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Darrell Myers runs his shop in the time-tested tradition of American barbers. Flattops delivered with levity are favored here.
By JEFF KLINKENBERG
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 2, 2000
TARPON SPRINGS -- Bald guy hobbles in, grabs chair. Barber twirls scissors on finger like Wyatt Earp getting ready to take on the bad guys.
Baldy requires little scissors work. Hmmm. Tweezers probably the right tool for the job.
Darrell Myers, the barber of Tarpon Springs, does not say this. At least not out loud. With his left hand he brushes back baldy's half-dozen bristles to call them to attention. His scissors approach, clip, clip, clip, with menace.
Haircut over.
"Want me to put down some fertilizer?" the barber finally asks. "Maybe we could get something going."
Darrell's Barber Shop, on Lemon Street near Alt. 19, is a bastion of American male culture, circa 1955, maybe earlier. There are pictures of vintage fighter airplanes on the wall and rod-and-bullet magazines on the rack. If a movie were made about Darrell's, it would have to be filmed in black and white, with Merle Haggard on the soundtrack.
Barber shops are supposed to be a vanishing species throughout America, but we are happy to report that Darrell's is alive and well. A cheap haircut is not the only drawing card; Darrell's is a place to swap fishing lies and insults while complaining about a modern world nobody wants to understand.
If you seek a barber who still knows how to give a proper flattop, welcome to the promised land.
But if you covet a pedicure or sophisticated conversation you'd best stick to a beauty parlor. At Darrell's, subtlety is as out of place as a white suit on a sponge boat.
"How 'bout them eyebrows, pal?" Darrell barks at a guy with longer hair downstairs than on the roof. "Want me to give them a little chop?"
Strapping guy gets stropped
Darrell Myers is 52. He says he was the youngest licensed barber in Florida when he started, barely 16. He started young because his parents cut hair, too.
Without Darrell, Tarpon Springs would be a shaggy place. When he throws open his doors at 7 a.m. a head or two usually is waiting on the bench outside.
Most mornings the heads are gray or relatively hairless. Their owners, World War II vets and retired men, are comfortable here. With the male talk and barracks humor, political correctness has run for the hills.
If a woman dares enter, silence overtakes the shop like in the old cowboy movies when the mysterious stranger swaggers through the saloon door. It takes a moment for everyone to adjust to the change in atmosphere.
This particular intruder is watching her husband get trimmed. While her man stares ahead in silence, she and the barber gab about their trials and tribulations.
"Sweetheart," Darrell says, "I've never had any luck. If it rained soup I'd be the guy caught in the downpour with a fork."
He is joking. Darrell says he likes barbering. He likes barbering because he likes people and because every hour and every head of hair is different.
Darrell, by the way, looks exactly how a barber should look. His wavy salt and pepper hair is combed straight back. He wears a maroon smock and eyeglasses, perhaps to better behold those nostril and ear bristles. He smells faintly of talcum powder and tobacco. Sometimes he sneaks outside between haircuts for a smoke.
He was born in Ocala and moved to Tarpon as a boy. Yankees he gives an extra dose of ribbing.
"You learned to say y'all properly?" he growls at a customer.
He cut Yankee Karl's hair a moment ago. Karl strolls over for a cuppa Darrell's lukewarm java. Pouring, Karl leans against the microwave.
"Damn," Yankee Karl says, retreating from the microwave, "static electricity."
"Doesn't take much to amuse some customers," Darrell announces as he strops his razor. Figures: At an old-fashioned barber shop, you can still get an old-fashioned shave.
"The '60s and '70s was bad for barbers," Darrell says. "The old people kept us barbers in business.
In 1972, federal labor statistics totaled 33,000 barbershops in America. The Woodstock Nation, alas, grew more hair than the brothers on that famous cough drop box. Today, barely 9,000 barber poles are still spinning.
Darrell's is busy all day. Stay long enough to monitor afternoon traffic and you're in for a surprise. Customer demographics change; high school kids grab the chair and submit.
Darrell does not watch MTV, but if he did he would see how retro hair styles are enjoying a comeback. Some of his customers -- he cut their daddy's and granddaddy's hair once upon a time -- want theirs shorter than previous generations.
"Take a little off the top but I want it really high and tight on the sides," says one picky high schooler.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," says Darrell, happy to oblige.
During the nightmarish days of hippiedom a highlight was the morning he got to shear off a man's waist-length locks. "I was grinnin' and gruntin' ", he says, still glowing with satisfaction.
The customer in the chair now inspires neither smiles nor sound effects. "Hey, take a little more off the top," he tells Darrell. "There's a bump there."
Young customers who risk an old-fashioned barber shop don't have to pay $50 to be stylish. They can get their do for a lot less than the price of the latest Foo Fighters album.
For the bravest customers, Darrell offers his specialty: the flattop. "It's comin' back," he says as Jerry Springer mugs on the shop's blurry television. Darrell says he and his barbers, Nick Mattis, Randolph Dey and Ron Ruggles, perform about 50 close cuts a week.
Of course, it's the older men who fought in World War II, or whose fathers did, who most appreciate the flattop. It's more than fashion. Their hair reflects values, no-nonsense manliness and practicality.
Twice a month Pete Hunter pushes open the door at Darrell's and grabs chair. He's a 50ish carpenter who was born in New Jersey and is still troubled by Florida's warmer climate.
"What I like about the flattop is the low maintenance," says Pete. "Also, the sweat doesn't run into my eyes anymore."
Darrell zeroes in with his clippers. Crouching so he is eye level with the top of Pete's head, he begins mowing. No floor Pete has installed has ever been more level.
"The secret," Darrell says, "is strong nerves. Don't want your hand to slip."
It doesn't.
"When I'm done a fly will be able to make a three-point landing on your head," the barber crows.
Madison Avenue might not call that an advertisement, but Darrell's Barber Shop does.