Story by Roger Bong
MAN’S WORLD
Nathan Shields is an innovator and will go against the traditions of barbering if he sees necessary. In the 1960s, by law barbershops could only be open Tuesday through Saturday.
“But campus is a different world,” Shields says, “no one’s around on Saturday.” He petitioned the barbers’ union of Eugene, seeking to open Monday through Friday instead. He was kicked out of the union, but he continued to operate under his own hours anyway, he says.
Shields has barbered at several shops in town, including Kampus Barber Shop and the Red Rooster, both on 13th Avenue, but the most intriguing contribution Shields has made to the world of barbering is Man’s World, located in downtown Eugene.
You might think the place is a beauty shop in disguise: shampoos, blow dryers, hair products—all these easily found in any beauty salon, as well as Man’s World. Although men now do more for their hair than they did 50 years ago, Shields explains, men usually prefer the barbershop to the beauty salon, so Shields took care in naming the 40-year-old institution in order to “bring masculinity to a feminine thing.”
Man’s World is no ordinary barbershop in its design. Forgoing the typical setup of a row of chairs—where, generally speaking, the top barber cuts closest to the front door—Shields’ shop is circular in design. Four styling stations are divided equally on the first level. When the shop first opened in 1970, the upper level was a waiting area complete with pool table and television.
“Barbers would stop by and laugh because it didn’t look like a barbershop,” Shields says. But that’s exactly what he had in mind. Every barber at Man’s World is as good as the other, Shields explains. “Everybody thinks everybody here is the main man.”
MOS FADED
Jason Thompson claims he was in “barber denial” for a long time. He’s been cutting hair since the late 1980s but didn’t get his license until after the new millennium. “I used to cut around the neighborhood and in locker rooms [in Portland],” Thompson says. He later set up shop in his garage when he moved to Eugene. “I never thought I could make a living being a barber.”
In 2004, after finally becoming a licensed barber, Thompson joined master barber Elijah Mack, who had founded Mos Faded a year earlier.
“He was the main barber in town,” Mack says of Thompson, “especially if you were a black man.”
Mos Faded is a place where people of all backgrounds are welcome. Not that other shops in town claim otherwise, but “there’s no other barbershop in town where you could go in and get a line-up,” Thompson says. (A line-up is a technique of making the hairline straight-edged and clean.) It’s what separates Mos Faded from the rest.
When Mack moved away from Eugene a few years later, Thompson’s good friend Alan McKinney stepped in to take Mack’s place. McKinney had just received his license to barber. “It seemed like a good fit,” Mack says on letting Thompson and McKinney take over the shop. Despite the change, Mos Faded has always been a place for friends and family.
“I think it’s the people that make the barbershop a barbershop, not the barbers,” says Thompson. “It’s nostalgia, atmosphere, company.”
“It’s much more personal than professional,” McKinney says. Relationships between barber and customer are deep-seated, so to speak, and some guys have been coming to Mos Faded since its inception.
“There’s always been this underlying theme that [Mos Faded] is a place for all people regardless of race, religion, or class,” Mack says. In June 2009, Mack opened a new shop, Electric Ocean Barbershop, located in southeast Portland. (“The biggest difference,” he says, “is that Jason isn’t here, and that’s the hardest part for me.”)
After previously working together at Kingsford Manufacturing Co. in Springfield, McKinney and Thompson are happy to be working for themselves as barbers. “You take pride in what you do,” Thompson says. “It’s a reflection of you.”
KAMPUS BARBER SHOP
Penny Berry first learned barbering techniques when she bought her first barbershop, the Kampus Barber Shop in 1992. She promised the previous owner, Ed Mayers, who was her ex-boyfriend’s father, that she would never turn the shop into a beauty salon. “I didn’t want to anyways,” she says whole-heartedly. Berry is the third owner of this ninety-seven year-old shop.
Perhaps the most decorated barbershop in town, just fifteen minutes spent inside is a visual feast. A mounted bear head roars above three golden-framed mirrors that rest on cluttered counters, behind which hangs a giant marlin. Near the entrance, a world map is filled with colorful pins to represent customers’ hometowns. It’s no surprise that international students often stop here in search of a haircut.
Berry hasn’t changed much of the decor. Even the red, velvety walls remain from the 1970s, when the owner prior to Berry remodeled the place.
“He was going for the Roaring Twenties look, but it ended up more like French brothel,” she says, laughing.
It might not be obvious why Berry, a hairdresser her whole life, would take so favorably to barbering, but ask her or the other barbers in the shop and you’ll get a simple answer.
“Women are pickier; there’s less stress as a barber,” Berry says. “Men probably wouldn’t even get their haircut if it wasn’t for women.”
“It’s laid back,” says Rom Bichel, the shop’s newest barber. He worked seven years in a local beauty salon before becoming a barber in 2009. He immediately noticed the difference: “I go home feeling good about myself.”