Like many local business corners, the intersection of Ball Road and Bloomfield Avenue has undergone many changes over the past 45 years. While the make-up of the corner has changed in many ways, there remains one constant: Gary’s Barber Stylist.
The small barber shop has survived for 45 years, and at the same location and under the same owner: Gary Helseth.
Due to the corner undergoing another change, Helseth decided to hang up his clippers and focus on enjoying the rest of his life. Chase Bank is converting the corner that is occupied by a restaurant, liquor store and other small shops and some of the businesses will be relocating or shutting down.
Helseth, 72, opened the shop in 1968 just about a year after getting his barber license. At that time, haircuts cost $1.60 at the cut rate shops and $1.75 if you went to a union barber, according to Mel Law, a friend of Helseth who works as a barber with him at the shop. Helseth lived in Long Beach at the time, but moved to Los Alamitos around the same time as he opened the shop. He said it seemed like a nice town in which to live and work.
“I thought if I got used to the area I might stay, so I’m still working on it,” Helseth said.
Helseth also married his wife Louise shortly before the two moved to Los Alamitos to start a family. They have three daughters, Kelly, Kim, Kerry and a son, Gary Jr. All four attended Los Alamitos High. Helseth said he has always been a big fan of Griffin sports and still is. While discussing his shop, the customer sitting in his chair getting a haircut happens to be Los Alamitos Mayor Warren Kusumoto.
It’s a Friday afternoon and Kusumoto will be attending his son’s basketball game later that night, when the Griffins play at Fountain Valley High. The two talk sports and as the conversation shifts to the shop, Kusumoto asks about the changes that the corner has seen in his time there.
Helseth says that pumpkin patches and Christmas tree lots used to spring up in the fall and across the street where a larger shopping center sits, the empty lot used to serve as a makeshift dump where people would illegally discard large items. When the lot was cleaned up a shopping center with an Alpha Beta market was built. That has now given way to a Ralph’s and other small shops.
And the Barber business has certainly seen its share of ups and downs. During the ‘60s and ‘70s, when more men were growing their hang long, Helseth went to school to get his real estate license to compensate for the drop in business. But the shop survived and Helseth said he has enjoyed his work and the people he has met.
Like many barbers shops, it was as much as a men’s club as it was a service business. Helseth said that only about half of the clientele made appointments. Most of the men simply stopped by and waited their turn.
There are various magazines to kill time or many simply took the time to chat with the men in the shop. And if you like sports, or golf or fishing, Helseth can keep you busy for a while. He is an avid fisherman and has taken trips to Mexico about once a year to fish for big game. His largest catch is pictured above his work station. It shows him standing with a 500-pound Blue Marlin caught in 1984 while fishing in the Sea of Cortez near Cabo San Lucas.
If you like golf, and especially golf stores, Helseth has plenty to share. Another wall in the shop contains framed bag tags from many courses in Southern California. While he plays mostly the Long Beach courses, he has played some of the best courses in the state. The one that he remembers most fondly is Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, California. Playing the famed 16thpar three over the ocean was one of his best golf experiences, Helseth said.
That is saying something for a guy who has had five holes-in-one during his playing time. And if you ask him his best score, he answers quickly that it was a two-under-par 70 at Recreation Course in Long Beach. He even remembers that it was April of 1982.
“I missed a six foot putt for a 69,” Helseth said.
Helseth said he was not likely to work more than a couple of more years, so the closing of his shop is not too rushed. He has not ruled out the possibility of renting a station at another shop in order to cut the hair of his several long-time clients. He said getting to know the people has been the best part of his job.
“It’s been a really good community,” Helseth said.
