Local Black-Owned Shop Has Quite A HistoryPast the iron-mesh security door and the empty, 20-foot-long vinyl waiting bench, Elvie Lewis gives his ancient barber's chair a slap with a striped towel to dust off the last stray wisps of hair from the customer he has just finished.
With a weary grin, Lewis plops down in the ornate chair and tugs a lever to make it recline. With his head back and his feet up, he closes his eyes.
"It isn't like it used to be. You couldn't even sit down, it was so busy. We kept this place full when I was in my prime," he says softly.
If business is a bit slow, Lewis has earned a break. He has been cutting hair for 62 years. At the age of 94, he likes to call himself Los Angeles' oldest barber.
These days, he still has a steady hand -- and an even steadier clientele. Longtime customers trickle in Tuesdays through Thursdays; a steady stream comes Fridays and Saturdays.
His regulars travel from as far as Palmdale to the three-chair shop on South Normandie Avenue that Lewis has operated since 1952. He started cutting hair in 1947.
Longtime customers praise his $15 haircuts and his upbeat attitude.
Through the years, Lewis mastered each new style that came along. There was the buzz cut of the 1950s, the bushy Afro of the '60s, the dreadlocks and cornrows of the '70s, the 1980s' mullet, the high-top fade of the '90s and today's high-and-tight.
"My favorite style is what they ask for," he says with a grin. In his zip-up barber's smock, the short, cheerful-looking Lewis favors his own receding gray hairline cropped short.
Customers say it's his smile and encouraging outlook on life -- just as much as the haircut he gives -- that keeps them coming back.
"He started doing this the same year that Jackie Robinson broke into the majors," says Derrick Blakey, 50, who has frequented the shop for 22 years.For much of that time, Lewis has allowed Blakey to sell T-shirts embossed with uplifting sayings such as "Wealth Is Good Health" and "Think Positive" in the shop. "Mr. Lewis is more than a hairstylist. He's an artist," Blakey says. "And he's an encourager. He's supported everything I've done."
Luvert Pineset, a 73-year-old retired high-rise maintenance worker who travels from Palmdale for his trims, appreciates Lewis' old-school, gentlemanly manner. "He's a nice man," Pineset explains.
"He's still got a steady hand," adds Robert Hunter, 76, a former steelworker from South Los Angeles who has been going to Lewis for more than a decade.
Lewis puts in a 7 a.m.-to-5 p.m workday Tuesdays through Saturdays. He's on his feet whenever he's cutting hair, despite the aches and pains that come from living nine decades.
He walks with a cane now, and four years ago he turned in his driver's license, swapping it for a simple ID card from the state.
Why didn't he retire 30 years ago?
"Everybody I know who retires goes out and gets another job. I already have a job," he says. "I'm not a 'honey do' man, you know, 'Honey do this, honey do that.' If I'm going to work at home, I may as well be working here."
Lewis' wife of 56 years, Mary, drives him to and from the shop from their home on West 66th Street, about a mile away.
"About the only places I go are to church, this barbershop and the VA hospital," he says. "For 45 years, I went on vacation all over the United States and to places like the Bahamas. Now my favorite place is here."
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