Jerry’s Unisex: Hair Styling and Conversation

He sometimes refers to himself as "just a simple barber," but I have been going to Jerry Grella for years to get my hair cut and while "barber," is definitely the case – in fact the best one who has ever laid a pair of scissors to my thinned-out pate –"simple . . . ?"  Hardly. 

In fact, despite my journeys through academia, my years as a writer and author interviewing politicos, tycoons and artists the world over, I'd say Grella could hold his own with the best of them on subjects ranging from dinosaurs to diplomacy, metaphysics to animal migrations, ecology to economics. 

Here is a man who memorized the Fifth Canto of Dante's "Inferno," because he loved the rhyme and meter of the story of the two doomed lovers: Francesca di Rimini and Paolo Malatesta. You don't simply get a haircut when you sit in Grella's chair, you become part of a spirited exchange on the subject du jour. 

I sometimes think of my trip to the barber as a throwback to those ancient days before hair salons, when barbershops were part of the local hangout scene in a downtown. However, at least in the way they are depicted in film, those barbershop conversations were more about the high school football team or the church bake sale, than the vagaries and intricacies of Middle East policy. 

"Iran," he said on a recent visit, as I lowered myself into his chair, "what do you think about Iran?" We'd covered Afghanistan and Iraq during many previous conversations. 

"You know what," I replied, "how about the monarch butterflies in that National Geographic series?" I had wearied of the whole issue of Middle Eastern wars. 

"Ah, the monarchs," he said, "so fragile but they fly so far. It takes three generations to make it from Mexico to Canada, then one super generation to fly all the way back." 

We were off into the realm of geographic migrations. 

Grella, himself, is an émigré, having migrated, in 1972, from the small town of Sturno in Avellino Province, part of the Campagnia Region of southern Italy. 

"I was already working as a beautician in Italy," he explained, "but it is difficult to be ambitious in a small town and there were already too many beauticians there."

His wife, who had preceded him by two years, had relatives in Glen Cove, so the Grellas settled here, first renting an apartment, then buying a home. Grella then bought the building on Glen Street that contains his shop, . He continues to do hair for both men and women. 

"Things are very different from when I first opened shop 38 years ago," he said.  "There was much more balance then than there is now. I was making $100 a week, good money, had no trouble paying the rent. Now, if you make a dollar, you need two just to survive. When I opened my shop, my taxes were $2,500 a year; now they are $19,000."

He also feels there has been a pronounced degradation in the kind of services you can afford, if they are available at all. 

"After World War II, food in Italy was scarce," he said, "but if you needed a suit, the tailor made it to fit you. Shoes? The shoemaker made them for you. Today, you get your suit from China, made by someone who doesn't even know you."

Although he said he never went past the eighth grade in school, he has had a life-long attraction to learning, an insatiable sense of wonder. Some customers are curt and just want him to cut hair; others get deeply involved in the exchanges.

"One of my customers was the president of a major corporation," Grella went on, "and he said, I don't come here to get my hair cut; I come here for the conversation.'"

Among other topics, the conversation can venture into the depths of religion, the meaning of life.   

"I have a minister," Grella said, "and although he disagrees with my feelings about religion, he respects them. And, of course, I respect his. I have another customer who asked me to go to the light switch and turn it off. 'That's your life,' he said, 'when it turns off; it's off.'"

"Well," Grella replied. "If you're so sure of the answer, I know everyone will listen." 

Men's and women's haircuts are $12 each. Men's stylings are $17, women's $18.  The conversation, on the other hand, is free and often freewheeling.