Downtown shop makes a living for barber, but it's a close shave

Originally published Saturday, September 13, 1997

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Once the back-to-school rush dies down, Ben Snyder finds time every fall to snap beans and top carrots in his tiny barbershop nestled between the Liberty Theatre and Constantine's Unique Boutique on Puyallup's downtown Main Street.

"My wife, Elizabeth, needs all the help I can give her, so when she's canning, I do what I can," said Snyder.

He has been snapping beans, topping carrots and cutting hair in his one-stool Economy Barber Shop at 112 W. Main St. for the past decade, and before that, out on River Road and down in his native Wilamette River Valley in Oregon, where he used to cut trees instead of hair.

Nowadays, he does what he can to keep things growing. The small shop is "a sort of plant hospital for plants other people throw away," said the man with thinning hair and steady hands. Just before his 9 a.m. opening every weekday morning -- and "on Saturdays, if I feel like coming to work," he rolls out a sidewalk planter box full of geraniums that goes under one window to balance the wooden bench in front of his other window. Cactus plants and violets dominate one front window, not far from the hanging spider plants.

When the flower shop closed next door, he also took over its party-balloon business, with sample balloons adorning much of one wall. And he keeps soft drinks in the big white refrigerator that dominates one wall, alongside the bulletin board with the snapshots and Bible quotations.

At 60, Ben Snyder figures he'll be cutting hair for a while yet before he can retire and "just cut hair for my friends on my front porch" out in Buckley. And he sure ain't going to get rich charging $6.75 for a haircut ($6.25 for seniors and children).

"I get a lot of older citizens who enjoy talking and visiting with one another. Since I've only got the one stool, they don't mind sitting and talking to one another. They've known one another since school, and from work and church and other places, and this is a place where they can relax and visit," Snyder said.

But chances are the conversation is about more than snap beans and carrots. A handwritten message in Ben's front window, just a few feet below his revolving barber pole, lists 18 downtown Puyallup businesses that have closed in the past 13 years, and concludes: "What's Our Destiny?"

Not just his destiny. With eight children, ranging from 10 to 29 years, Ben Snyder knows he'll be cutting hair as long as he's able. But he worries some about the fate of downtown Puyallup, despite the new paving and the concrete benches and planter boxes springing up almost as fast as boutiques and antique shops in the surrounding blocks.

"A lot of our business leaders and businesspeople themselves seem indifferent to the parking problem," Snyder said while cutting my hair. "There's about 23 different businesses I could name that have left downtown in the last 13 years, all handicapped because of the lack of foot traffic. Now antiques are fine, but they draw a pretty selective sort of customer, and we need more general shopping."

If people are doing more shopping up on South Hill and the other big malls, they must still be coming downtown for haircuts. There are four other barbershops within walking distance of the tiny Economy Barber Shop. But there are also empty shops and storefronts on both sides of the busy Burlington Northern Santa Fe street-level tracks.

Prices may differ, of course, but one other thing distinguishes the Economy Barber Shop. "Barbering Done On Men & Boys Only. No Exceptions!" reads the sign on the back wall, behind the solitary barber stool. "I'm not a stylist; I'm just an old-fashioned barber," Snyder explained. "I just wouldn't feel right taking on a project unless I feel competent, and I wasn't trained to cut women's hair."

And on some of today's popular "bowl" or "mushroom" cuts on boys? "Well, I tell you -- and I tell them -- I would've been embarrassed to go to school if my parents had cut my hair like that! But mostly I do just 'regular' cuts, and an occasional shave. I'm probably the last barber downtown or around here that still does a shave. It's just about extinct.

"Lots of seniors like the full treatment. They'll come in once a year, usually winter, and order the full treatment as a Christmas present to themselves. Or, a youngster will come in and order a gift certificate for a full year of haircuts as a Christmas gift for their dad or granddad. Sure beats getting another pair of socks," Snyder said.

Even selling haircut futures doesn't always make ends meet at the Economy, so several days each week, Ben scouts the area for old cardboard to sell at a local recycling plant. "I have to cut almost three times as much hair today as I did when I began, just to stay even. And I still have youngsters in a private church school, so I do what I can to make ends meet," he said.

Raising prices might help, but Ben Snyder said: "That wouldn't be fair to all my customers on Social Security." So for the foreseeable future, at least, retired men -- and their grandsons -- still can get a $6.25 haircut at Ben Snyder's Economy Barber Shop, 112 W. Main.

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.