That also required shaving his 8-inch beard, of which he was particularly fond. “I kind of look like I’m a mad scientist when I’m cutting hair,” he said. Stradwick said he wanted to make sure he had a “full seal” to keep the virus out, given there is still a lot of uncertainty about how exactly it is spread. He turned to eBay and paid a premium to purchase a half-face respirator mask and cartridges manufactured by 3M, which he said are usually reserved for medical personnel. But with his mother, wife and one child at higher risk for contracting COVID-19 because of underlying health issues, going back to work still had him concerned. Stradwick made it through eight weeks of his business being closed. “Had the stimulus not come or I didn’t have any savings, I would have had to go get an essential job or something,” he said. When non-essential businesses were closed in late March, he’d been saving up money to take some time off for the birth of his fourth child. Stradwick opened his business two years ago, providing appointment-only advance barbering to customers in a 50 or 60-mile radius. “If I could still be closed to this day and not have any financial repercussions or worries, I would be closed right now,” he said. Shambabh said as the weeks have gone on being reopened, people are getting more comfortable with the regulations in place and they seem less anxious about coming in.Ĭhad Stradwick would have preferred to wait to reopen Stradwick’s Fade Cave in Wheeling, but economic realities gave him little choice but to follow suit when barbershops, hair and nail salons and massage businesses got the go-ahead from the state to reopen in May. She said the salon’s cleaning routine has always been very regimented before the COVID-19 outbreak, but wearing masks is new and hairdressers can only see one client at a time.įor now, the masks remain on staff and they see one client at a time. Being the owner and having so many faces looking at me, asking what we were going to do, it was hard.” “I couldn’t sleep at night knowing they were struggling to pay me. “As soon as we shut down, I stopped their rent,” she said. While Shambabh owns Beauty on Broadway, the other cosmetologists rent their space in her shop. You hadn’t worked for two months and have to spend all this money on rearranging, cleaning supplies, rerouting electrical. “They only gave us six days to get ready. “Our salon is designed a certain way and now we had to rearrange all that, things had to be reconstructed and there was no help for that,” she said. One of the struggles she faced with reopening her salon was having to do so on such short notice. “To go away from our clients and our team, that was a rough deal for all of us,” she said. In Salem, Beauty on Broadway being closed was “a very lonely time,” owner Shelby Shambabh said. People are going to be getting heatstroke.” “There’s numerous things said by doctors recently that you should not wear a mask in the humidity. “I don’t think it should be mandated for every soul to have to wear it, not by any means, especially in this heat,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can to keep our people safe.”īrewer said he worries that the mask mandate will be problematic as the summer goes on. “You have to wait in your vehicle or out on the porch and you have to wait for us to call or text you and say it’s your turn to come in,” he said. No one is allowed to wait inside the shop, and only one customer is allowed in at a time. Also included in his shop’s precautions are barbers wearing gloves and the shop having a rotation to clean doorknobs and light switches. “My biggest worry is if I allow my barbers to be comfortable and cut how they want without a mask, I have to worry about the state board coming and shutting me down.”īrewer went on to explain that his barber chairs are sanitized after every client. “Different members of the community are acting like this is our rule, but in reality, it’s not - we are just being forced to abide by it,” he said. He said his shop has received a lot of backlash from community members who disagree with the mandate. “I’ve already had multiple clients cancel with me because of that reason.” “We can’t cut beards, (can’t do) the hot lather, we can’t do anything like that,” Brewer said. While Brewer himself won’t have to constantly wear a mask due to his asthma, masks are now to be worn inside public spaces until the county’s outbreaks lessen.īrewer opened Bad Habits in September and because he’s self-employed, he was denied unemployment. Owner Mitch Brewer said the new order mandating masks to be worn in public has hurt his business, as no beards can be cut if masks can’t come off.
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