4 weeklypress.com · ucreview.com · NovemBer 07 • 2012 continued from page 1


Tony Rodriquez


days. Some bad. But he was a very loving, friendly man,” Monica said from the sitting room in the barbershop’s rear. Complete with a flat screen TV, couches and coffee table, this reporter gathered with Monica, son Anthony Jr., Joseph Rutedge and Ronald James last Friday, November 2nd. Like a sitting room in an actual home, framed pictures of African American icons such as James Brown, Mal- colm X and President Obama lined the room’s walls. Hurricane Sandy had halted the barbershop’s nor- mal hustle, however. For the fifth consecutive day, Just For Men was without power. Still throughout the interview, several people opened the front door in the hopes that they could receive a shape- up, fade, or trim. Or maybe they just stopped by talk and hang out. Just For Men, which attracts its clients from all over the city, isn’t just a place to get one’s haircut. “This place has always been more than just a barber- shop,” Monica said. “It has always had a family vibe. It is also a place where men could sit back and talk about


men’s stuff. It was a place for venting.” And it was there, on a blustery morning in November, that friends and loved ones remembered the remarkable life of Tony Ro- driquez.


Born in 1957, Tony was raised by his grandmother on the 2900 block of Allegheny Avenue in North Philadel- phia. Enterprising, from an early age he went to work as a shoeshine boy on the corner of 29th and Lehigh Avenue, to help his family make ends meet. Always a hard worker, he took a job as a dishwasher while attending Germantown High School. After graduation, Tony at- tended Pierce College, earn- ing an Associate’s degree in Business. In 1977, he went to work as a landscaper for SmithKline Beecham, where he was employed for fifteen years. Tony found his true calling as a barber in 1989. Going to barber school all day, Tony continued to work his landscaping job at night. After graduation, he worked for a few years at Anthony’s Barber Shop. Then in 1992, he opened Just For Men, only a few blocks from Anthony’s.


And Tony was determined to make Just For Men a suc- cess. As the first black-owned business on Baltimore Ave, “Tony would spend the night there in the beginning to get the business going,” explained Ronald James, a lifelong friend of Tony’s who helped him open. Bruce Bur- ton, who later opened Pretty Boyz, was also part of the original crew, James noted. “They would work from 7 till midnight,” Monica added. “Tony kept a mattress in the basement so he could be in the shop when he got up.” Part of Tony’s success as a barber lay in the fact that he ran a tight ship. “Everything was by the book,” said Moni- ca, who worked for a while as a cosmetologist in the shop’s basement before the couple opened a second shop, Just for You, which caters to both men and women, in North Philadelphia. “Everything had to be sanitized, all of the blades had to be up to code,” Monica said.


“He said your haircut is like your signature,” ex- plained Joseph Rutedge. He began working at the shop in 1994. “He made me a better barber,” Rutedge said, adding that in order to work one’s own chair in the shop, “they


had to know how to cut both white and black hair.” And Rutledge, unlike James or Burton, did not re- ceive the privilege of working at his own chair for several years. As Rutedge explained it, he began his career at Just For Men, shortly after gradu- ating from barber school. “At first, I did all of the dirty work,” said Rutedge. That included sweeping the floor, washing the towels and wiping down the corners. “You have to obtain experi- ence, and then you move up.” After a while, Rutedge began cutting hair in the basement when the shop grew crowd- ed. But eventually, Rutedge worked his way up into the third barber chair. Tony used the same model of learning to work from the ground-up on his son Anthony Jr. “My dad had me coming in here since 2002,” said Anthony Jr. Like Rutedge, Anthony Jr. did the grunt work. “He wanted me to learn how to work hard because I will own this bar- bershop one-day,” explained Anthony Jr. But Tony Rodriguez was not all work and no play. Not by a long shot. My dad was a prankster. He was silly,” said Anthony Jr.


Take the time he gave Rutedge a stack of flyers to distribute on one of the hot- test days of the summer. “I spent the whole day giving out flyers on Baltimore and Woodland Ave,” Rutedge ex- plained. “When I came back, Tony had reprinted them. He pretended like I hadn’t already distributed them. He said ‘you’re a lazy bum,’ be- fore he started cracking up,” Rutedge relayed. Another time, Tony, James and Rutedge were sitting on the bench in front of the shop. “Business was slow that day,” Rutledge explained. “And a guy walked by and asked us if we worked at the barber- shop.” According to Rutedge,


Tony sarcastically quipped, “No. We’re waiting for the bus.”


For Roger Harman, who


wrote to the UC Review earlier this fall regarding his memories of Tony, “getting a haircut from him [was] always an entertaining ad- venture. He had a saucy, politically-incorrect sense of humor and I always left his place with a nice haircut and lots of new material.” “We were always the


best of friends. We kept each other going,” James said


from the barbers shop. “We wanted to grow old together. He was more than my broth- er. We worked together for so long. He would give you anything.”


Everyone close to Tony


still remains stunned when it comes to his sudden death. In the last fifteen years of his life, Tony be- came dedicated towards a healthy lifestyle, Monica explained. According to Monica, this occurred after a doctor told him in 1996 that if he didn’t have a bypass surgery, he would die in a month. But Tony decided against the surgery and changed his life instead. Rutedge remembers him saying, “They wanted me to have that surgery 15 years ago and I’m still here.” But by last year, “Tony knew he had to have the surgery,” Monica said. “It was scheduled for August 2nd. He died on July 31st.” To keep Tony’s memory alive, Monica her children Anthony Jr., Bianca, Walid as well as Ronald James and Joseph Rutedge, plan to do everything in their power to keep the barbershop alive and thriving. For more in- formation on Just For Men, please call 215-386-4581.


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