WASHINGTON — Like many men, actor Michael Ealy — co-star of the new movie "Barbershop" — has a love-hate relationship with hair-cutting establishments.
As a child in his Silver Spring, Md., neighborhood, Ealy saw barbers as strongmen who’d rake unwelcome combs through his thick hair. By his preteens, he dreaded relinquishing six of his hard-earned grass-cutting dollars for a trim. As a teenager at the University of Maryland, Ealy saw a $15 haircut as so exorbitant, he had a buddy teach him to trim his own locks.
It wasn’t until adulthood that Ealy, 29, learned to appreciate barbershops’ appeal.
"It’s a place you go to get more than a haircut," says Ealy, who doesn’t use his real surname, Brown, professionally because of the numerous Michael Browns registered with the Screen Actors Guild.
"There are so many different kinds of people at barbershops. Politicians, lawyers, mailmen, teachers and cops talking about everything — sports, politics, religion," says Ealy, who’ll next be seen in the HBO drama series "Baseball Wives."
"You see barbers holding court; you see guys who are there every day because they have nothing else to do."
He says the economic and social diversity is easily explained.
"If you’re a man, you need to get your hair cut."
If you’re a lucky man, you get it cut someplace like Calvin’s, the lively Chicago shop that rapper Ice Cube’s character inherited from his dad in the movie.
Warm but predictable, "Barbershop" won’t win any Oscars — a subplot involving a stolen automated teller machine is particularly annoying. But audiences who enjoy the frankness and humor common to neighborhood hair joints — not to mention irreverent quips about slavery reparations and Martin Luther King Jr.’s dalliances — will have fun.
As a former single mom of two boys, I’ve spent plenty of time in barbershops, establishments whose overwhelming maleness made me feel like the privileged observer of a secret society. The deep-‘hood establishments I visited kept the language clean. Still, clients’ conversations, views and magazine choices reflected a serious black-guy vibe.
Barbershop devotion is hardly a black thing. Roberto Jimenez grew up in a neighborhood where Salvadoran, Nicaraguan and Bolivian immigrants frequented a local barbershop.
"On Saturdays and Sundays, the whole neighborhood came," recalls Jimenez, 20. "We’d talk about how the week went, about what was going on in people’s different countries."
Sadly, American barbershops have seen better days. In 1987, 6,191 of them employed more than 17,000 people. By 1999, just 3,874 barbershops had 5,000 fewer employees.
In comparison, 63,020 beauty shops employed 390,953 hairdressers and others that year.
Since their inception in the late 1970s, unisex shops have siphoned off customers from establishments like Harry Walls’ self-named institution, owned for 35 years by a former Tuskegee Airman who has "cut heads" since he learned barbering during Air Force basic training.
Men as diverse as baseball great Jackie Robinson, Michigan Rep. Charles C. Diggs Jr. and past Washington Post publisher Phil Graham have gotten haircuts at Walls Barbershop, located just north of the White House.
These days, the shop’s traditional red, white and blue pole rarely spins — "I’m too old to climb up the ladder now," sighs Walls — but the place is still a draw for men who favor "old school" barbering. There, they’re treated to thick foam, hot towels and discreetly placed issues of Playboy because, Walls says, "you can’t just have the Bible sitting there."
At Walls, "we don’t do no shampooing or styling or anything like that," says the owner, who at 75 still dons a burgundy barber’s coat each day to clip customers’ hair.
"I can’t get out of my old ways," he explains. "And a lot of men like to go to a real barbershop. They don’t like that feminine, half-and-half setup they’ve got now. … They like the real barber chairs that are comfortable. I had a barber quit me two months ago, and most of his customers came back, saying, ‘I don’t like that salon stuff.’"
Of course, unisex salons have their own unique appeal — including cross-gender chitchat, advice and arguments. "When I was younger, traditional, all-male barbershops were fun," says Dave Singleton, owner of Silver Spring’s decade-old D.I.S.C. salon.
"Now, I welcome the conversation of the women. I guess I like getting to hear the other side."
Licensed as both a barber and a cosmetologist, Singleton boasts an economically diverse clientele who get their perms, dreadlocks, twists, press-and-curls and "tapers" — formerly called fades — hooked up by five stylists.
But he believes old-school barbershops are due for a comeback.
"The trend is going to swing back around to barbershops, because women are wearing more natural hairstyles," says Singleton, 38. "For a good haircut, you need a barber. Cosmetologists’ skills go in a different direction.
"Barbering," he says admiringly. "That’s a totally different profession."
Donna Britt can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200.
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