GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Vincenzo Licari answered the phone in his barber shop on Bridge Street NW in Grand Rapids on a September morning, talking to a customer he has been seeing for decades.
Licari, the owner of Esquire Hair Salon, is one of the only barbers in the area who still does a straight-razor shave. He’s been doing them for 46 years.
Looking back, he says he never thought he’d last more than a year on the West Side.
Licari grew up in Sicily, Italy and started an apprenticeship with a barber when he was 9 years old. Other kids would go into the old World War II battlefields and search for scrap metal to sell. Licari’s father wanted to keep him out of trouble after school and set him up sweeping the floor at the barber shop, but he eventually started doing more.
“After a year of working there, one day (my boss) said, ‘Today, you’re going to shave me,’ And I said, ‘I’m 10 years old. I’m going to cut you!’ He said, ‘No.’ And I thought, ‘Well, I’m not worried. It’s your face, not mine.'”
He nicked his boss that day, but he says it was the last time he ever cut anyone during a shave.
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