Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Bill Holst has been coming to barber Sal Bañales for haircuts for the past 10 years--a fifth of the time Bañales has been in the business.

Barber has cut hair for 50 happy years

By Suzy Ramirez

With a time line of haircuts spanning five generations, local barber Sal Bañales celebrated 50 years of cutting hair and making memories over the Labor Day weekend.

Bañales has been a local legend ever since he came to the Feather Edge barbershop in Los Gatos in 1964. It was here that he met his current business associate and friend, Al Cano. For the past eight years, he and Cano have both cut hair at the Argonaut Barber Shop in Saratoga.

"I love my job. There's not one day when I get up in the morning and tell my wife, 'Oh, no, not again,' " Bañales said.

Bañales has just a few stories to tell about these years and his journey to becoming a barber. During the Great Depression, Bañales moved from Los Angeles to Corcoran, a small town outside Fresno. In 1942, he went into the U.S. Army and fought in World War II. As an infantry squad leader, Bañales was sent to fight in places such as North Africa and Italy.

"What can I say about the war--other than you just try to make it day to day," Bañales recalled. He returned to the United States at the end of the war in 1945.

Not wanting to return to work in the fields, Bañales decided to attend barber school in Fresno and join his brother Eddie's barbershop in Corcoran. He cut hair there for the next nine years.

As Bañales' family grew, he and wife Ramona decided a move to San Jose would present more opportunities for their five children. It was this move that brought him to Los Gatos' Feather Edge.

During a time when old-fashioned barbershops have become rare, and overrun by more up-to-date unisex salons, Bañales said, the personal attention and special skill of barbers are welcomed by regular and new customers alike.

"To me, customers come to this shop because they like a barber to cut their hair and don't want to go to the fast cuts," he said.

Bañales' favorite customers are the families who have been coming in for up to four generations, which he has watched grow in both years and size.

"I will have cut the grandfather, father and his kids' hair," Bañales explained. "Now the kids have babies and I cut their hair too."

The Shannon family in Los Gatos is a case in point. The family of four boys and a father have been coming to Bañales for nearly four decades. The family followed Bañales when he moved to Saratoga from the Los Gatos barbershop position, and now the sons take their own children there.

Jim Shannon, like all of his brothers, received his first haircut from Bañales and has been a loyal customer and friend of the barber for more than 21 years.

"Sal is not just a great barber, but a family man, which is very important," Shannon said. "More importantly, he is a good friend."

Family is a high priority in Bañales' life, which shows in his 50-year marriage to Ramona and in their five children, daughters Gloria, Cathy, Norma and Sally and son Salvador Jr.; 12 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

The old barber chair from his brother's shop ended up in Bañales' garage when his brother shut down the store. Bañales still uses the chair to cut his relatives' hair in a more personal and convenient setting.

The experienced barber has made an effort over the past 50 years to keep up with changing hairstyles--from the 1950s crew cut to bowl or skater cuts in the '80s. During the hippie era of the '60s, Bañales went to a junior college and learned how to cut long hair.

"The styles almost seem to go in a circle," he said. "I was doing bowl cuts in the '50s and now kids just have all kinds of names for them. I am always learning. It's like a dance; there are many steps."

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]