Pa. barber celebrates 50 years of cutting hair

By JUSTIN MCANENYAssociated Press Saturday, November 7, 2023

Loading...

Coming into West Chester on Route 202 from Route 1, there is Jimmy John's Pipin' Hot Sandwiches, a roadside staple for the area, countless car dealerships, shopping centers and plenty of traffic lights. It's easy to not notice any of them, except the traffic lights, of course. But if you slow down and take a look, you might notice another landmark tucked off of the side of the northbound lanes, just next door to Jimmy John's — Tony Polito's Barber Shop.

When you take your first step into the barbershop, the first things you notice are the barber chairs, Polito and the military memorabilia he has collected over the years.

And then your eyes start to wander. There is a lot to see. Not only the memorabilia that include pieces from World War I through the present day, but also pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

Polito, who has lived his entire life in West Chester, will celebrate 50 years of being a barber on Nov. 13. Odds are you've seen some of his more famous customers — Ernest Borgnine, Bill Guarnere (a World War II soldier brought to fame in the HBO series "Band of Brothers"), Vic Mills, who invented disposable diapers that you would know as Pampers, and Bill Bergey, who played for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Although Polito enjoys being a barber, which you'd assume since he's been doing it for half a century, he chose it as a career because "it got me out of the grocery store," Polito joked.

Polito's parents owned a grocery store in West Chester and he knew he didn't want to work there for the rest of his life. Through a friend and a relative, becoming a barber was suggested. And on Oct. 1, 1959, he received his barber's license. Not too long after he got his first job at a barbershop in what would eventually become the shopping center at the intersection of Route 202 and Route 1 — before it was developed.

Then, 30 years ago, he bought the shop next to Jimmy John's and he's been there ever since, never taking a week's vacation, he said, but relying on three- and four-day weekends, with the exceptions of getting sick and being in the hospital. From 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, Polito said, "(I) just go to work."

And the changes that 68-year-old Polito witnessed: Remember when Route 202 was a two-lane road? Polito does. Remember when Route 202 was bordered by farmland and not shopping centers and car dealerships? Polito does.

"We went from a farming community to an urban community," Polito said, adding that most of his customers used to be farmers who would come into his shop after working their farms or those stopping in after working at local factories. "The biggest part of your business was after (everyone else finished) work." Now, customers come in all day, throughout the day.

Even though the business has changed, most of his customers have not. For some families he's been the barber for five generations of family members and his oldest customer is 102.

In 50 years he's seen the barber business bloom, almost die out and rebloom. He's seen the short hairstyles of the '40s and '50s give way to the longer styles of the late '60s and '70s and eventually return to the shorter styles. "The hair trends," Polito said, "there have been a few changes."

Polito gives what he calls the businessman haircuts, those that are shorter and clean and not stylized, unlike what you would get at a salon. Using scissors, which is the old-fashioned way, Polito said, instead of clippers and numbered guards. "I don't cut by number 'cause you wouldn't ask Andrew Wyeth to paint by number," he said. Cutting hair to Polito is a talent and takes a special touch.

And he's seen shaves go away almost entirely. You could do two haircuts in the time it took to complete one shave, "so it faded out," he said.

As styles and fads came and went, Polito's military memorabilia only came in. Although Polito has been a part-time state constable for 18 years and would've liked to have been a Pennsylvania state trooper, he's been blind in one eye since suffering an injury when he was 9 years old. Polito, with respect to those that serve in the military, has collected items related to the military and law enforcement for decades, like a military-issued coat that was donated by a local family that belonged to a bomber pilot who died in World War II.

The pilot's mother didn't know what to do with the coat and it ended up in the barbershop. Along with clothes there are helmets, boots and all sorts of other items. "I'd hate to throw it away," Polito said.

Over the years, "the big thing is the people you meet," said Polito, who doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon. People stop in for haircuts and to just sit around and catch up, "there's always something interesting going on here," he said.

But, Polito said, after 50 years, "I keep threatening to take some time off and go somewhere."

___

Information from: Daily Local News, http://www.dailylocal.com

Join the Discussion
Rate Article: Average 0 out of 5
register or log in to comment on this article!

0 Comments

Add Comment

Text Only 2000 character limit

Page 1 of 1

Research Exchange

10 Tips for Successful Sample Concentration and Buffer Exchange

Nov 6

Centrifugal devices with ultrafiltration (UF) membrane can solve common problems researchers face when working with proteins.

Meeting the Challenges of Long-term Time-lapse Imaging

Oct 26

Recent technological developments in the sequence capture of cellular events through a light microscope can be combined to image multiple independent experiments automatically, with many advantages.

Handle With Care

Aug 26

Researchers face the dual challenges of difficult to handle and hard to maintain stem cells.

Six Tips for More Successful Cell Cultures

Aug 18

For those who perform cell culture experiments, it pays to be meticulous. Even seemingly minor handling techniques and lab equipment features can make a difference in achieving success.

The Future of the FDA: Operating in an Electronic World

Oct 12

Acording to an Axendia reseach study, the FDA is currently shifting its organizational and technology infrastructures to facilitate electronic interactions with the companies it regulates.

Tissue Microarrays - Opening up new opportunities in the Therapeutics sector

Oct 12

Tissue Microarray has become a pivotal cog in the wheel for high throughput studies and is an integral part in the validation process for screening results from discovery platforms for expression studies using various approaches.

De Novo Formula Generation with Sub-ppm Confidence

Oct 12

Novel technology embodied in the micrOTOF allows precise measurement of both accurate mass and True Isotopic Pattern (TIP) over a wide dynamic range, allowing for the implementation of an open access system.

PLA 2.0 Software for Analyzing - Parallel-Line and Parallel-Logistic Assays

Oct 12

Biological or potency assays are frequently analyzed with the help of the parallel-line or parallel-logistic (4 or 5 parameter fit) methods. These methods have major advantages over traditional single-point assays.

Attention Deficit & Hyperactivity in a Drosophila Memory Mutant

22 hours ago

Action selection is modulated by external stimuli either directly or via memory retrieval. In a constantly changing environment, animals have evolved attention-like processes to effectively filter the incoming sensory stream. These attention-like processes, in turn, are modulated by memory. The neurobiological nature of how attention, action selection and memory are inter-connected is unknown. We describe here new phenotypes of the memory mutant radish in the fruit fly Drosophila.

Mechanisms of plasticity in simple taxis behaviors in Drosophila

Nov 8

Like the proverbial moth drawn to the candle flame, the fruit fly Drosophila also stereotypically approaches light sources. This positive phototaxis is the archetypal example of hard-wired input-output behaviors.

Live cell imaging of mutant and wild-type GABA-A receptor trafficking using a novel reporter protein

Nov 8

Efficient signaling in the brain requires precise regulation and targeting of cell surface ion-channels. Mutations in these channels associated with inherited diseases can cause improper targeting and reduced surface expression.

ADP-Glo™: An Ideal Approach to Monitor the Activity of Protein Kinases and Beyond

Oct 16

Because of its versatility (alltypesofsubstrates), robustness (Z’>0.8), rapidperformance, and its ease of use, the luminescence based Kinase Glo® assay platform has gained wide acceptance in many drug screening programs for protein kinase inhibitors.

Molecular rotor dynamics influenced by the elastic modulus of polyethylene nanocomposites.

2 hours ago

We observed that the excited-state twisting motion of 3,3(')-diethyloxacarbocyanine in polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) depends strongly on the elastic modulus of medium. PNCs consist of low density polyethylene dispersed with surface-functionalized nanodiamonds...

A conserved interaction between the SDI domain of Bre2 and the Dpy-30 Domain of Sdc1 is required for histone methylation and gene expression.

2 hours ago

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, lysine 4 on histone H3 (H3K4) is methylated by the Set1 complex (Set1C or COMPASS). Besides the catalytic Set1 subunit, several proteins that form the Set1 complex (Swd1, Swd2, Swd3, Spp1, Bre2 and Sdc1) are also needed to mediate...

Live imaging of rat embryos with Doppler swept-source optical coherence tomography.

2 hours ago

The rat has long been considered an excellent system to study mammalian embryonic cardiovascular physiology, but has lacked the extensive genetic tools available in the mouse to be able to create single gene mutations. However, the recent establishment of rat...

Gefitinib induces apoptosis and decreases telomerase activity in MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells.

2 hours ago

Gefitinib is an anti-cancer drug that selectively inhibits epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase activity and induces apoptosis in many cancer cells. Cancer cells are often protected from apoptotic cell death by telomerase, however the...

Prokariotic Cell Collection in Denmark

Nov 6

I would like to know about a prokariotic cell collection in Denmark. Is there a cell bank in this country? I need a Lactobacillus strain for a fermentation assay and this information about the bank is very helpful for me.

Request for Entries

Oct 16

Ask the Experts is your chance to get the answers to questions on applications, materials, methods, processes, and technologies. Email you question to bst_web@advantagemedia.com, and the editors of Bioscience Technology will find an appropriate expert to answer it. Watch this space in the future to see the questions your colleagues are posting.

STAY INFORMED: SUBSCRIBE TO

Magazine and E-mail Newsletters

Loading...
E-mail:   

MULTIMEDIA

Video:

Frontiers in Bioscience Learning and Memory Video

Oct 6

How does the brain learn and remember? An academic conference "Frontiers in Bioscience Learning and Memory" was held at City University of Hong Kong on June 16th.

Podcasts:

Allen Institute for Brain Research

Allen Institute for Brain Research

Oct 14

Discussed in this interview are both the mouse brain project and the human cortex project with an emphasis on the importance of these projects to neuroscience research.