Also this issue: Icepack -A.D. Amorosi

June 19-25, 2003

naked city

No Girls Allowed

Face time: Andy Sgarra works his magic on Rob Whitehouse at Shaving Grace, an anti-salon just for guys. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Shaving Grace offers a tonsorial haven for men.

by A.D. Amorosi

The art of the true barbershop shave and a haircut is a feat worth witnessing, watching old Italian barbers hover lovingly over their charges, snipping sideburns and straight-razoring neck lines while pumping the booster seats on their nickel-plated Koch barber chairs. To say nothing of a good hot-towel treatment.

But that's the old world, right?

Not for the Sgarra family, an Italian-Irish East Falls clan who are making the old world new again with their Shaving Grace barbershops, open now at the Philadelphia Racquet Club and in Exton, with a soon-to-open shop in Atlantic City's new Borgata Hotel.

The shops are staffed by the Sgarra brothers: barbers Nicholas, Mike and Andy, and "check cutter" Rich, ages 28 to 35.

"In a man's lifetime, you'll count on one hand the barbers he's had. A woman will go to someone different for foiling, for curling, for cutting." That's "Uncle" Joe Russo, master barber of 35 years, now making his home at Shaving Grace with his Do-Vo blades, an arsenal of scissors, his Clubman Talc and blue Barbicide disinfectant.

"You know, it's a very personal thing touching a man's hair," Russo says. "If this wasn't a business, you'd get arrested."

Mike and Rich Sgarra laugh with him as if they're all sitting around at a family dinner.

But barbering wasn't a trait handed down through the generations in the Sgarra family. Back in the early '80s, "My dad's hair was thinning and he didn't want to pay for haircuts anymore," says Rich, who was 13 at the time. "Dad went out, bought a Wahl clipper, told me I was his barber. So I did his hair. Then I started to do my hair -- this is when I was on South Street with a mohawk. Then I did my brothers. Then they did each other."

"Then neighborhood kids started coming," chimes in Mike, recalling how he, Andy and Nick would cut heads on Friday when the football team came over for trims. "We'd close up at 9 p.m. and have money to party with," says Rich.

By 1995, their neighborhood barber, Joe Michetti, caught sight of the brothers' activities. Rather than yell at the unlicensed kids, Michetti encouraged the Sgarras to get legal and buy him out. "'You'll make an honest living,' is what he told us," says Mike.

Eventually each brother came from another job into what became the family business. While Andy, Mike and Nick cut hair, Rich became the business' researcher and manager.

"Nick thought, and us too, that salons are geared for women, not for men," Rich says. The brothers hoped to reach an affluent male clientele who wanted to smoke cigars, play cards and talk guy talk.

"When we came to the Racquet Club, we found guys relieved to not be around women," says Rich. "They want the comfort of being around men, getting their hair cut by another man."

In 1999, they turned the already existing salon space in the Racquet Club from sterile to subtly male, lining it with leather couches and map tables while leaving the iron Thomas Koch chairs, porcelain sinks and marble stations.

More recently, the Sgarra's turned to Exton, which has grown in popularity as a homestead for the wealthy, opening a 2,500-square-foot shop. Then they caught the savvy eye of Bob Boughner, CEO of Boyd Gaming/MGM Grand, who came into the original Grace scouting talent. "He wanted upscale, not uptight," says Rich.

So the Sgarras have spent the past few months preparing for back-to-back openings in Exton and Atlantic City (the Borgata shop will open by the end of July). The A.C. store is a turnkey operation utilizing the brothers' name as well as on-site talent (Mike recently moved to Brigantine), but the Shaving Grace in Exton replicates the Racquet Club shop. There are giant antique mirrors, a lounge where you can smoke (you get a tall glass of beer and a cigar with every cut, shave, massage or manicure) or play pool, putting greens and places to sit in comfy leather chairs and deal cards while waiting to go into the barbershop itself. That area is lined with antique Koch chairs that Rich found on eBay. "We knew we were going to build the space around the chairs. We found a little Italian man, near 80, still cutting hair in Nazareth, Pa., with these chairs. He apprenticed on them in 1925. They're like new -- still with their brass patent-pending plaques."

Just don't call Shaving Grace a salon. "Look," says Joe Russo, "'barbering' was supposed to be a dying art. But men don't want the nonsense of a salon. Guys want someone they can trust, who can give them precision, comfort and cleanliness."

Shaving Grace, 215 S. 16th St., third floor, 215-772-1542; 269 Main St., Exton, 610-524-6977; One Borgata Way, Atlantic City, N.J., www.shavinggracebarbers.com.