Barber James Lizotte is giving a shave today - and he's going back to the 1920s to do it.

He leans over the antique barber chair while his client, Max Goodberg, 30, closes his eyes and almost falls asleep. Lizotte goes through his ritual: He lathers thick shaving cream on Goodberg's face and neck with a badger hair brush. Then, in 14 choreographed strokes, he removes the cream with a 5-inch knife. For the finale, he wraps a hot towel around Goodberg's face before splashing bay rum on his cheeks.

"Back in the day," says Goodberg, slapping his cheeks and smiling, "men used to take more pride in themselves."

Media: San Francisco Chronicle F.S.C. Barber Shop

In San Francisco, and places like New York and Seattle, old-fashioned barbershops are bringing that pride back, offering both traditional straight-razor shaves and tight, old-fashioned haircuts.

The latest in a series of hypermasculine throwbacks, these retro establishments are full of pre-1930s barber chairs, hand-powered barbering tools, folksy wooden touches, straight-razor shave kits, whiskey and, of course, the signature red, white and blue barber poles.

These days, they have customer lines that rival those at Bi-Rite Creamery.

Waiting in line are predominantly young men working in tech and finance who find their barbers on They're often in lean Dockers and clean flannel, tight black jean vests or vintage smoking jackets.

Lizotte is blown away by how popular the Prohibition-theme Peoples Barber & Shop has been since it opened in the Polk Gulch in July. "The numbers are amazing. It's way beyond expectations," he says, standing under the logo that looks as if it had been peeled off an old Western saloon.

In the past year alone, half a dozen of these shops have opened. Each has its own character. There is Oakland's no-stylists-allowed Temescal Alley Barbershop, the uber-authentic Cable Car Clothiers, and the relaxed Peoples Barber & Shop. Leading the way was the hipster-haven FSC (Freemans Sporting Club) Barber, which opened in 2011.

Female-centric salons like Barber Lounge are installing retro male grooming corners. Wingtip clothing store opened one in its private club. 1512 Barber Shop brews its own rye whiskey. And it's not just hipsters and bankers - even Macy's put a shop in.

"Before this, guys had two options - a chop shop like Supercuts, or a women's salon where they can sit next to ladies with foil in their hair," says Shorty Maniace, who reintroduced some of the original retro-cut protocols that helped launch the popularity of the old-style barbershops in 2006.

"In the '20s or in the '40s, it was different. Men were allowed to care more. The '60s killed barbering 'cause everyone wanted to look like a hippie, but it's come back."

Mayur Hiremath 35, an Intuit manager and recent customer at Maniace's Mystic Barbers shop in Civic Center, says, "It's about taking yourself a little more seriously, like men used to. It's a great haircut for 30 bucks. I don't end up looking like a teenager. And I don't have to go to a women's salon."

FSC Barber

"First of all, we're not 'old-timey.' Second, I don't really think it's a trend," says retail store manager Riki Bryan, the kind of masculine archetype that FSC helped popularize - buff, bearded and blond with a tight haircut, flannel shirt and thick Texas accent.

With three shops already in New York, FSC turned what had been a fringe haircutting style practiced in Seattle in the 1990s into a wildly successful mainstream aesthetic when some of those Seattle barbers like Maniace moved east. Though they may shy from labels, FSC, which replaced a pet-supply store when it opened in May 2011, has some of the city's oldest barbering tools (their chairs and wood-and-marble back counter date from the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago) and longest lines (23 people deep on a recent Saturday morning).

On a long wooden bench outside the shop, the store founder, Sam Buffa, 34, recounts the ordeal it was to acquire that antique barbershop set. Buffa, a San Francisco native wearing Birkenstock clogs and sunglasses, thinks the city's men are ready to change what he considers their unkempt aesthetic.

"This is about moving past the scraggly, long-haired hippie to something rugged and masculine and real," says Buffa, who's interrupted by a friend bringing a quiche from Tartine.

The shop has nine chairs and a long black counter. Its shelves are lined with old-fashioned male-care products like Marvis toothpaste in silver canisters and Geo F Trumper pomade. An FSC-brand barber brush and razor set is $50; a Chatsworth Barley set is $500. Men waiting on a bench read GQ, Restoration Hardware and the New Yorker.

About half of the staff at FSC are stylists who cut hair, while half are licensed barbers who can also give shaves.

"San Francisco is ready for it in a way it wasn't before," Buffa says. "This city is not the people who used to be here."

Temescal Alley Barber Shop

Down a quiet, newly revitalized alley in Oakland, Nick Vlahos and Brad Roberts have opened a dapper three-seat barbershop with an antique barber pole and faded, faux-stained logo.

Vlahos, a third-generation Greek American barber who grew up just a few blocks away, connects the renewed interest in barbershops to the tough economic times.

"In the '90s, everything was pretty lax. Guys would just roll out in pajamas," he says. "But the world's gotten more competitive again, and men have to be more put together.

"So we look at the past to when the barbershop was a community gathering place and a ritual for men."

Temescal, which opened in August, is retro in both decoration (the wooden accents, antique barber pole and weathered iron chairs) and approach - they basically give one haircut.

"Short and tight, and it always looks good," says Vlahos. "It's the same cut my grandfather gave."

He draws a line between his shop, which employs only licensed barbers, and places like FSC or Peoples, whose employees are 50 to 80 percent stylists.

"They're salons dressed up like old-timey barbershops," says Vlahos. "Those guys are hairstylists!

"You want to find old-timey? There are 200 actually old barbershops in Oakland. Go there for old-timey."

A very tall man in all leather gets off his motorcycle and walks in for a cut. A student with an antique film camera around his neck comes in a moment later. They sign themselves up on a chalkboard at the door.

Vlahos offers everyone shots of Bulleit rye bourbon and doughnuts from Pizzaiolo, the restaurant next door.

Cable Car Clothiers

In November, the Financial District haberdashery Cable Car Clothiers opened an in-store barbershop designed by Nick Calvanese who lives a retro-immersion lifestyle and is one of the most period-correct barbers in the city.

His methods are obsessively old-fashioned - in and out of the shop. At work, he uses a handheld massager, the stimulax, from the 1940s - and keeps the original box to prove it. And he's built a small museum in back of the shop. There he has the first handheld clipper ever made, the first handheld hairdryer, the first Gillette safety razor, and olive oil pomade from Murray's that's used in prisons ("Institutional Sale ONLY," it says on the side).

He will only do a cut that has actually been done before, with photographic evidence.

"People come in and ask for pompadours or business casual cuts. Sometimes they just say they want something retro, but I won't make anything up," he says. He pulls out a vintage Facial Hair Types card and his look book: "Mug Shots" by Raynal Pellicer. "I cut based on these," he says flipping through the photos, which look like police mug shots.

Calvanese has worked on the Hollywood sets "Boardwalk Empire" and "Public Enemies" and with the local store Decades of Fashion and the Art Deco Society. He's a regular in hot rod magazines like Ol' Skool Rodz and Gearhead, and he keeps the press clips on hand.

"I live life like it's the '20s, '30s and '40s. I wake up different than others, down to the way I make coffee," using a vintage stainless French press, says Calvanese emphatically. "Everything I do I try to make it period-correct."

He wears a pinstriped barber's jacket from the 1940s and keeps his hair slicked back.

"Those guys at the other shops pay a lot of money to look retro," he says. "But you can't just buy this. You have to live it."

"TV shows like 'Boardwalk Empire' and 'Mad Men' are bringing back traditional barbers - men want the older styles," he says. "History repeats itself, especially here in the Financial District."

Peoples Barber & Shop

An old barber pole turns slowly outside Peoples Barber & Shop, which opened in May and where Lizotte is head barber. People walk in from the street to admire it while three young men sit, holding IPAs (complimentary with any service), and talk about the differences between cuts from the '30s and '40s.

"As much of a feminist as I am, men and women need different spaces," says Lizotte. "And when you see that barber pole flashing in the window, you know you're in a man's space."

This story has been corrected since it appeared in print editions.

The 411 on barbershops

Cable Car Clothiers: 110 Sutter St., Suite 108, S.F.; (415) 397-4740. Haircut $32, straight razor shave $30.

FSC Barber: 696 Valencia St., S.F.; (415) 621-9000. Haircut $40, buzz $20, straight razor shave $40, beard trim $15, hangover treatment (facial with hot towels and tea tree oil) $25.

Peoples Barber & Shop: 1259 Polk St., S.F.; (415) 292-4099. Haircut $38, straight razor shave $38, beard trim $15, head shave $34, hot towel treatment $18.

Public Barber Salon: 1528 Grant Ave., S.F.; (415) 362-0040. Haircut $31, beard trim $10, women's haircuts start at $36.

Temescal Alley Barber Shop: 470 49th St., Oakland; (510) 761-5074. Haircut $22 (kids and seniors $15), straight razor shave $30, beard trim $10.

For a video of FSC Barber, visit
