Joe Notarfonzo, owner of Joseph's Hairstyling, centre, his brother Cas Notarfonzo, right, and Nick Loizou, left, pose for a photo in front the shop on Aug. 24, 2009. Next week they will be celebrating their 50th anniversary in the Summerhill Yonge area. The shop will commemorate the event by offering $1 haircuts, the same price they charged fifty years ago.JENNIFER ROBERTS
Despite the name, you won't find any colouring, setting and curling at Joseph's Hairstyling. This is a dyed-in-the-wool old-school barbershop: Red-and-white check floor, tall cylinders of tool-sterilizing blue goo, knotty pine panelling, naughty magazines on the table and the twin tinkles of an old radio and a cash register. Nothing fancy, and no fancypants hairstyles - you want that, go to one of those chi-chi lady salons.
Giuseppe (Joe) Notarfonzo's customers like it that way. Some so much they've been coming to the cozy little shop on Yonge near Summerhill since Joe's brother, Casimiro, opened it with Nick Loizou in September, 1959. Mr. Notarfonzo left Campodimele, Italy, to start his clipping career two years later and took over in 1982. In that time, he's seen a lot of changes to the neighbourhood.
The liquor store: In the 1960s, customers would fill out slips of paper "with a pencil attached to the board, you couldn't even steal the pencil" and write down the bottle's ID number. A clerk would then go fetch items from a back room and hand them over.
Watering holes: Until the swanky Ports of Call opened in 1963, it was "the Morrison down the street and the Norgate just on the corner of Yonge and Shaftesbury." The Norgate, he says, "was rough."
Housing: The renovated, million-dollar homes of Woodlawn, Walker and Alcorn avenues were but a realtor's dream in this "poor neighbourhood." Things changed when "professional people with no kids" bought in the mid-1970s. Although foresight could have made him rich, "we had no money; even $5,000, $10,000 was a lot of money then - don't forget, a haircut was about $3 in the 1970s."
Fellow retailers: The area is now an established Antiques Alley, but Mr. Notarfonzo remembers the first shop, Perkins, arriving in '63. There were at least five other barbers, too, "until the Beatles came out."
Monthly lease in 1959: $100.
The commute: From 1961 to 1966, Mr. Notarfonzo lived with his brother near Runnymede and Annette. He'd take a bus to Bloor, a streetcar along Bloor to the Yonge subway, then get off at Summerhill. "Most of the time in the morning I was the only guy getting off there."
Supermarket availability of Italian products: "Very hard," he says. "You had to go to College Street - to Johnny Lombardi-area - but it was too far for me to go."
To celebrate the 50th anniversary, Joe and his crew are offering 1959 prices - $1 haircuts - from August 31 to September 5. Joseph's Hairstyling is located at 1204 Yonge St.
Dave LeBlanc