When Gabe Gonzales opened Bellarmine Barber Store in 1953, he wasn’t fascinated about beginning a enterprise that may final seven many years. He simply wished to cease working 16-hour days for one more barber store so he might spend extra time along with his younger and rising household.
“My spouse determined it. She mentioned, ‘you’re not going to any of the youngsters’ video games or taking us out on Sundays or weekends’,” Gonzales, now 96, instructed me as we sat within the store this week.
The choice paid off in methods Gonzales couldn’t have foreseen. He spent extra time along with his spouse, Lupe, and their 4 kids, and finally took them on holidays to Europe and South America. And he constructed a enterprise with deep roots in Santa Clara County, slicing hair for mayors, judges, CEOs and athletes.
Because it marks 70 years in enterprise, Bellarmine Barber Store is the oldest such enterprise in San Jose. Esther Faria, Gonzales’ daughter, took over from her dad in 2005 — none of his three sons went into the enterprise, and Faria went to barber faculty behind her dad’s again after working as a grocery retailer clerk.
She now shares the store along with her niece, Stacey Gonzales. Whereas she has no plans to retire quickly, Faria’s grateful that the store will stay in household fingers for a 3rd era and owned by Latina ladies, she factors out.
If future generations of the household show to be as shrewd at enterprise as Gabriel Gonzales, it might final for a number of many years extra. When he opened the store on Emory Avenue — a 150 square-foot area with room for simply two barber chairs — Gonzales requested the Jesuit boys faculty throughout the road if he might use the identify. How’s that for built-in advertising and marketing? He additionally channeled his hair-cutting income into actual property, shopping for properties and fixing them as much as promote. Like all good barber, he saved his ears open as his scissors snipped, asking his prospects in actual property about any properties coming quickly to market.
“I've loved it right here, and I’ve obtained a variety of good prospects and a variety of them saved coming again,” Gonzales mentioned.
That listing consists of generations of Bellarmine and Santa Clara College college students and alumni, together with NFL quarterback Dan Pastorini and former San Jose mayors Tom McEnery and Sam Liccardo, who most likely obtained his first haircut from Gonzales.
“Gabe knew the one secret that would maintain a 6-year-old nonetheless within the chair lengthy sufficient to endure a haircut: the promise of a grape blow-pop, which was reliably produced after each haircut,” mentioned Liccardo, who has been going to the store ever since, although “with out compensation,” he notes. “So I estimate they owe me about 283 blow-pops by now.”
Liccardo’s father, Sal, additionally nonetheless goes to the store and obtained a haircut there this week, although he could not have remembered to choose up a blow-pop for his son. (Within the curiosity of full disclosure, most of my haircuts since 2005 have been at Bellarmine, too, although I’ve been recognized to stray.)
After he retired, Gonzales continued to chop hair for 15 years on the Sacred Coronary heart Novitiate in Los Gatos, however needed to cease when COVID-19 struck. His spouse of 75 years handed away in 2019, and as of late, he stays lively by enjoying golf a few occasions per week. He took up the game in his 50s and sometimes performs with the identical judges, clergymen and legal professionals whose hair he had been slicing for many years.
However together with a gentle stream of regulars, staying present has helped Bellarmine keep in enterprise, Faria mentioned. Throughout COVID-19, the store began taking appointments, which proved very fashionable with prospects. Providers now transcend a normal haircut, together with fades, beard trims, shampooing, “camouflage coloration” for males and even a primary facial. The store now welcomes in ladies for haircuts.
“We’re preserving some stuff the identical, nevertheless it’s rising slightly bit, too, and altering,” mentioned Stacey Gonzales, who additionally labored at Bellarmine Salon at Santana Row — an offshoot that Faria opened in 2005 earlier than realizing juggling two locations was an excessive amount of and promoting it a few years later. “I’m glad to proceed the legacy my grandfather constructed.”
SPIRITUAL SOUNDS: Baritone Robert Sims, who has carried out at Carnegie Corridor and with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, will deliver his voice to Palo Alto this weekend for “Alive within the Spirit,” a particular live performance on the First Congregational Church on March 19. Sims will be a part of the Congregational Live performance Chorale, accompanied by piano and organ, in conventional spirituals, together with “Glory, Glory Hallelujah,” “Go Down Moses,” and “My Good Lord’s Performed Been Right here.”
The live performance on the First Congregational Church, 1985 Louis Highway, begins at 3 p.m. and is sponsored by the Associates of Music, although donations can be accepted.
CULTURAL CONNECTION: One of many packages created to assist San Jose residents get out and keep engaged in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic was the “Abierto” program — that’s “open” in Spanish. It began by offering grant cash for outside occasions the place folks might take pleasure in actions extra safely, nevertheless it’s nonetheless going sturdy in its mission of offering residents with issues to do. This system, run by the mayor’s workplace, just lately supported “Viva Mexico, Viva America,” a two-day live performance and dance efficiency by folklorico firm Los Lupeños de San Jose held final weekend on the Mexican Heritage Plaza theater.
Due to the grant, tickets have been supplied for simply $5 to make the manufacturing accessible to the group across the East San Jose landmark on the nook of King Highway and Alum Rock Avenue. The end result was a pair of sold-out exhibits, with lots of people being uncovered to the performing arts.