Friendly Barber Shop staff opens a new spot in Carrboro for haircuts and conversation
Jeremy Anderson wants people to know there’s still a local place to get a haircut and a hot-lather neck shave in downtown Carrboro.
On Monday, Anderson opened Main Street Barber Shop, an “old-fashioned barber shop” at 108 E. Main St. The space had been vacant since Friendly Barber Shop closed in April, leaving a lot of people looking for someplace to go, he said.
Many of them knocked on the window as the final renovations were underway or leaned out the windows of passing cars to cheer the sign in the window announcing the new venture. It was heartwarming, Anderson said.
“They’re having to drive to Hillsborough or Pittsboro to get a haircut, or go to a corporate place,” he said. “The good news is you can still go local.”
The turnaround in ownership was quick. Russ Sturdivant, whose father Grady Sturdivant opened the shop in 1961, retired when the shop closed at the end of April.
The building’s landlord reached out to him about keeping a barbershop going, said Anderson, who had worked at Friendly for 14 years.
The shop was “in pretty rough shape, just from the years,” Anderson said.
It’s now got a fresh coat of paint on the walls and black, metal cabinets where the wooden ones once stood, scarred by decades of dangling electric razors. The shop’s wood-paneled chairs stayed on a swivel Wednesday as waves of customers stopped in for a trim from familiar faces.
The old crew is back, Anderson said, as he cut hair alongside Jeff and Phil Knox, who had worked there for years before their plans to take over the business fell through in February. Abe Thompson, who stayed until the doors closed, is also back, he said.
“A lot of people were wondering where those guys went, and I’d like to let them know that we’re just happy to be part of the community that we’ve been part of all these years,” Anderson said.
Preserving local barbershops, memories
The native of Walnut Cove in Stokes County has another shop in neighboring Alamance County.
The Graham Barber Shop opened in 1953 and closed when the last owner left in 2023. About a year later, Anderson revived it, and he’s since established a skilled crew to keep it going while he concentrates on Carrboro, he said.
“It’s easy to keep one going in Graham with the rent so reasonable,” he added.
Both shops are throwbacks to when barbershops were locally run, and a man might visit the same barber from childhood to old age, Anderson said. There are two in Carrboro: Main Street Barber Shop and Midway Barber Shop on West Rosemary Street.
Step Edwards has kept Midway going since taking over for his father, who opened the doors in 1952 when the Midway district was filled with Black-owned businesses catering to Chapel Hill and Carrboro’s Black community.
His barbershop doesn’t really compete with Midway, Anderson said, because it takes a different skill-set to cut African-American hair than it does white, Asian and Hispanic hair.
“You want somebody who’s comfortable with your type of hair,” Anderson said.
“Sometimes [Midway sends] people to us who want a layer cut or a surfer cut, because [they] don’t really use scissors,” he said, “and sometimes we’ll send people up there who want a tint fade, because I can do one, but not quite as good as they can.”
The price of a cut and neck shave at Main Street Barber Shop will remain $25, he said. He also plans to keep the tradition of filling one wall in the shop with memories, replacing the yellowed newspaper clippings, Tar Heel posters and photos of famous customers and family that Sturdivant took with him when he retired.
One of the first keepsakes will be a photo of Eric Montross and Grady Sturdivant that hung on the wall for years, Anderson said.
“It was pretty cool to see all the old stuff there over the years,” he said.
Other Chapel Hill, Hillsborough business news
WomanCraft Gifts, an artist-owned and artist-run craft and fine arts gallery has moved out of its Carrboro location and reopened in Chapel Hill. The new WomanCraft shop is located on the hill across from Village Plaza and Berkshire Chapel Hill at 250 S. Elliott Road. Store hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Serratore’s Pizza and Pasta, a new Italian-American restaurant offering fresh pasta, homemade sauces and wood-fired pizzas, is under development at 112 N. Churton St. in Hillsborough. The space was previously occupied by Radius Pizza. Hillsborough resident and Chef Josh Decarolis and his partners, Chef Phil Bey and restaurant manager Pietro Costanza, could open the doors by mid-summer.
North Carolina Birth Center is open at 930 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Chapel Hill. NCBC is one of nine Birth Partners Inc. midwifery centers nationwide and is accepting clients with due dates starting in November. It’s not affiliated with the previous tenant, Women’s Birth and Wellness Center, but honors the legacy of its founder Maureen Darcey with a wall of memorabilia and photos. Darcey died in 2019, and the Women’s Birth and Wellness Center closed in 2022.
