It’s more than a just a part of history. It is history. It
bleeds it. Every pair of shears, every straightedge razor and every
other item both inside and outside the barbershop has a story to
tell. And so do the barbers themselves.
It’s more than a just a part of history. It is history. It bleeds it. Every pair of shears, every straightedge razor and every other item both inside and outside the barbershop has a story to tell. And so do the barbers themselves.
Anyone who has been to a barbershop knows this. And that’s why they keep coming back.
Since the time of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, the barber has played an integral role in life. In fact, barbers are even mentioned and called upon in the Bible.
As time went on, the barber took on more responsibilities than simply cutting hair. He was your doctor, performing bleedings and minor surgeries. He was your dentist, pulling out bad teeth. He shaved your face, bathed you, gave you a massage and sent you on your way.
The barbershop wasn’t just a place to come in, get a haircut and a shave and get out, either. It was more or less a social club for men. The businessmen, bankers, movers and shakers all would look forward to their three stops a week at the barbershop to talk about the important business of the day, hear all the latest rumors and get a shave from the barber with a straightedge razor.
Newcomers to town would look for the striped poles and make their first stop there. A trip to the barbershop would get them cleaned up and looking sharp – and while they were there they would learn what jobs were available in town and the best place to find a room.
But the world began to grow up and started to get faster. Soon there were phones, then there were highways and then great cities with skyscrapers everywhere. Soon hair salons became the rage, and then the franchise haircutter. No longer was the barbershop the only place to hear the latest business news, and no longer was the average man spending three days a week at the barber. They had their own razors and they had no time to be wasting away getting their haircut. Face it, the barbershop had been left in the dust of the old world.
Today, although their purpose has metamorphosed into little more than a place for men to get their hair cut, it still takes on a special meaning for those who still practice the craft and for the old-timers who still remember what the red, white and blue pole meant to them years ago.
On a bright, sunny morning in downtown Morgan Hill, Carlos Altamirano was working on trimming one of his customers, using an electric razor to trim the sides of his hair. Suddenly, he put down his clippers and ran outside his front door to yell at one of the locals.
“Hey Boogaloo, you walk like a duck,” he yelled, laughing.
Altamirano, who rarely keeps his emotions to himself, is a fixture in downtown, working out of an A-frame building that appears misplaced among the long rectangular buildings that line Monterey Road. His shop is unmistakable, just like his shiny 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne that is parked alongside the shop each morning.
Altamirano and Stefan Medina, a 33-year-old barber who shares the space at Carlos Barbershop, also are known to glue quarters to the sidewalk outside the barbershop and watch with delight as people see the coins shining on the ground and unsuccessfully try to pick them up.
“It all has to be in good humor,” Altamirano said.
Medina agreed, telling stories of Altamirano giving people a hard time – but always jokingly.
“No matter what mood you’re in, he’ll make you laugh,” he said.
For Altamirano, 58, barbering began while he was in the military during the Vietnam era while he was training in the Mojave Desert.
“Right there,” Altamirano said as he pointed to a few old, black-and-white photos taped to the top of a mirror in his shop. “I was 19 years old; I was in the Army. A friend of mine bought a pair of clippers and got tired of it after a little while, so he gave them to me.
“It was a razor, a pair of scissors and a comb – that’s all it was,” he said. “That, and a bunch of sand.”
Altamirano got the hang of using the razor and went to work on a scheme to make a little money on the side.
“For the first month I didn’t charge anything,” said Altamirano, who built himself up a good-sized customer base from his unit. “Then I started charging 25 cents a haircut.”
However, that idea came crashing down when one of his superiors decided he didn’t want to pay for a haircut.
“A major came up and he made it my duty to cut hair,” Altamirano said. “So I couldn’t charge anything anymore.
“I really didn’t start cutting hair on an everyday basis until 1984.”
That was when Altamirano opened up his first barbershop in Morgan Hill. He has moved a few times since and finally ended up at 17455 Monterey Road.
“This little building draws a lot of attention,” said Medina, who learned his trade from his family. Medina himself used to spend a lot of time by the building as a kid – skateboarding off the slanted side of the building.
“They used to come out and yell at us,” he said.
Now Medina has learned what it was like to be on the other side. After putting up with kids skating off the side of the building, he and Altamirano put up cattle guards on the sides of the building to stop the kids from skating. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any fooling around at the shop.
Also apparent when going into Altamirano’s shop is his love of Marilyn Monroe. The barbershop is filled with photos, cardboard cutouts, and even a telephone with a Monroe doll with a grate that blows air up, pushing up her dress, whenever it rings.
“It’s a collection that started with this one picture 15 years ago,” Altamirano said, pointing just above his Army picture to a giant poster of Monroe. “People just started bringing in pictures and she’s here.”
He said the collection of Monroe memorabilia wasn’t something he planned on.
“I just put it up and it blossomed,” he said. “I’ve bought a lot of them and a lot of them were given to me. She’s my gal. She’s an icon.
“If anybody wants to know anything about Marilyn, I’ll tell you about her.”
Hollister Barber Frank Chavez, 71, also has received many things from his customers for the wall in his barbershop at 530 San Benito St., but his pictures are a little different.
When walking into Chavez’s shop, named Johnnie’s Barbershop for Chavez’s late boss and friend, Johnnie Olano, visitors are taken back to a simpler time not just from the 1930s barber’s chair but from an array of pictures that show the history of Hollister and the lives of people that have come in for haircuts.
The pictures on the wall date back to 1911, including a photo of a man named Charlie Root. Root, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, once pitched to Babe Ruth, and subsequently gave up Ruth’s “called shot,” when he pointed at the bleachers before hitting a home run (others say he was pointing at Root and arguing with the Cubs’ bench after an inside pitch). When his playing days were over, Root bought a ranch in Paicines and came in to get his hair cut at Chavez’s barbershop.
“He used to tell me stories of pitching back in Chicago,” Chavez said.
Charlie Root Jr. gave Chavez the picture of his dad. Both he and his father have now passed away.
Other pictures on display at the barbershop include 1930s photos of Hollister High School football coach Andy Harden and two owners of a service station in Hollister during the 1930s. There also is a panoramic view of Hollister during the time Chavez grew up in the town. He even pointed out the schoolhouse on a hill where he once went as a boy.
Chavez said most of the pictures in the shop were brought in by his regular customers.
“They all come in and give them to me because they know I like those pictures,” he said.
Chavez has been cutting hair for 43 years, and has seen many customers come in and out of his doors, but he still remembers many of their stories.
“I like to talk to my customers,” he said. “My oldest customer has to be this guy,” he said as he pointed to a framed photo on the wall of a man named George Kinkaid. “He’s 97 years old. He loves to talk about the old days.”
Kinkaid no longer has the strength to come to Johnnie’s Barbershop, which is located above the San Benito Bank, so Chavez takes his tools to him, going to cut his hair every few weeks.
“I have a lot of old-timers. They come in here and talk about the good ol’ days.” Chavez said. “A lot of them have passed away.”
But if you look hard enough, there is some youth to be found in today’s barbershop.
In 42-year-old Luis Vasquez’s Gilroy barbershop, Vasquez had just finished with a customer when a young boy walked up with a broom and began sweeping hair off of the tile floor and into a dust pan. That 12-year-old boy was Vasquez’s son, Henry, who may have looked just like Luis himself did a little more than 30 years ago.
For Vasquez, the barbersop was a part of life growing up in Guatemala.
“When I was a kid, my dad took me to the barbershop,” said Vasquez, who was just 8 years old and living in Guatemala City. His father’s friends owned barbershops in town, and he wanted to help.
“I grew up in the barbershop,” Vasquez said. “I was sweeping, cleaning. They showed me this job.”
Vasquez opened up Vasquez Barber and Styling Shop at 8335 Monterey Road in Gilroy six years ago.
He said that barbershops were similar in Guatemala, but those shops didn’t have many of the luxuries American barbers enjoy today.
“It was all the same thing,” he said. “They had white shirts, long hair. … They only used scissors. There was no electricity.”
Vasquez spent 23 years in Guatemala before he made his way to Gilroy. After spending time as a salesman, Vasquez had an opportunity to build a barbershop of his own – which he did with his own two hands.
“I made this shop” said Vasquez, who put in all of the plumbing, electricity and fixtures himself. The whole project cost him just $11,000.
Vasquez speaks fluent Spanish and English, and living in two different cultures influenced him to find interest in all kinds of people.
“I like different people, different languages,” said Vasquez. “It’s a social job, you know.”
Vasquez is one of the few remaining barbers that still shaves faces.
“A lot of customers are face customers,” he said. “I do the best face in Gilroy.”
“He does,” said Jesse Hernandez, a customer who happened to be getting a haircut at the time.
The 33-year-old has been coming into Vasquez’s shop for five years now.
“A friend of mine told me about him,” Hernandez said. “I’m 100 percent satisfied every time.”
That’s music to Vasquez’s ears. He said it’s likely that he’ll spend 20 to 30 minutes on a single customer to make sure the haircut is just right.
“My customers are my friends, too,” he said.
And most of the customers at Vasquez’s barber shop know his two sons, Luis Jr., 17, and Henry, who spend a lot of time helping their father out.
“If my dad needs help, we’ll come over,” said Luis Jr., who said he loves being a part of the barbershop. “We’ve been helping out here since it opened.”
