Garza Barbershop
The storefront windows are filled with driftwood, mannequin heads, stuffed ducks, carved tiki faces and even a shrunken skull-all accompanied by frolicking live cats. But walk inside the barbershop and you’re sent to another century. Posters of Nixon-era icons like Leon Russell, wearing a red, white and blue top hat, share the walls with faded head-shop ephemera featuring David Cassidy, David Bowie, Edgar Winter, Cher and Marilyn Monroe. The time capsule moves forward as the back walls display posters featuring the Bee Gees, John Travolta, Miss Piggy and Farrah Fawcett. Two leather barber chairs are surrounded by shelves filled with assorted bottles of gels and creams, cans stuffed with scissors, and dozens of Barbie dolls, their arms, legs, and blonde heads tilted and pointing in all directions. As you wait to get your haircut, you sit on padded vinyl chairs and a thrift-shop couch facing a red-checked Formica table. On this rests the city’s greatest library of back issues of National Enquirer, Star and People magazines, featuring stories of Charlie’s newest Angel, Andy Gibb’s tragic death, and of course, Michael Jackson. You might think that Jackson owns the place, or at least goes there, but the shop is actually run by Jose Garza. He started the place in 1973, and when asked about the posters he simply replies, “I like the posters because they remind me of the haircuts people like. When I opened, people would just point to the pictures and say, “I like that haircut, or that one.”
3519 South Halsted
Garza Barbershop is closed.
Best of Chicago 2002
