The classic barbershop has two main themes: community and trust. Where else in 2017 would you let someone put a straight razor near your throat, let alone pay for it?
Few barbershops made it past the ’70s and ’80s, falling behind as hairstyles ran long. But in the past six or seven years, Denver has experienced a resurgence of barbershops as a younger generation picks up the clippers and straight razors. And the owners of those newer shops say business is booming.
The haircut industry is still mostly salons, but barbershops are making an impression, comprising 323 of the 4,487 registered shops under barber and cosmetology in Colorado, according to the Department of Regulatory Agencies.
Among those shops is Proper Barber on Tennyson Street north of West 38th Avenue, which opened in 2011. The shop has nine chairs and opened a second location with six chairs in Capitol Hill.
The shop hums with music, conversation and buzzing. It offers a variety of cuts, beard trims and a “proper shave” with a straight razor. Men sit in old-fashioned chairs that face each other, encouraging people to chat as they get a cut. A rebooted barber pole sits in the front window.
“When Jordan (Weinstein) opened Proper six years ago, there wasn’t anything like it in Denver,” co-owner Ryan Williams said.
Williams worked in corporate America but quit his job and started barbering five years ago. Proper is anything but corporate — a taxidermied deer wearing sunglasses, a rolled bill stuck in its nose, hangs on the wall. Williams, who is covered in tattoos, including a straight razor dangling from the corner of his eye, was wearing a floppy bucket hat as he worked. He looked right at home in the shop.
Proper was in the right place at the right time, he said.
A rise in metrosexuality — men paying more attention to shopping, dressing and grooming — meant men could openly care about their looks while hair trends leaned toward beards and classic hairstyles. At the same time, a new wave of young men started moving to the city with jobs in the technology, marijuana or start ups.
“The growth has been so much,” Williams said. “No barbershop has taken business from another one. There’s plenty of work to go around.”
For Williams, the modern barbershop is not a trend that will disappear in a couple years. As long as barbers continue to provide a community environment for their clients, he said the shops will stick around. Additionally, stricter regulations are helping weed out shops that aren’t serious about barbering, he added.
“A good ol’ barbershop”
“It’s sad to me, being an old timer, that the barbershop is vanishing in the American scene,” said 82-year-old Dick Alderson, owner O’Brien’s Tonsorial Parlor on East Eighth Avenue and Birch Street.
“Anybody who wants to bring back an old barbershop, I’m all for it,” he later said. “I’d love to see that instead of fancy hairstyling salons. I like to see a good ol’ barbershop.”
Alderson has been barbering for 64 years. He’s witnessed the industry change drastically since he started when he was 19-years-old — a time when there could have been as many as two barbershops on the same block, he said. O’Brien’s was started by two brothers — Dick and Jack O’Brien — in 1953. The shop was next to the old University of Colorado Medical Center at East Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, which provided a steady stream of customers until it moved in 2007.
The small shop has wood-paneled walls decorated with sports memorabilia, newspaper clippings and old photos, including a 1918 photo of the Journeymen Barbers’ International Union of America local 205 with more than a hundred men. ESPN was on the shop’s TV, and older men waited in wooden chairs, browsing the newspaper.
Alderson described times when the shop had a phone connected to the College Inn, a bar down the street. Men would grab a beer while waiting for the shop to call over when they were ready. People didn’t make appointments, they would simply wait — sometimes for two hours — chatting among themselves.
“Young people today didn’t ever know what an old-time barber is like,” Alderson said.
He said barbershops took a downturn in the ’70s and ’80s when the long hairstyles became popular. Barbers didn’t adapt, and Denver lost shops by the thousands.
Some have survived along with O’Brien’s, including 80-year-old Hollywood Barber Shop on East Colfax Avenue and Josephine Street. Owner Mykhal Goodloe has been barbering for 21 years at Hollywood, which moved to its current location 20 years ago.
The shop is large, with 12 stations and a shoe shine chair. Each barber has decorated his station with sports teams and other cultural icons. A bench press is tucked in the corner and small decorative tile lines the floor. Hollywood has weathered storms both in the industry as well as the community, Goodloe said.
“When we were going through the recession, you had so many people who needed to have somewhere to vent,” Goodloe said. “The barbershop has always been a place for community.”
Goodloe said he’s noticed barbershops popping up, saying they were trendy at the moment.
“I think it’s good that younger people are willing to pass the torch on,” he said. “They can see what we really do for this community.”
Beyond being a sounding board, Goodloe says the shop tries to engage its community, whether that means collecting Toys-For-Tots, hosting barber competitions or holding customer appreciation days.
“The barbering game has been here before us and it’ll definitely be here after us,” Goodloe said.