-by Doug Marino
There is a single-chair barber shop that is located near the corner of Jones and O’Farrell streets, in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. The decrepit place has been there since the city was re-built after the great fire of 1906, and a short, stocky man named Alex has owned it outright for the last two decades. The store consists of two rooms: a back storage area where Alex eats his lunch and keeps the books, and the main room where he tends to his clients. There is no sign on the street, no formal name to call it by.
Alex first immigrated to the States from the Philippine islands, where he served in the military as a young man. He opened his store shortly after arriving in San Francisco. Because Alex has had his shop for so long his clientele has gotten to be as diverse as the City itself. Customers range from businessmen of the Financial District on their way home from work or on their lunch breaks to old homeless fellows who have been loyal to Alex and his shop for as long as anybody can remember. The place is popular in the local community for a number of reasons, one of which is the competitive price Alex charges for a top-rate, professional haircut. Another is the large and unmatched porn collection he keeps on hand for waiting customers.
I first heard of the shop from my roommate, who, after walking by after work and stopping in to get his hair trimmed, came home with a $5 haircut and a stack of old porn magazines. As you might imagine, we were instantly sold on the place and have been loyal customers ever since. Come to think of it, this exemplifies the point that Alex relies mainly on word-of-mouth advertising to establish his broad customer base.
His shop is small and simple. There is a row of five plastic chairs set against a mirrored wall and a single leather-backed barber’s chair for the customer. If there aren’t any customers, the seat belongs to Guzman, who is a cook at the Thai-food joint next door. A large screen television sits in a corner and is surrounded by a variety of house plants and flowers; namely orchids and hydrangeas, but I’ve also noticed oleanders and azaleas on occasion. Horse racing simulcasts from Golden Gate Fields in Berkeley are shown throughout the day, and the cook has been known to leave customers next door waiting for their plates of seafood curry or garlic chicken for nearly an hour on crucial race days.
I suspect that Guzman and Alex have been friends for many years. Because of his generosity with winnings collected from the races and unmatched loyalty to the shop, the cook usually has say on what’s being watched, and when there aren’t any customers, the main chair is his. In a typical week, he’ll have his hair trimmed three or four times.
Alex is regarded throughout the neighborhood as a wise man and he loves doling out advice. After a major international crisis, business men who crawl home every night to Nob Hill condos and college students irking by on minimum wage are known to gather in his shop and have their hair cut, just to get his insight into what happened.
Those who make their living on the streets of San Francisco tend to congregate on a corner adjacent the place. The faces have not changed for as long as the shop has been there, Alex will tell you. And he will, on occasion, hand out some of his tips to them. They are well aware of his generosity and, because of it, Alex is highly regarded in the local community. A middle-aged woman who wears short cropped, dread locked hair, a striped, faded button-up shirt and knee-length cargo shorts will stand in front of one of the large glass windows and stare at patrons getting their hair cut, minutes at a time. This tends to unsettle some of the newer customers. To ease this tension, Alex will provide the customer with a quick character-study of the woman. “Oh, for chrissake,” he’ll say, reaching into the drawer and pulling out a $5 dollar bill and giving it to the hag, just so she’ll go away. “That bitch.”
In any case, his shop is widely known as a refuge for the old and alone and the young and lonely. The old men who sit in the store are either waiting to get their haircut or watching life slowly pass by the large pane-glass windows, and they are quick to assist paying customers by hanging up their jackets or holding their umbrellas. On rainy days, which seem to dominate winter and spring months in San Francisco, he opens his place to all who may be in need of some shelter for a little while, and these are the days when I try to make it down to see Alex. Because when the air is cold and the sky is gray, his place is usually full.
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