Hair styles change, but barber shops don’t. See inside a turn-of-the-century SLO shop
Hair styles change often, but the look of an old-school barber shop hasn’t changed a great deal in over a century.
In a photo circa 1912-13, eight men stand stiffly as the slow shutter speed camera and flash records the image. They are in the Palace Barber Shop on Chorro Street near the Mission San Luis Obispo.
Bootblack John Fourcade works shining shoes in the foreground.
The photo shows the classic look of a barber shop hasn’t changed as fast as hairstyles have: Big hydraulic lift chairs, white-shirted barbers, mirrors on the wall, an easily swept floor with brooms at the ready and a set of chairs for customers waiting for the next barber.
Fun fact: the red, white and blue barber pole out in front of traditional barbers is a throwback to early days when the barber also pulled teeth or performed blood letting.
The scene is pretty similar, for example, at the Anderson Barber Shop — which has been in business in town for more than 100 years.
Barbering is a job that resists automation, although movie star George Clooney once claimed in an interview that he cut his hair with a Flowbee, a combination vacuum and hair cutter. I look at the Flowbee and think to myself, “your mileage may vary.”
The job of bootblack, however, isn’t advertised anymore.
In the era of dust- and mud-filled streets, keeping expensive boots protected was an investment worth making.
Shoes that require shining are not as common in the era of disposable fast fashion and paved streets. Those folks who own a pair of shoes worth getting a replacement set of shoe laces for usually end up shining their own shoes.
The earliest Weekly Tribune article I found mentioning the Palace Barber Shop is from April 1908.
A 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of downtown San Luis Obispo shows two barber shops along Chorro Street just down from the Mission.
The larger one is three doors down from Monterey Street, in the old two-story brick Lasar Building, demolished in 1955 where Mission Plaza is today.
A smaller shop further down has a back corner overhanging the creek. Another large barber shop was across the street, roughly between where Bull’s Tavern and Bath & Body Works is today.
Meanwhile, women in that era didn’t have a beauty salon on Chorro Street. Wealthy women had servants to take care of their hair but for the most part in the early 1900s women in this region relied on family members or themselves to style their hair.
Things would change in the 1920s as the confluence of flapper style, movie glamour and a gradually growing number of workplace jobs for women all combined to create a business environment that supported the craft.
By March 21, 1921, the Daily Telegram carried a story about one of the new stores, a franchise Marinello Beauty Parlor, opening with a manicurist in town.
An experienced technician from Los Angeles came to help set up the store.
Unfortunately we have no photo of that business.
