Vintage barbershop going on 65 years in Valley Stream

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Michael Uvaydov darted around the inside of Sal & Vin’s Barber Stylist on Rockaway Avenue last month, wielding scissors, a spray bottle and comb.

“Not just barbershops — any business — if the customer is happy, they’re always back,” he said.

But for some floor and ceiling renovations, patrons haven’t noticed much of a change at Sal & Vin’s through the years. The business opened in Valley Stream in 1952. The shop’s original price list and business cards still hang on the wall — 90 cents for a haircut, and air conditioning, were featured prominently in its early advertising. Barber chairs shaped like vintage automobiles are still occupied by children, who Uvaydov said have long been the business’s niche clientele.

To prove the barber chairs are originals, Uvaydov opened a metal flap revealing a small compartment in one of their arms. “Ashtrays,” he said simply.

Uvaydov, 55, and his brother, Joseph, 62, began working at the shop in 1998, though they’ve been cutting hair much longer. Michael said he has learned to adjust his disposition to match his customers’. “They’re happy — they’re satisfied with the attention and service we give them,” he explained. “You just have to feel the customer out … When you ask them a question — sometimes yes or no — he’s not in the mood for talking, you just don’t bother him.”

They both know their customers intimately — and it’s no wonder: Many who’ve been coming for years. “I know their names, their kids’ names, their grandkids’ names, you know?” Joseph said.

“We have customers who used to live in the area but they moved, years ago,” he added. “They’re still coming back. They remember us.”

Jay Yandel, a dean at Central High School, started coming to Sal & Vin’s a few years ago. “They do a nice job,” he said. “Unfortunately, you don’t see much of that anymore.”

Like the Uvaydovs, who took over the business in 2005, the original owners, Salvatore and Vincent Spadaccino, were brothers who liked cutting hair. Salvatore died in 1972, at age 48, and Vincent died in 2013, at 87. Michael Uvaydov said that Vincent frequented the barbershop until he died, greeting customers and sharing memories of his Valley Stream upbringing.

In an archived 1999 interview, Vincent told the Valley Stream Historical Society’s Helen Dowdeswell that his father, Charles, was also a barber, and assured him he could always fall back on the profession if needed. Dowdeswell, who died in 2010, was Vincent’s French teacher at Central High School. She recorded some 200 interviews she conducted for the society on cassettes, and took meticulous notes.

She asked Vincent about his life and career. “I must’ve been 21, 22 years old when I started working with my father on Rockaway Avenue,” he said. “I got married at that time, and I stopped school and raised a family.”

He joked that when the Beatles were popular in the ’60s, business dipped slightly. Hairstyles varied, but their loyal customers remained.

A member of the Knights of Columbus, the Valley Stream Lions Club, the Holy Name Society and the East Rockaway Yacht Club, Vincent remained active in the community over the years.

“It was enjoyable — it was a beautiful place to grow up,” he told Dowdeswell. “I never doubted a minute of it. I loved it all. Everybody knew everybody. You walk down Rockaway Avenue, you can say hello to people.”

His passion for Valley Stream lives on in the barbershop’s current owners, and their eagerness to serve friends old and new — the men, women and children who stroll in off the street looking for a haircut and a conversation.

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