”Hi, I’m Skidmore. Skidmore the Barber.” He sat half-reclined on a cushioned chair next to a tiny, old TV, clearly comfortable in his own shop, which has been on G Street in Arcata for almost 40 of the 50 years Skidmore’s been cutting hair.
The barber chair in the center of the floor stood empty. Deer heads line the walls, accompanied by a large, dried snakeskin.
When asked for a last name he replied, “That’s it: Skidmore the Barber. … I’m the oldest barber in Northern California,” he added with pride. “Almost 80.”
When most people think of a barber, Skidmore’s the guy they picture: A friendly old man who’s been around seemingly forever — someone who knows the neighborhood’s history inside and out. A barber is seen as rather quaint, like a soda jerk or a bellhop — a whimsical character in a Norman Rockwell painting.
In the 21st century, are barbers more than just charming remnants of the past? Do men still value the experience of a buzz and a hot lather shave in an environment set aside just for them? Or have they moved on to places like MasterCuts, where you can walk in with the whole family and be done in half an hour?
”It seems like barbershops are a dying breed,” said Terry Brill, proprietor of Terry’s Bluegrass Barber in Arcata. His place has a distinctly different feel than Skidmore’s. Instead of stuffed animal heads, his walls are lined with mandolins and banjo cases. Rather than a lacquered
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snakeskin, criss-crossed hockey sticks hang above the window.
But, despite the title on the sign outside, Brill is not technically a barber. He cuts men’s hair, yes. And he has the cushy barber’s chair. But he doesn’t shave his customers, and that is an essential distinction. Brill has his cosmetology license, but in order to be a barber, he’d need a license to use a razor.
It’s one of several points of pride among the barber profession. Jeff Hutchens, owner of The Barber Center — another traditional-looking shop, located in Henderson Center — disagrees with Brill. He doesn’t think barbers are going away anytime soon.
”There’s been a barbershop here on and off since the ’40s,” he said. And Hutchens believes there are plenty of reasons men will continue to come to barbers.
”You go to one of these places where they just clipper you and kick you out,” he said, shaking his head. “I call it ‘Clip ‘n’ kick.’ It doesn’t feel like they’ve done a proper job.”
After removing the sheet from his client’s neck, the customer stood up from the chair, paid $14 in cash for his cut and headed for the door.
”Have a fantastic Christmas, OK?” Hutchens said to him as the man headed out to the street.
When a man gets a cut at a real barbershop, said Hutchens, he gets special treatment, like a razor outline and a hot lather shave around the ears. “It feels like a finished product,” he said.
His shop, which features three barbers, gets a broad cross-section of customers, from kids to businessmen to the old-timer regulars.
But in order for the profession to continue, customers are only half of the equation.
Bill Hancock, a licensed barber and owner of CityBarberShop on J Street in Eureka, said, “There’s a huge shortage of people in this trade. We don’t have enough people up here to draw from that are skilled. We have a lot of hairdressers (but) we don’t have many barbers.”
Hancock’s shop is markedly different from others in the area. To the left as you enter, five leather armchairs surround an ornate area rug and two small marble tables. A large bookshelf holds styling products on the upper shelves, books on the lower ones. In the corner, a cooling case displays a wide variety of fine cigars. There’s a self-serve coffee station that offers real cups and saucers, and a sign out front advertises the business as a free Wi-Fi hotspot.
Hancock even has a deluxe Web site, which advertises the business as a “grooming lounge” and features, among other things, a list of services offered, a glossary of different cuts (”The Ivy League,” “Flat Top Boogie,” “Caesar”), instructions on different ways to tie a necktie — even a link to the “barber cam,” which allows people to watch haircuts currently in progress.
”There’s a myth that these shops are dying,” Hancock said. “It’s not true.”
Hancock said that, after graduating from barber college, he felt that “someone needed to give (barbering) some new spirit. I thought it was on the cusp of something, and it was really about to take off.”
”And, in bigger metropolitan areas, it is,” he said. “If you Google ‘barbershops’ you’ll get the antiquated stuff about barbers and traditions and the Andy Griffith stories, but you’ll also get stories about how it’s thriving and reaching a hybrid market — sort of between salon and barbering now.”
Other local barbershops aren’t quite so forward-looking. In fact, many of them look like they haven’t changed anything but the magazines in the racks and the channel on the TV for decades. Of course, that might be just fine by most customers.
”I get all ages,” said Virgil Falkinbury, the 71-year-old owner of The Den Barbershop on Sixth Street in Eureka. But he also admitted, “today’s slow. Basically it’s OK,” he said, but “it’s slowed down just a little bit in the last few years.”
Several years ago, it looked like there would be a resurgence in the ranks of local barbers. Susan Waddingham established a barber college on Fifth Street and admitted 14 students during the first year. They all graduated.
”It was the most successful school in California,” said Roger Iverson, a licensed barber who served as an instructor at the college and now works in the building where it used to operate. “It had 100 percent graduation (rate) for first-time applicants.”
But the college lasted less than two years. “People said they wanted to become barbers, but when it came time to register, they weren’t prepared financially,” Iverson said.
Without an influx of younger talent, the barbering profession could be endangered. The average age of barbers chosen more or less randomly to be interviewed for this article was above 60. The one thing that they all had in common was their favorite thing about the job: The people.
”I like visiting with people and making friends,” Skidmore said. “I get a few younger people, but most of my customers are older, retired people.”
”I’ve seen a lot of barbers come and a lot of barbers go over the years,” Hutchens said.
If they all go, something unique would certainly be lost.
”This is the one place left where guys can gather and talk and joke a little bit. That’s what makes it nice,” said Hutchens. “It’s our place.”
http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_7741454
