It’s hard to eavesdrop. Polished wooden floorboards lie exposed down the middle of the rectangular room, and either side is lined with black leather seats. The room is generally neat and symmetrical, except for the area at the back of the shop where too many leather and poof jackets crowd the racks. But that’s the customers. Denny has nothing to do with that. It feels empty, with high ceilings and motionless fans, perfect for eavesdropping--but for the steady hum of clippers.
The shop is new, been open a year and some change. With 5 barber booths on each side, Denny Moe’s Superstar Barbershop is about three times the size of any of the other shops or salons on Harlem’s Frederick Douglass Blvd between 133rd and 134th streets. Despite the large capacity, there’s not that much talking going on. The 50% owner and manager of the shop Denny Moe explains that it’s because the shop is so big that conversations are usually confined to the barber and the client, instead of the philosophizing and banter bouncing around the entire place like it used to in older, smaller shops.
Speaking from 27 years of experience at 3 different barbershops, Denny says “most barbershops have an intimate setting. At the first shop I was at, we had no TV and radio was to a minimum. We had to entertain each other.” A middle-aged customer chimes in, gesturing and tapping his feet for emphasis with his head leaned back in a sink, hair being coerced back to youth. The men of the barbershop were “part barber, part psychologist, part fashion consultant. For years it’s been a therapy place for men, where we could congregate, talk, and chill.” The absence of women in most barbershops allows for black men to define themselves collectively. As such, in an era when blackness itself has become a brand, a commodity, and manhood is validated by mere things, the barbershop is a potent, vital place.
The flatscreen is usually tuned to Maury, Jerry Springer, Judge Mathis and his cohorts, or The True Crime Channel. Alternately barber and client alike criticize and revel in the outrageous, perhaps to normalize their mundane but underrepresented struggles. Today on Maury, a plump, oily-faced, weave-laden former prostitute is loudly admonishing promiscuous 14 year-olds girls, punctuating each sermonette with an angry “Nah hug yo mama!” And while we smile and shake our heads, it is understood that baby/mama drama is real.
Aaric, younger than some of the other barbers, is 34 but he could be 21. Clean-shaven with generous wide smile, he moved to New York to be with his former girlfriend and their daughter. He has another daughter in Ohio, “I hate it because I don’t see my daughter as much as I want.” Luckily he only has to pay child support for one child, which is 22% of ones income after taxes. “Child support is Uncle Sam’s sister.” As if to typify his story, a couple comes into the shop, the woman looking to use the restroom. While the she is gone, the brother hears our conversation and says “There go my daughter mother right there.” I think he said they were just coming from court.
Aaric: “And y’all can still walk down the street together? That’s a beautiful thing.”
“It is what it is.”
That single parent homes are a staple of the black community makes it unlikely that family could be created in a place of commerce. Aaric says “You live with these people. I feel closer to these dudes than I do my own blood.” Speaking of Denny Aaric says “You have to have a strong head of the table. Most owners don’t actually cut hair. They just come and collect the money.” That fact that Denny is a barber makes him a effective and empathetic leader.
Denny’s entrepreneurship is mirrored by that of his barbers. Each barber pays booth rent, sets his own prices, and deals individually with their own clientele. In this business model, individual and collective success is oftentimes one and the same. Denny mediated monthly meetings where the barbers set standards for dealing with customers, and settle internal disputes.
He also made sure that all of his barbers were licensed. Aaric says “To find a shop owner who has a masters who won’t charge $500 to $1,000 dollars is a feat.” Denny did it for free. The certificates are all neatly framed with taped in pictures of the respective barber.
Denny grew up Frederick Douglas Boulevard which he, like most Harlemites, still calls “8th Ave”. Walking down the streets now, you can see into Harlem. The flesh is torn. Newly completed apartments are still wrapped in metal structures, tall condos just in the beginning stages are bare skeletons of metal. Even the leafless trees seem naked, at the mercy of winter wind that pushes discarded artifacts down the Boulevard.
As his neighborhood is changing to accommodate people who aren’t from Harlem, Denny is expanding on the paradigm of the barbershop as community center. Denny tells his son that “he doesn’t need the hood, the hood needs him.” Activism through the shop is appearent in the little things. The counter beside the window is replete with advertising for other local black owned businesses, but also with flyers for financial and tax services, credit score recall and home ownership, cultural events around town, and barbershop events funding and coordinated by Denny. Last week’s was Networking 101, and this week it’s a poetry reading in honor of Women’s History Month.
Dressed in a Sean John shirt, Rocawear sweats, and clean white sneakers, Denny says he’s not too much into hip-hop—the deceased Gerald Levert provides the bumpin musical supplement to the shop’s Myspace page. But when asked he has plenty to say about our cultures obsession with consumerism rather than investment, the way promiscuity is glorified and how it undermines they family. But all of this consciousness he says, is rooted in a love for cutting hair, and compassion for people.
A big man who is quietly impacting, effortlessly authoritative, Denny was a bodyguard for 12 years. He used to work for Keith Sweat. “I love people smiling, b. I been doing security for a lot of years and my biggest thing is just seeing people happy. Sitting back and watching over them, making sure that they are safe…It’s a beautiful thing.”
