The unwitting customer might walk into Hoboken’s First St. Barber Shop expecting to find a plump man named Gino, weighed down by life’s vicissitudes and silver cutting shears. The unwitting customer would be wrong. What he will discover instead is a winsome woman named Sandy, inspired by life’s vicissitudes and high-healed leopard skin boots.
Veteran hair stylist Nancy Grosso opened the First St. Barber Shop in the winter of 1994. “In Hoboken you sort of need a gimmick to have a successful business,” Grosso told me last week, while perched on a green vintage barber’s chair in her 55 First St. shop. “And there are a lot of guys in this town, so I wanted to go for a masculine look.”
The First St. Barber Shop not only oozes virility, but also nostalgia for simpler times. Between vintage equipment and antique pictures, including a signed head shot of George Burns and a framed New York Post front page featuring a young and potent Joe DiMaggio, the salon evokes a time when the subway series meant Yanks vs. Dodgers and a haircut cost under a dollar. “All we need now is a fireplace and a wet bar for cognac,” Sandy Merwin, the winsome stylist, said last week.
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