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Your Choice: Veteran barbers and relatively new ones offer $11 haircuts at barbershop in Old Town
CUTS BOTH WAYS: OLD AND YOUNG WORK TOGETHER
Journal Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Side by side at Old Town Barber Shop are Giles McLelland (left) with customer Al Gambill, and Jamie Rutledge with Ryan Smith
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Published: May 11, 2008
The Old Town Barber Shop has an old-fashioned striped barber pole outside, offers razor-neck shaves in the traditional way and has two barbers with almost 100 years of cutting experience. But it's hardly an old-fashioned shop.
That's because, since 2004, when Jamie Rutledge bought the shop from Giles McLelland and Bobby Whitfield, he has worked to bring what he calls "new school'' and "old school" together.
Rutledge, 30, is joined by Ric Converse, 28, and together they handle walk-in customers to the shop in the Old Town Shopping Center on Reynolda Road.
Rutledge, who said he always enjoyed going to barbershops as a child to hear "the old-timers" tell stories, graduated from barber school in 2002.
"Barbershop," he said, is a strong word. "People know that it's haircuts and catching up on some local gossip or whatever -- just come in, air your mind out a little bit and go back to your regular routine."
Converse, who spends most of his weekends as a professional wrestler, joined the shop in November.
Converse's clients tend to be teenage boys to men in their 40s; Rutledge has clients of all ages. And everyone pays the same $11 for a haircut, whether man or child.
And first-time haircuts on children can be easier than people might think, Rutledge said.
"I just take it slow and put cartoons on or something," he said. "Let them know they're going to get a sucker and just take care of them."
Meanwhile, McLelland, 78, and Whitfield, 77, keep doing what they've been doing for so long. They cut hair by appointment only and have many regular, longtime customers.
"They've been around each other for years, so they know each other inside and out," Converse said.
McLelland, a retired Army veteran, opened the shop with a friend, Robert Boyd, in 1963. He bought out Boyd in 1964 and owned it by himself until he became business partners with Whitfield, Max Murray and Craig Levein in 1973. McLelland and Whitfield eventually bought out the other partners, running the shop together from 1999 to 2004, when Rutledge took over.
"Giles and I went through the hippie generation when the word ‘barber' was an ugly word," Whitfield said. "All the kids had long hair."
A customer typically has a special barber.
Mike Ennis of Rural Hall has patronized Rutledge since he graduated from barber school,and gets a cut at the shop once a week.
"As far as haircuts go, I've been all over the country driving a tractor-trailer and nobody cuts hair as good as he does," Ennis said.
Al Gambill of Winston-Salem has been coming to the shop for full trims for at least 25 years, often providing McLelland with stories of his travels as a Moravian missionary.
"He does what I ask, and I don't have to explain to him each time what I want," Gambill said.
He stops in for a close cut before leaving on a trip to Honduras or Nicaragua.
"I usually let Giles know that this is a regular cut," he said. "When I'm ready to go on a trip, I say I need my Honduras cut."
Whitfield likes the mix of young and older barbers.
"I think we get along together, and we can please old people and young people," he said.
And both generations of barbers like learning from the other.
The younger barbers tend to do more fades and tight hair cuts, which are popular nowadays.
McLelland likes to watch them do short cuts, as his customers typically wear longer hair.
The young barbers like hearing about the old days.
"I love being around the older guys because they can tell you stories about when it was a dollar for a haircut and they had to work from 8 in the morning to 9 at night just to make things work because it was a different time," Converse said.
■ Fran Daniel can be reached at 727-7366 or at fdaniel@wsjournal.com.
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