The Ragusas make their last cuts

JOLIET – After more than five decades of cutting everything from flattops to fauxhawks to fades, the Ragusa boys are hanging up their scissors.

It’s Joe and Dominic’s last week at Joe Ragusa’s Barber Shop. The business, an East Side staple even as the neighborhood and hairstyle preferences changed drastically over the years, will be shutting its doors for the last time Saturday.

“You wouldn’t believe the changes,” Dominic Ragusa, 72, said.

A Ragusa has been cutting hair in this town for the last 69 years, ever since their father, Joe Ragusa Sr., opened his first shop in a shack at Collins and Jackson streets in 1945.

Nine years later, he bought a house at 412 E. Jackson St. from a customer moving to Minnesota, tore off the front porch and built his new barbershop in the front yard.

The family’s been there ever since.

“We’ve lived in this neighborhood our whole life,” Joe Ragusa, 75, said.

In its heyday, the shop ran five chairs, one for each Ragusa plus two other barbers. Mayors Maurice Berlinsky, Norman Keck and John Bourg were occasional clientele. People wore their hair short back then, and customers were plentiful and regular. And loyal.

John Gleason, 80, has been coming to Ragusa’s for more than 60 years.

“They’re just good barbers, good people and good friends of the family,” Gleason said.

Gleason said he’s stuck with the same haircut over the years: “just a trim.”

“Though now I don’t really have enough hair to cut,” Gleason joked.

The business was once one of dozens of union barbershops across the city. Now the barber union is gone and only a handful of the old barbershops remain.

Clientele also has changed, from primarily white to predominantly Hispanic. Joe, at one time, also cut women’s hair until his daughter, Lora Booth, took over that part of the business when she started working with her grandfather, dad and uncle about 30 years ago.

But the biggest change has been in hairstyles. When the Ragusas started, short hair was the norm. All that changed in the mid-1960s.

“That’s when The Beatles hit the shores,” Dominic said. “After that no one was getting haircuts.”

Both men have been cutting hair for so long that they can handle just about any style, as long as the customer can explain what they want.

“If you don’t come up with the right words to explain what you want, the picture in the barber’s head is not going to be right,” Joe said. “And bad things are going to happen.”

Many clients now use their cellphones to show what kind of cuts they want, Joe said.

Years ago, the most popular styles were crew cuts and flattops. Nowadays it’s the fade, which is basically shaved sides with a variety of styles on top, Joe said.

The barbershop also once offered straight-razor shaves.

“In 1985, we put the razors away,” Dominic said. A couple of older clients had contracted AIDS from blood transfusions. “We just didn’t want to take a chance with the blood,” he said.

On Saturday, the family will celebrate after their last day with a pizza party.

Booth plans to continue cutting hair at Sparx Hair Studio in Shorewood.

“I’m going to miss my dad and uncle,” Booth said. “We’ve been a great team together. It’s hard to split up.”

Dominic, who has a bad back, plans to retire.

“I’m not going to miss the work, but I’m going to miss the people,” Dominic said.

Joe, who had hip replacement surgery in April, will continue barbering at Hair Center Barber Salon, 825 Campus Drive, Joliet. Like his brother, it’s more about the people than the work.

“That’s why I want to stay with it,” Joe said.