FAMILY BUSINESS
Diane Landis Hackett
It’s not often that you see a grown man wearing his daughter’s pink barrette to hold his longish hair out of his face. So, when my friend and neighbor Ron Connor appeared on the street sporting just that fashion statement, I felt obliged to comment.
"Nice hair, Ronnie!"
"You like it?" he replied holding his head up to offer me the full effect.
"Very radical. Are you trying for a ponytail?" I ask doubting the answer was yes.
"I’m waiting for Bob. He’s away. I only go to Bob," he says more seriously now.
"Who’s Bob?" I ask, suddenly much more curious.
"He’s my barber at the Center Barber Shop in the Princeton Shopping Center. He’s on vacation now. He really knows jazz," he replies.
Mr. Connor, a jazz pianist and a local real estate agent, is always looking for a good discussion about jazz, so this barber must be worth the wait.
The barber he has been waiting for is Bob Tovar. He’s been cutting hair, pretty much in the same sunlit spot, for more than 35 years.
As I enter his shop I’m struck by how masculine it feels in here. It’s like a bachelor pad, all chrome and black leather with framed U.S. Open golf posters on the walls and a raft of magazines with titles such as Esquire, Men’s Journal, Road and Track and Wine Spectator stacked in neat piles around the room.
I ask myself, am I really at the shopping center next to Eckerd drugstore peering out at the parking lot that I have traversed hundreds of times? And where is the barbershop pole, anyway?
Mr. Tovar sits down next to me. He is lanky and loose limbed and has a certain way of looking at you, with his eyes half closed, that exudes cool. I’m quite certain he knows a good riff when her hears it, even if he doesn’t play it himself.
He is also soft-spoken, well dressed, polite and laid back, very laid back. On the CD player is Chet Baker back when he was at his best in the 1950s. Back when he was playing and singing and before his slide into drugs, which led to his demise.
We’ve been talking for two minutes and I’ve already learned a musician’s history even before I learn Mr. Tovar’s story. And there is more. Mr. Tovar likes Keely Smith and Louie Prima, Brubeck and Maynard Ferguson. He has seen most all of the jazz greats perform somewhere, especially in the ’50s and ’60s when he says jazz was much more accessible. He frequented a place called the Music Circus outside Lambertville that brought in jazz, rock and Broadway shows every weekend.
He mentions more obscure players such as Stan Kenton, John Swana, Bill Sharlap who he has seen in Philadelphia, Atlantic City and elsewhere.
"I like the straight ahead jazz. Now, lots of people do fusion," he says and adds that he still goes to a jazz club in Metuchen called the Cornerstone that offers the real thing.
After hearing him talk for these first 10 minutes, I wonder if I’m imagining a jazz cadence going on with the way he speaks. Do I detect a relaxed rhythm? Does his gravely voice lilt just slightly at the end of each sentence?
We chat on and he points out the picture of himself with the famous drummer Buddy Rich that is attached to his mirror and then he gets up and brings over a photo of his wife, daughter and granddaughters. They are lovely.
The phone rings for what seems like the fifth time since we began talking and he answers in his usual manner, "Hey (first name of client on the other end) … How are ya?"
Besides Mr. Tovar and his passions, what sets this barbershop apart from the rest is that he cuts by appointment only. Thus, the phone calls.
"Princeton is white collar. Everyone has a schedule, which is why appointment-only works," he says and adds that by making appointments busy people don’t have to wait to get their hair cut.
His policy hasn’t turned too many people away because he is booked pretty much all day, every day. Many of his customers have had their hair cut by him for as long as he has been in business.
He returns to sit next to me and I’ve been thinking how pleasant it is in this spacious and square room. The sun is streaming in and reflecting off the chrome chairs and clean floors that he abruptly gets up to sweep when he detects a spot of hair. It feels like a refuge of sorts, for men only, of course. Ah, so, this is what a men’s barbershop was like before the unisex salon and spa.
The conversation shifts to golf, which he has been playing for more than 40 years and he says, "Once you play it, you get hooked. There is something about it. It is aggravating, frustrating and keeps your interest, but you never master it."
What Mr. Tovar seems to have mastered is the art of running one’s own business and keeping one’s clientele happy.
Back on my street, Mr. Connor, who has traded CDs and records with his jazz barber, runs down his own list of why he likes to go to Center Barber Shop. The parking is great which is a real plus for Princeton (a real estate agent’s perspective, he says). He also says Mr. Tovar is a good barber who is not in a rush.
"He is a character, well worth the price of the haircut. I think he is the required barber in town for jazz lovers," Mr. Connor concludes, his hair neatly shorn by now.
This sums up Mr. Tovar’s philosophy just fine. "It’s all about jazz or golf, Diane," he says as I prepare to exit his little oasis.
What more could a busy, modern man want?
Diane Landis Hackett’s Family Business column appears monthly in Princeton Business Journal.

