a guide to the barbershops of New York

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to New York

There are eight million New Yorkers, each with a head on their shoulders. Many of those heads have hair, follicles that continues to grow at approximately half an inch a month. That’s enough to turn a clean-cut kid into a shaggy dog in a couple of weeks. It is therefore no surprise that, like pizza-slice joints and bagel stores, barbershops dot nearly every block of the city. 

The Big Apple is a tonsorial paradise. Over the past 20 years, I’ve sat in hundreds of barbers’ chairs, staring at myself in the mirror as my hair has gone from long to short, short to shorter, thick to thinning, wild to kempt. I’ve had good haircuts and bad, a few great ones and a few disasters. Most have faded from memory. But some have remained salient, for the cuts were so skilful or the scene so memorable that they resist oblivion.

These are the best barbershops of New York City. At least for me. Indeed, a barbershop is a personal choice, and one’s favourite is a mystical connection, forged through fortune (I happened to walk in) and feeling (I dig the vibe).

Some barbershops exist for just a haircut. I quite like the modest walk-in spots for a quick buzz cut or clean-up, where few words are exchanged, your hair falls around you and you emerge a new man. Others exist for more: many men have one barber for life, a barber who knows their kids’ names. Often, especially in the Black community, the barbershop is also a lively social hub, a place for laughing, venting, advice-giving, health screenings and neighbourhood news. (Indeed, the barbershop quartet developed in Black barbershops in the 1880s, and the movie Barbershop, starring Ice Cube, was a cultural touchstone of the 2000s.)

Barbering was one of the first professions to be licensed in the state of New York, and, in turn, barbershops have been part of the fabric of the city since the early 19th century. For years they were homosocial androns, existing only for men. In fact, unisex salons were only made legal in New York in 1972, when men began to wear their hair long and instead wanted hairstylists (who hitherto had operated with a different licence). The 1970s marked a dark time both for barbershops and the city. But barbers, like a stubborn hair, continued to exist. Hairstyles changed, got shorter, then longer, and now are, like everything else, so fragmented that even the smallest niches can sustain a business. That’s good news for barbers.

Today, diverse barbershop traditions thrive. Black barbershops continue to serve (and build) community. Dominican barbershops give perfect fades and touch-ups. Old Italian shops do a brisk business with clippers. Hipster shops from the mid-2000s lumbersexual-era continue to thrive, as do gender-neutral barbershops and unisex salons.

To find your own barber, you’re welcome to follow the spinning barbering pole, but I like these. Each really captures the spirit of New York: its stories, its styles and, in cascades of shades, its hair.

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Best high-end barbershop

Martial Vivot Salon Pour Hommes

639 1/2 Hudson Street, West Village, Manhattan, NY 10014, and 39 W 54th Street, manhattan, NY 10019

I’ve been going to Martial Vivot, owner of Martial Vivot Salon Pour Hommes, for the past 15 years. He knows my bald spots and secrets. He’s seen me through man buns, horrific mid-length cock-ups, buzz cuts, marriage, children and divorce. He’s a master with scissors (“A haircut with scissors,” he tells me as he tames my stray hairs, “will last much longer than one with clippers”). And he gives one of the best cuts in New York.

A French master barber with locations both downtown and in midtown (right behind MoMA), Vivot has been cutting hair since he was a teenage apprentice in Besançon. He opened the salon in 2008 and now has 12 barbers over the two locations. Each salon is modern and sleek. There’s a whiskey cart, an espresso machine and a lounge. But for all the fanciness, Vivot is an old school master at pairing your hairstyle with your face shape. “A haircut is more than just maintenance,” he says, scissors in hand. “It is a ritual of self-expression.” Haircuts from $125-$420 (with $60 cuts from apprentices). Website; Directions

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Best budget barbershop

Astor Place Hairstylists

740 Broadway, 2 Astor Place, Manhattan, NY 10003

Descend the steep flight of stairs on Astor Place into subterranean chaos: a large room with 40 chairs, its black-and-white tile floor filling day in and day out with shorn hair. The shop is a cacophony of clippers and accents. Each station is plastered with photographs of home countries and family members. The walls are covered in colourful pop art by Mike “Big Mike” Saviello, the former longtime manager turned well-regarded artist. A handwritten sign lists every language spoken, and it’s almost all the languages.

All of New York comes to Astor Place, which has been a mainstay since 1947: politicians such as former mayor Bill de Blasio, celebrities like Chris Rock and Adam Sandler, nearby NYU students (who take the place over for dance parties) and regular New Yorkers. Clients are greeted by a no-nonsense host with a clipboard. You write your name and wait for a stylist. It’s as democratic a space as you can find in a city of extreme wealth and poverty.

Astor Place is a high-volume business. Chit-chat is perfunctory; cutting is fast. Many of the barbers have been there for decades; all are handy at basic cuts, shaves and shape-ups. Haircuts from $30. Website; Directions

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Best Harlem barbershop

Denny Moe’s Superstar Barbershop

2496 Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Manhattan, NY 10030

At the centre of a 14-chair barbershop in Central Harlem stands Dennis “Denny Moe” Mitchell, owner of Denny Moe’s Superstar Barbershop. Mitchell is 59 and has been practising the art of barbering — partly cosmetic, mostly conversational — since he was 14. “I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, work in Manhattan, live in the Bronx,” he tells me as he evens out the lines of a client. “I like the Knicks, the Nets, Yankees, Giants, Rangers, Islanders and Buffalo Bills. I can have a conversation about anything with anyone.”

All of those conversations seem to be unfolding at once inside his bustling shop. Three generations of customers — a grandfather, father and son — sit along one side of the room, each under a maroon shawl. Other men congregate by the front of the shop, awaiting Mitchell’s call of “You next.” Their easy rapport blankets the shop with a warm, familiar vibe. 

The complex cultural history of Black barbershops in America is best explored in the book Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and barbershops in America. Its author, Quincy T Mills, has said: “The barbering industry has been a really open space for Black men in particular to want to find a climate as independent labourers and to become entrepreneurs.” Mitchell perfected his craft under the mentorship of legendary Harlem barber Robert “Bobby” Flowers, who owned the shop before him — and today, Black barbershops like Denny Moe’s continue to thrive. Haircuts from $35. Website; Directions

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Best fade

Filthy Rich Barbershop

63-12 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside, Queens, NY 11377, and 148 Havemeyer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY11211

As a Filipino boy growing up in Queens in the late 1980s, Richard Mendoza loved hip-hop culture and decided he wanted to be in the middle of it. “I went to see if I could apply to a Black barbershop. Didn’t want me. A Spanish barbershop. Didn’t want me. A Russian barbershop. Didn’t want me.” Instead, he started his own. The son of a beautician, Mendoza began charging $5 for a haircut when he was in high school. He went to barber school and now owns two shops.

Go to Mendoza for one of his legendary fades. To him, the perfect fade starts closely shorn on the sides and builds to a gradual crescendo of hair, with a fringe or slickback (or whatever style you wish) atop the head. 

Mendoza represents a new era of barber, who combines technical nous with social media savvy. His Instagram @richthebarber, a constant feed of freshly cut men, has nearly 86,000 followers. Many find their way to his shops. (“My clientele comes from everywhere,” he tells me, “Asians, Latinos, white people, Black people, tourists, gentrifiers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, everybody.”) At his Woodside shop, reservations are recommended, as they book up. “One chair is always reserved for my mom,” he adds, “if she ever wants to come in to dress up her friends.” Haircuts from $60 (with Mendoza from $100). Website; Directions

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Best shave

Sigfrido’s Barbershop

381 1st Avenue, Gramercy Park, Manhattan, NY 10010

A shave, unlike a haircut, is a combination of creativity, technical skill and intense physical intimacy. (Rarely does a man have his face touched so gently.) When I’m looking for a shave, I want someone who has been doing it for a long time. Someone like Ruben Aronov at Sigfrido’s in Gramercy. 

Sigfrido’s was founded in the 1960s, but Aronov, who moved to the US from Uzbekistan, started working here over 20 years ago and has owned the shop for 10. 

The three-chair shop is predominantly a walk-in situation, and to be honest, I walked in for the first time just for the decor. There’s nothing worse than try-hard barbershop design, but the walls in Sigfrido’s are layered in real stuff: faded postcards, cloth patches from various organisations (New York City Sanitation Police, Tulsa Police) and other gifts from customers.

As Aronov reclines the chair and swaths my face in a hot towel, I am grateful for the chance not to talk. He quietly denudes my face of its whiskers. (“A good shave takes time,” he tells me. “Hot towel, straight razor, nothing electric. Massage the skin. It’s a meditation.”) Painstaking and unhurried, the process connects me to a long line of men who have sat in the barber chair before me, and to those who will come after. Shaves from $30. Website; Directions

Do you have a go-to barbershop in NYC? Share your recommendations in the comments below

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