Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Casey.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Michael. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
When I was twelve my father came home with some rickety clippers complaining that he was tired of my brother and I wasting his money at the barbershop. He exclaimed that he was going to cut our hair himself and after he gave my brother a chili bowl haircut, I elected to try my hand at cutting my own hair. The next day at school no one ridiculed me for looking crazy and this gave me the confidence to continue cutting myself, to start cutting my brothers, cousins, neighbors and eventually my dad. I went to barber school at 16 and my Indianapolis public high school teachers allowed me to bring clippers to class and cut hair in the back of the classroom while they were lecturing. After assigning the class thirty pages to read, the teachers hopped in the makeshift barber chair warning that if the principal walked in I was solely responsible. After graduating Barber School, I began cutting in a local barbershop within walking distance from my parents’ house. Earning enough money now to regularly take my girlfriend on dates infuriated my Jehovah’s Witness parents who didn’t like that I was evolving into a Billy D Williams Casanova and they promptly kicked me out of the house just shy of my 18th birthday.
The stakes became higher living on my own at 17 having to pay $350 rent for my furnished studio seemed expensive for an adolescent in 1996 even though the $12 I was charging for haircuts as a licensed barber was a far cry from the $5 a cut I was making in the classrooms. The profession became good to me as I grew to be known as the barber who gave the meanest fade and gave the best hairline in the city. I married my girlfriend at 22 years old and told her she never had to work because my clippers earned enough for the both of us. Feeling like I wanted a more admirable career, I became a firefighter a few years later, but continued to cut hair on my off days and in the fire truck bay at the fire station. After realizing that I was making twice as much money cutting hair in three days than I was fighting fires in two weeks I found admiration in leaving the department and going full time in my own barbershop that I opened called Urban Masterpiece. Even though I was the Public Information Officer for the fire department and received medals for saving lives, I got more gratification out being a public servant to the psychological needs of my African American patrons, informing them so that they made astute life decisions. The Jehovah’s Witness religion under-served my visions of grandeur. I became a political figure when my college sent me to the 2008 inauguration to speak live on CSpan to its CEO about the tribulations of being a black man in power and this perturbed my Jehovah’s Witness wife. Finding no support for my endeavors, my wife and I went our separate ways and the religion ousted me, so I sold my Indianapolis barbershop and moved to Los Angeles to spread my wings.
Knowing no one at all in the city, I passed out cards every day at the Beverly Center mall until they kicked me out for soliciting. I would do the same at The Grove and the Target Plaza on LaBrea building a sizable clientele in a matter of approximately five months. Meanwhile, the friend I moved in with in Valencia, who I knew from Indianapolis, put me out of his condo believing me to be the despot my wife painted me out to be. So, while amassing clientele and learning the temperament of a new city, I was forced to live in my car, showering at the gym, until I saved up the money to rent half of a bedroom in Culver City. My reputation now preceding me, I accrued return business routinely and my personality, always being infectious, granted me the opportunity to ingratiate patrons with a story or a witty joke. At the junction when my clientele was supposed to go from sizable to abundant, the shop was shut down for contractual noncompliance, moving me to a beauty shop across the street and eventually to another barbershop on Melrose. This shop too would get shut down for contractual noncompliance causing me to question whether the additional customer base that I acquired would continue to follow me on my unlucky professional expeditions. I tried one more shop that was neither audacious nor hipster, this one was exclusive. However, I discovered that my ebullience, zeal and wackiness couldn’t be out shined by glistening chandeliers and couldn’t be caged by enveloping drapes, so I decided to rent a commercial unit in the back upstairs of a building on LaBrea and 4th.
I called the barbershop The Loft LaBrea and that 500 square foot space became home to an Afro/Cuban, Zanzibar Moroccan themed dojo for hair cutting. In two years, I showed a myriad of people every classic black movie they had never heard of while saving enough money to open the shop of my dreams, The Funhouse Barbershop. My life’s trajectory has always felt to me like the Michael Jackson “Leave Me Alone” video and Pee Wee’s Playhouse, mixed with a little Alice in Wonderland and Fat Albert. The images of these having been seared in my unconscious mind for decades led me to one conclusion when I saw the blank canvas that was the gutted out colorless cavern that I rented on LaBrea, two blocks from Melrose, I must erect a Fun-house to symbolize the festive outlandishness of the black barbershop. Since it is the sanctum of our peculiar ideology and abstract boisterousness, I understood that The Funhouse is the perfect representation of the black barbershop.
The peaks and valleys of my life have felt so otherworldly and extraordinary that I’ve always imagined a funhouse being my haven from the madness. A place that is intentionally more ridiculous than the lunacy of real African American life. I can see on the faces of the patrons that come in the shop that they share this same feeling. When you walk into the shop you are transported to a place beyond the craziness of life’s struggle and are made comfortable being your oddest most eccentric self. From the cabaret decorated wallpaper to the black-sploitation heavenly rapture murals above, to the wacky floor and stair tile, the inimitable funhouse mirrors and the haunting taxidermy on the walls every inch of the shop teleports you to a bizarre coziness. The iconic and noteworthy black movies that are always playing are a staple, so the conversation is always rich and obtuse because the fusion blackness and wackiness is so surreal. It is the only barbershop of its kind, customers love it, movie location scouts flock to it and passerby’s faun over it. It comes from the mind of the one who has seen life and barbering as a colorful conundrum, Michael Elton Casey.
Has it been a smooth road?
The most arduous struggle in the pursuit of striving to create a brand-able/franchise-able barbershop that is adroitly unique is eradicating the doubt that that constructs the box you think outside of. When I decided that I wanted to erect a funhouse, I had to reconfigure the logic in my head that asked if people would find the concept inviting in a barbershop. Being that is the only one of its kind, I struggled pondering whether the figurines, or the taxidermy would be too bizarre for the average patron. I concluded that if I curated a feeling and not an exhibit I would be able to appeal to the pleasure center in their brain instead of the part of their mind where skepticism dwells. The other challenge was deciding whether dumping the largest sum of money I had ever saved would be a yielding investment in a barbershop, when so many around me were living off their savings while pursuing Hollywood endeavors full time. To my surprise, many of my industry clients commented that the world I created and the emotions I affect through The Funhouse are more poignant than the affect that a movie or TV show can have on a viewer. Lastly, I had to think critically about fusing outlandish and unbridled black barbershop culture with the Hasidic Jewish culture in the neighborhood they so graciously allowed me to move into. I didn’t want to compromise the customarily rich black ambiance I’d cultivated by toning down the colorfulness of our joviality. Pleasantly, the Hasidic Jews find our merrymaking almost as entertaining as we do.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with The Funhouse Barbershop – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The Funhouse Barbershop specializes in fading, geometric shaping and sponge gradient defining. This means that we give the best blends in the city, we shape the top as boxes, ramps, Gumby’s, mohawks, afros and stair steps and we make the fade on a sponge cut sexy! We are known for the masterful precision we implement into each haircut and the definition we give to hairlines and beard shapes. But what most relish about coming, outside of the cut, is sitting down and watching a classic black movie and delving into the famous and infamous conversations we embark upon while engaging in call and response comedy routines simultaneously. As a company, I am most proud of the fact that The Funhouse is the only barbershop in the world that is nestled in the heart of a Hasidic Jewish community and they embrace, patronize and reciprocate cultural sensibilities with us daily. What sets The Funhouse apart from other shops is that we hold philanthropic events for at risk teens, forgotten black actor award ceremonies, movie screenings, book signings and costume contests year-round. No other shop takes such an authentic interest in its extended community.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
What I like best about Los Angeles is that no matter how wacky I intentionally tried to make the aesthetic of The Funhouse, there is always someone wackier walking past the double doors going to or from Melrose! It keeps my imagination in constant rejuvenation. What I like least about Los Angeles is that it is sensory overload. A person, such as myself, who has keen sensory perception stays taxed from the strain the video game-like adventuresome this Los Angles disco tech places on my perception.
Contact Info:
- Address: 524 North La Brea Avenue
Los Angeles CA 90036 - Website: www.thefunhousebarbershop.com
- Phone: 3233773011
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @thefunhousehaircuts
- Facebook: @thefunhousehaircuts
- Yelp: The Funhouse Barbershop
Image Credit:
Trevante Rhodes
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