Six Barbershops That Make the Cut

By Scott Elder
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 20, 2007

Alot of fuss has been made recently about the propriety of John Edwards's two $400 Beverly Hills haircuts. But for many guys, the real controversy was the quality of the clip job: Edwards's pricey coif looks more like a decent $20 cut. Maybe he should've just visited the corner barbershop instead?

Abel Gaona, a barber at the Puglisi shop in Foggy Bottom, likes to tell the story of a regular customer who tried a high-end men's salon for a trim. Big mistake.

"I thought maybe his wife or somebody cut it . . . like to practice giving haircuts," recalls Gaona, who had the nervous regular in his chair minutes later. The fix -- a total do do-over -- cost $20, a third of the original sloppy chop.

When it comes to barbers, a good man -- or woman -- is hard to find. Here are six top barbershops for the next time you get a little shaggy.

Sneed's 8th & I

Even if you don't notice the barracks across the street, you know this is a place for Marines as soon as you walk in. The walls are decorated with a large USMC seal, signed portraits of Marine generals and a print of a watercolor depicting leathernecks rappelling from a helicopter.

Owner Robert Sneed, 69, has been giving Marines their high-and-tight cuts for nearly 30 years, first as the manager of the concession inside the barracks and in his own shop since 1986. "They've been good to me," says Sneed, who charges Marines less than half the regular price for their frequent haircuts. "You can't keep up with all the names," he says, "but faces -- I don't forget faces."

Sneed and all the other barbers at his shop do much more than the standard Marine cut -- properly called the "zero taper" -- and now civilians make up about 60 percent of the clientele. Sneed still gets a kick out of giving guys their first flattop: "It'll blow their mind."

749 Eighth St. SE, 202-544-2541. Cut: $15; Marines $7; other military, police, firemen and retired military $12; children $10. Beard trim: $7.

Eaton's Barber Shop

Anyone worried that U Street has lost its authenticity should check out Eaton's Barber Shop. It's a throwback that has been around for 25 years, and it's definitely part of an endangered species.

"Older men come in and ask if I still use a razor," says Leon Tyson, meaning a straight razor for shaves. He does, but now Tyson (everyone calls him Tyson), 76, uses straight razors with disposable blades, and increasingly they're being used to shave young people's heads, not their faces. Barbers who have been trained to do faces are disappearing fast.

Tyson moved here from North Carolina 50 years ago to learn how to barber at a trade school, and he has been cutting hair on and off ever since. After retiring from his job at the Government Printing Office 20 years ago, he decided, "I want to be my own boss one day." Now that he is, the boss seems pretty easy to please. "My stressful days are over," Tyson says.

If a customer walks in the door, Tyson gets right to work. Otherwise, he seems content to relax, listen to the radio and shoot the breeze with pals from the neighborhood.

"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-

2175. Cut: $20. Beard trim: $12.

Westover Barber Shop

Westover is a spot for celebrities, former owner Fares Abi-Najm says. "Ollie North comes in here, and John comes here," he says, motioning toward longtime customer John Horton, who admits he's not a celebrity outside the barbershop. North, however, does indeed come here, and for a time the "Ollie Cut" was on the price list.

"The thing about this place," Horton says, "is when most people walk in the door [the barbers] know their names." That's pretty uncommon, even at a small neighborhood shop, and Abi-Najm is glad the new owner, Annie Tran, is continuing the tradition.

Although Abi-Najm, 58, sold the Arlington business in 2002 to manage the Lebanese Taverna in Tysons Corner, he still works Saturdays "to be with the guys." In addition to the regulars, "the guys" are barber Roger Nasr, 47, who like Abi-Najm is originally from Lebanon, and the new owners, Hong and Annie Tran, both from Vietnam. They've placed a smiling golden Buddha beside the cash register, but a good-luck statue won't be necessary if the barbers stick to the basics: Be kind to the customers and give good haircuts.

"There's something special about a barbershop," says Tom Mirga, a steady customer since 1988. "It engenders loyalty."

5910 Washington Blvd., Arlington, 703-241-9312. Cut: $14, seniors and children $12. Shave: $9. Beard trim: $5. Facial massage with hot towel: $16.

Westwood Barber Shop

"Nothing fancy," a customer tells Nick Santini after taking a seat for a cut. He's surely just saying that out of habit -- the Santini brothers don't do fancy haircuts, and their shop reflects that. Everything in this Bethesda strip-mall barbershop is classic: The chairs are decades old but well maintained, the super-clean floor has the traditional black and white square tiles, and the barbers are wearing matching light blue barber jackets.

On a recent visit, customers ranged from old men with canes to hip teenagers to boys who needed a booster for the chair. (One poor kid apparently had played barber and lost).

The Santini brothers -- Dominic, Nick and Joe -- emigrated from Italy's Abruzzo region and bought the Westwood shop in the 1960s. Unfortunately, the entire Westwood Shopping Center is slated for demolition, date uncertain, and the Santinis will have to retire or work part time somewhere else. They've ruled out trying to open another place because "the rent is sky high," says Dominic, who at 67 is the youngest of the three brothers. "You can't make it [cutting men's hair alone]; that's why they open unisex places."

This isn't good news for Mitch Corbett, who wasn't particular about where he got his hair cut until he started getting trims at the Santinis' shop. If the brothers stopped cutting hair, he says, "I don't know where I'd go."

5430 Westbard Ave., Bethesda, 301-654-9788. Cut: $15. Razor haircut: $19. Facial massage: $11. Scalp treatment: $6.