City Barber Shop Offers Slice of Wrigleyville

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first entry in a blog called In Search of the Crosses. I’ve always been fascinated with the quirky, interesting people and places that give cities a unique local color and flavor. Having lived in Alamogordo for 11 years, I’ve got some familiarity with Las Cruces, but I’m looking forward to finding the lesser known things, the hidden gems, that really make this area what it is. Over the course of time, I’ll bombard you with opinions on local barbecue rib dinners, red-chile-cheese-and-onion enchiladas and, of course, green chile cheeseburgers. If you haven’t guessed, I’m a big fan of eating. I already have a favorite area restaurant — Chope’s in LaMesa, which is heaven for good green chiles when they die. But I have at least a passing interest in non-gastronomical things as well.

Friday, April 20, was a great day for finding some local color. With perfect weather at lunchtime, I walked from the Sun-News office to the downtown mall. There I found some live music from a five-piece group called Siempre. They entertained me and about 40 others while I downed a chile relleno plate from Antonio’s Restaurant.
The band was a lot of fun, featuring an excellent lead guitarist (and a boy, about 4, in cowboy boots with his own unplugged guitar).
The chile rellenos were just as good. The proprietress at Antonio’s would not tell me what comprised the delicious cream sauce they put on top (a family secret recipe), but she did tell me they used Monterey Jack cheese inside, and sometimes Asadero.
For my money, a chile relleno HAS to have a white cheese. I usually prefer mozzarella, but the Jack and Asadero work quite nicely as well.
But the highlight of my Friday was a visit to City Barber Shop at 1201 N. Main.

There are places you can go to get your hair styled, or “done.” Most of them have names that are hair-related. For example, most cities in America will have a shop called The Mane Event, or Shear Magic. As an aficionado of bad puns, I always have fun spotting these places.
But if you’re a guy, and you want to get your hair “cut,” you go to a good, old-fashioned barber shop. This is one thing modern technology or overseas outsourcing have not been able to replace. Thank God.
I know there are several real barber shops in Las Cruces, complete with the classic red, white and blue pole, but I was convinced to try City because of the Cubs flag flying out front.  The Cubs have long been my favorite National League team, and I’ve made a handful of pilgrimages to Chicago’s Wrigley Field, the temple of baseball.
My favorite American League team is the Tigers. (How a kid raised in Oklahoma grew up rooting for the Cubs and Tigers is subject matter for a later blog for people who are extremely bored or insomniacs.)

City Barber Shop looks small from the outside, and I was expecting to find a quiet two- or three-chair operation.
Man, was I wrong.
The first clue was the wall-to-wall crew waiting for a cut. They have a sign-in sheet to keep track of everyone, and they need it.
The second clue was the four chairs. A later peek around the corner revealed a second room with three more chairs. A seven-chair shop. Floyd the barber from the Andy Griffith Show would have had a heart attack.
The Cubs flag was no fluke. Two of the barbers Friday were wearing Cubs T-shirts (Zach Mirabal’s read, “Chicks Dig the Long Ball”). Cubs memorabilia was plastered over almost every wall, with a little bit of NMSU Aggies, Pittsburgh Steelers, Las Cruces Bulldawgs, Mayfield Trojans and Oñate Knights stuff thrown in to fill in the gaps.
Also on the wall was a 3-foot-by-4-foot painting of the late Henry Mirabal, Zach’s grandfather and the patriarch and founder of City Barber Shop.
Henry’s son Steve also cuts hair in the shop, which will have its 50th anniversary next year.
And despite long waits, everyone in the shop Friday was having a great time.
It also seemed like just about everyone knew at least one other person in the shop, either a barber, a customer, or both.
Imagine how high spirits would have been if the Cubs had not lost earlier in the day to St. Louis.
Friday afternoon must be Shorties Haircut Day; there were several 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old boys getting cuts. Barbers Vince and Russell were having a particularly tough time trimming the hair of a couple of reluctant tots, even when the boys’ moms were squeezing their heads to keep them still.
While waiting, I got to sit in a quite comfortable Low Rider chair, and got to read — what
else? — a Cubs spring training program.

My turn came, and Bruno was my barber. I asked him if it was a requirement to be a Cubs fan before you got hired. He said it was not, but that it was hard not to become a Cubs fan once you started working there.
Bruno was friendly and shared with me some of the history of the Barber Shop. He also gave me a great haircut.
There was a time when I judged a haircut by two criteria: How cheap was it, and How quick was it.
During my college days at beautiful Oklahoma State University, “Whisperin’” Richard Danel ran the Varsity Barber Shop in Stillwater. He would typically cut your hair in seven minutes, and the price back then (from 1981-85) was $4.50. You’d usually pay with a five, and he’d always give you your change in the form of a 50-cent piece.
I would normally grow my hair as long as I could stand it, then go visit Whisperin’ Richard and have him cut it as short as I could stand it.
As a result, I probably less than 15 haircuts during a four-year college career, which means I spent less than $70 for haircuts over that time.

If I had been able to keep up that pace, it would have taken me an amazing 20 years to spend $400 — the same amount presidential candidate John Edwards spent on ONE haircut recently.
But I digress.
City Barber Shop can’t match Whisperin’ Richard on either time (I spent more than an hour there — 30 minutes waiting and 30 minutes getting cut), or price (though $12 in 2007 prices is probably fairly comparable to $4.50 in 1985 dollars, and still a hell of a lot less than $400).
But the atmosphere and the experience at City made the time and the price well worth it.
Next time, maybe I’ll time my haircut with a Cubs game, so I can watch a few innings on one of their multiple TVs while I’m there.
On second thought, it may be better to go when they can focus on my haircut and not the Cubbies.

Richard Coltharp is special sections editor for the Sun-News. He can be reached at rcoltharp@lcsun-news.com. The above photo was taken BEFORE his haircut.