“I don’t know about you, but for me after I get a haircut I look good, I feel good, everything is right in the world,” said Angel Vazquez, a student friar on campus.
Sitting in the Damietta Center, Vasquez, a licensed barber in the state of Illinois who is waiting to have his license transferred to New York, can often be found here waiting for students to walk in for a haircut or schedule an appointment. His barber shop, located in a room within the center, is where he provides haircuts free of charge on Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Vazquez said that, a couple of years ago, a hairstylist who gave monthly, free haircuts to people living on the streets of Manhattan was featured in a New York Times article. This article and the words of the hairstylist would come to inspire Vazquez to offer his barber services on campus in an effort to connect with students on a more relational level that he finds to fall in line with the Franciscan mission.
“[The hairstylist] was a Buddhist and he went in and talked about how it was good karma and how it really connected with the people, gave them back a little sense of human dignity,” said Vazquez. “There was something about the way he said it in that article that really kind of resonated with me with saying, ‘Now that’s a ministry, this ability to reach out to a population of people that normally is very much neglected.’”
Vazquez’s grandfather was a barber who owned a barber shop on the south side of Manhattan in the Staten Island ferry terminal. Experiencing the communal atmosphere in his grandfather’s shop at a young age sparked his interest in the profession, and he hopes to pass on that flame.
“Over time, I just hope one or two guys decide to pick up the ability to just be a barber and listen,” said Vazquez.
All the equipment used in the barber shop is part of Vazquez’s own kit that he got whilst going through a barbering program in Chicago. As for supplies, he is given a 50-dollar stipend every month by the university and anything beyond that comes from his own pocket. Vazquez said that he was grateful that the university has worked with him as much as they have, providing him a location for his services, the students to work on and electricity to keep the lights on.
Vazquez also told a story from when he used to cut hair in a barber shop elsewhere to show how important barbering can be.
“The one time this guy, he ended up becoming one of my regulars, he came in to the shop very agitated and needed a haircut, so I sat him down in a chair and we just started having this conversation, and he finally opened up saying that he had a court date the next day. He felt he was being wrongly accused, and he was just upset over that,” said Vazquez. “I provided him a space to vent, and he needed to be angry for that moment. I think me not judging him in the process, rather, just listening to him, by the end of the haircut, he was calm.”
Vazquez also spoke on how barbering can have many parallels with what he is called to do as a Franciscan.
“I think that is part of the Franciscan charism: that ability to listen to another person and meeting them exactly where they are, not judging them for being there, or getting there, or expecting them to move out of that space at my convenience,” said Vazquez.
Landon Allison, Associate Editor
allisolj17@bonaventure.edu
