Josh Ryan, aka Dr. Fade, is the 28-year-old owner of the Broadway Barber Shop. Although it may seem like a traditional old-time hangout where the locals trade tall tales while waiting for a trim and a shave, it's actually a place where the customer's hair becomes canvas.
Ryan's specialty is designing images and sculpting them into people's hair with his clippers. One of his recent creations was the image of Michael Jackson applied to the back of one customer's head.
A barber by trade, Ryan is also a self-taught artist specializing in photo-realistic drawings produced with pencil and paper. His brief art education consisted of one high school drawing class and a photorealism class at San Francisco's Academy of Art University.
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Ryan's shop in many respects resembles a classic, old time tonsorial parlor but with modern services. The barber himself is a combination 1940's slick, parted hair garbed in 1980's attire replete with suspenders. Only the handlebar mustache is missing.
Customers can still get the traditional regular cut and straight razor shave in one of Ryan's three barber chairs. Or they can be more creative and bring a photo of newer styles and let the "Doctor" do the rest.
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Ryan loves his shop and his job, but has aspirations of building on his success and opening additional shops. Also talented as a tattoo artist, he's interested in combining barbering and tattooing and dreams of ultimately cutting celebrities' hair.
Look for his new website www.drfade.com expected to be launched next month. In the meantime, check out his myspace page.