The Sicilian Scissors

Last week, I found myself in my old neighborhood, Kew Gardens, and I drove down the block where my barbershop had been located.

I say "had been" because to my surprise and dismay, it was no longer there, having been replaced by a store that sold mobile phones and accessories. While this new store might be very nice, it will never recapture the magic of Joe's Barbershop.

Joe's was owned and operated by Joseph Annunziata, an Italian-American fellow who was very proud of his roots. I really think that the place was originally set up as a shrine to Frank Sinatra. There were pictures of Frank Sinatra everywhere, as well as about a dozen very large Frank Sinatra bobble-head dolls. Eventually, Joe decided that since he was already paying rent on the place, he might as well earn some money by putting in some barber's chairs and giving haircuts. I'm not really sure if this is the way it happened, but it makes sense, and would explain a lot.

Everyone I knew had his hair cut at Joe's. The shop became synonymous with getting a haircut. You'd say, "I've got to go to Joe's this week," not "I need a haircut." Neighborhood parents would tell their sons, "Look at you. You're a mess. I'm taking you to Joe's."

Everybody knew Joe, and Joe knew everybody. My friends and I were convinced that Joe was "mobbed up." Looking back, we had absolutely no evidence to support this belief, but it just made too much sense to us, so we believed it. (Years later, the NY Attorney General's office, under Elliot Spitzer, employed this very same sort of logic when dealing with Wall Street). For some reason, we were very proud of the fact that we knew this "highly connected and influential mafioso." We always believed that if we ever got into a pickle with the mob, we'd just drop Joe's name, and we'd be on the right side of things. Add to that the fact that I've always been very fond of both pizza and pasta, and I was practically the mayor of Bay Ridge.

Undoubtedly, the best thing about Joe's Barbershop was the non-stop entertainment provided by the group of his buddies who were always hanging out in the place. These guys would walk in, sit down, and spend the next two hours reading the paper and shooting the breeze. Like Joe, most of these guys were Italian-American, with typical names, like Sal, Dom, Nicky and Tony. Invariably, one of the guys would have no larynx, and would speak in an incredibly raspy voice that my brother and I would spend the next week trying to imitate, much to my parent's chagrin.

Oddly, these guys never spoke of their children, only their nieces and nephews. A typical conversation went something like this:

Dom (entering the barbershop): "Hey Joe!"
Joe (as he was cutting someone's hair): "How you doin', Dom? How's your nephew?"
Dom: "Ahh, he's just a fat punk. He's got no respect for his elders."
Nicky & Tony (from the far corner of the shop): "What's that? He's got no respect?"
Sal (sitting in one of the empty barber's chairs): "Hey, Dom. Why don't you teach him a lesson?"
Dom: "Nah, I couldn't do that to my sister."

I'm not going to get too nostalgic about the barbershop I patronized as a kid. If anything, I should be nostalgic about my hair itself. However, I really learned a great deal about the world while sitting in Joe's barbershop. What a great place it was. Where else could you get not only a haircut, but the "guaranteed" winner of that day's 3rd race at Aqueduct race track?

Why, I'll give you 3-1 odds that the manager of that fancy new wireless phone store doesn't even know a filly from a furlong.