Gerry’s Barbershop has been around for nearly three decades in Juneau.
Owner Gerry Carrillo Sr., who emigrated from the Philippines in the mid-1970s when he was 16, started the shop after he was laid off from a state job in the 1980s. Now, he runs the shop with his daughter, Eva, and his son, Gerry Jr.
They say that after awhile even the clients become family.
Gerry’s Barbershop occupies a little nook next to a pizzeria in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley suburb.On a recent afternoon, the inside of the shop is loud — the music is up, conversations are going and the clippers are buzzing.
Here, it’s walk-ins only. A traditional cut, like a fade, is $18.
Eva is the oldest child. Covered in tattoos with long, black hair dominated by lime-green streaks, she’s full of laughter.
She has always loved doing hair and has worked alongside her dad for almost 10 years.
The trends with cuts come and go, she says.
“I did a lot of regular haircuts, and then the fauxhawk came back,” she says. “And now I still do a lot of mohawks, I think it’s ’cause I look like this so they always come to me, but a lot of people have been getting, like, old-fashioned haircuts like the traditional comb-backs and the pompadours.”
Lots of kids have bookended their school careers with haircuts at the shop, from their first day of class to graduation.
Kyle White is one of them.
When White got older, he wanted a different hair style.
“I remember one time, I was like, ‘Hey Gerry, I think I’m going to do something different,’ and he was like, ‘No, you’re going to get the Kyle cut,'” he says. “And so I was like, ‘OK.’”
Eva lets out a loud laugh.
“Typical,” she says with a smile.
“‘No, no, no, you don’t want that.’ Like that?,” she asks, imitating her dad’s voice.
“Yeah, exactly,” White says, “‘You’ll get the Kyle cut.’ And then I just now started to get the fauxhawk.”
Combing his hair up to cut the ends, Eva tells White the style looks good on him.
White has checked out other shops in town, but always comes back to Gerry’s.
“Sometimes when they’re closed, I go somewhere, and they always don’t get it right,” he says. “But you come here for so long, they know what I want.”
Gerry Jr.’s chair is in the middle of the shop.
“I like to say that I beautify people,” he says.
“I consider this like a family barbershop: grandpa will come and get a haircut, dad, grandson, sometimes great-grandson,” he said. “It’s hard. I guess working in a barbershop I feel like I don’t know how much time has passed by until someone comes in and I can see their hair.”
Gerry Sr. says haircuts will always be in demand.“(At the time) the economy was low, and I figured (that) hair is growing, it’s always got a job for me to do,” he said.
Cutting hair is a tradition in his family, he says.
“We got the blood of the barber,” he says. “My uncle was here first, long, long time ago, 1908 and he started a barbering business and he was very well-known in this town. … And I decided to go to school as a barber and (as) it happened I had a good touch.”
The Carrillos say they become a part of their customers’ family, even if in a small way.
The trio has given people their first haircuts, and sometimes their last.
A couple of years ago, a customer asked Eva to cut his hair before cancer took it away.
“He came back a year later, looking better than he did when I cut his hair off, he had so much hair, I was like, ‘Is that you?”… He’s doing really well,” she said.
Over the span of two hours, an old high school friend stops by, as well as a long-time customer who owns a pet grooming service in town and a new regular.
Near Gerry Sr.’s chair toward the back of the shop, a black-and-white photo sits on a small bookshelf that stores supplies. In it, daughter, son and father are cutting hair. Gerry Jr. is sporting a handlebar mustache and has a large tattoo on his forearm. Written in cursive, it’s the family name, “Carrillos.”
But the trio make it clear that in their shop, family can be anybody — not just the people cutting your hair.
