How the HECK can there be an 'internationally renown' barber?
@roamer_1 He was recognized as the #1 'Barber' in the 60's in Western New York and Toronto, which was and up and coming Cosmopolitan city...look at their flying saucer City Hall complex and community called Yorkville, which was like Soho, in New York City.
His clientele included professional athletes, national politicians and TV personalities.
One day, he walked out of his shop and being a doppelganger to Michael Landon on Bonanza, he saw a beautiful twenty-something woman with a startling geometric haircut.
He approached her to find out who cut her hair. She told him and the rest is history.
He immediately traveled to London and San Francisco on vacation and studied for a month at the Vidal Sassoon academies.
He returned home and actually FIRED 90% of his male clientele...no matter how famous, and replaced them one at a time with women.
In six months he was booked six weeks in advance, getting $75. for a haircut. This was in the late 60's, when professional stylists were getting $20 tops.
He paid for Vidal Sassoon's top haircutters in London to come to the shop and give classes to several apprentices for 2 weeks.
We both had Stingray Corvettes and he had a 26ft cabin cruiser and he couldn't go to an NLF or NHL game to take a piss without a dozen people yelling "Hey, Gino!!...." Just his smile made girls wet their pants. He lived Warren Beatty in Shampoo and I swear it was framed on his life.
Ah...the memories.
Whenever top billed concerts came to the city, they sought him out.
Laughed when you typed "barber".
When he relocated his business in downtown, he built the shop himself. People always asked, "Is this going to be a barbershop...?" And it pissed him off to no end.
Today, he's retired in the Villages down in Florida.