Allan Appel Photo
As young banker James Foti sat for a blended fade with a little gel for the front flip, barber Stacy Quattlebaum scraped his neck with the straight razor. He pronounced it the best part of the haircut; he could not explain why.
The barbering mystery unfolded at Orange Street Hair Styles, Quattlebaum’s spiffy new shop across from the 200 Orange St. city government office building a block from the Green.
Quattlebaum left a longtime perch on New Haven’s Wall Street to open the shop earlier this year, getting on her feet after overcoming a sudden onset of thyroid and neck cancer and a clash with an older barber that she inherited. You wouldn’t have known any of that as Foti got his fade Wednesday.
Foti, who works in the credit department of the Bank of Southern Connecticut on Church, walked in around 12:30 looking for a little grooming before a vacation to Miami next week. He’d started coming to the shop a month earlier.
He put in his order: “Short on the sides, all the way around. I want to leave it flipped up in the front.”
As barber and client settled in, Foti said he had not known that the shop was even there until he strolled by recently, although he’s been in the neighborhood for several years. The previous shop, known as Phil’s, had been there for 50 years, according to Quattlebaum.
Quattlebaum bought the shop from Pasquale DeSisto, who also owns the Phil’s on Wall Street, where she had worked for ten years. She described the Orange Street space as full of junk when she bought it, and with reception chairs duct-taped together. The two barbers who had worked there for the past ten years, she said, were also old school. So was the plumbing and the electricity. All were replaced. Quattlebaum’s mom bought her the mirrors and her dad, the cash register.
As she placed a ring of soap on Foti’s neck, Quattlebaum asked him if what he liked about the neck shaving was the sound of the razor.
No, that wasn’t it. The haircut continued.
As she shortened Foti’s hair on the bottom and began to blend it with the clippers to the upper half, Quattlebaum pointed to the windows with high, large lettering and to a barber pole. None had been there before. The barber pole is all glass. She placed it high up on the exterior wall so kids don’t grab it and people can see it.
The message is getting out. Foti was Quattlebaum’s 11th customer of the morning.
After she added a little more unscented Paul Mitchell gel and offered a quick check of the mirror, Foti pronounced: “That’s good. Nice and even and up in front like I like it.”
He left with the mystery of the neck shave thrill still unsolved. He paid $19 for the haircut, then added six dollars extra.
That’s another plus of the new location, Quattlebaum said: ““Bankers, financial center people, lawyers — these people tip better than the students.”
All the best to Stacy and this new establishment. She gives a great haircut! Great to have her downtown right near all the offices. She did a great job too in pumping new life into that old barber shop.