s opinion about a Mother’s Day outing.

“He’s basically a father figure--like a parent you go to for advice,” said Lemus, a theater projectionist who lives in the Pico-Union area. “People here are going to miss him.”