Six Barbershops That Make the Cut

"A barbershop is a place to meet," he says. "Always been that."

1015 U St. NW, 202-462-3400. Cut: $11. Shaved head: $13. Shave: $6. Beard trim: $7.

House Cuts Barber Shop

Congressmen have lots of privileges that aren't available to John Q. Public, but a private barbershop isn't one of them. Anyone who can make it through the metal detectors at the Rayburn House Office Building is welcome to sit in Joe Quattrone's storied barber chair.

The 73-year-old "Joe Q," as he's known on the Hill, has been keeping congressmen kempt for more than 37 years, including some you've heard of, such as Al Gore and Dick Cheney ("a really nice guy"). The day before Gerald Ford assumed the presidency, he got a trim from Joe.

The first Americans Quattrone really knew were the GIs who occupied some of his family's houses in Calabria, Italy, during World War II. "They were real good to us," he remembers. "Whatever they had, they used to give it to us." Later, he followed family members to Ohio, then moved to the District and got the job as House barber by contacting his old congressman.

"There's no better job in the world," he says. Do the representatives ever ask his advice on how to vote? "We become real close friends," he says, "let's put it that way."

Rayburn House Office Building, Room B323, Independence Avenue between First and South Capitol streets SW, 202-225-2327. Cut: $14. Shave: $10. Beard trim: $5.

Puglisi Haircuts

The nondescript architecture of the office building at 2100 Pennsylvania Ave. NW doesn't suggest there's much personality inside, but the people who go to Tony Puglisi's barbershop on the ground floor know different. The place always seems full of George Washington students, profs and other assorted professionals waiting for a trim. The standard sounds -- the snipping of scissors, the electric buzz of the clippers and the hum of the hot lather machine -- mix with the shop's unique polyglot barber banter.

Jose Domingoe, 38, a second-generation barber whose father ran a shop in Argentina, likes to speak Italian to Puglisi on his right and Spanish to Abel Gaona, 38, on his left. Gaona's dad had a barbershop in Paraguay, where Gaona started cutting hair when he was about 15.

Puglisi, 66, took a boat over from Sicily with his wife in 1961 to work in her uncle's barbershop, which was on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. Although Puglisi had cut hair in Rome and apprenticed at a shop back in his small home town near Messina, he needed barber school to learn one outlandish American cut: the flattop.

Puglisi Haircuts moved to its current spot in 1990 when the old shop was razed to make way for a World Bank building. (There's a photo in the new shop of the old place with Puglisi out front.) Has Puglisi ever considered moving back to Italy? "Once you live in the U.S. for a while, you don't want to go back," he says. "This is the place."

2100 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 202-833-