February 7–13, 2020 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 11
THE FINAL CUT
Slope’s oldest barbershop closes after 100 years
Proposed tower sparks debate in W’Terrace
It’s time to take care.
Become a patient today:
acpny.com/welcome
1-877-696-5538
CARING FOR THE WHOLE YOU.
Photo by Courtesy Fiumefreddo Family
You have one body. Your vehicle for this lifetime.
A simple reminder: Take care of your one body, head to toe, heart
and soul. Because regular care leads to better health outcomes.
That’s why at AdvantageCare Physicians, we believe in caring for
the whole you.
We get to know you: Your family health history, what your diet’s
like, what kind of support system you have. This helps us build a
complete picture of your health.
Of you.
And we connect the dots in your health journey.
Big things, like managing a chronic condition or helping you
find the right specialist.
And everyday things, like reminding you about a routine screening,
answering a question, or helping you get a prescription refilled.
All the things that contribute to whole-you health.
All in one place.
We’ve created a home for your health. A place where
you’re known.
Now all we’re missing is you. Join us.
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
In sunny 1903, Maurice
Garin won the inaugural Tour
de France, Prussia became the
first nation to require mandatory
drivers licenses, the original
Teddy bear was exhibited
at the Leipzig Toy Fair,
and a new business debuted
on Seventh Avenue — Park
Slope Barber.
The newly opened barbershop
would go on to become
one of the neighborhood’s
oldest continuously
operated businesses, weathering
recessions, changing
fashions, and radical demographic
shifts, as time
worked its magic around a
business that changed very
little over the years. Customers
were still seated in antique
leather barber chairs
and accepted change from a
100-year-old brass cash register,
although one ancient
appliance, used to heat up
towels, sat unused in recent
decades — the Health Department
banned them in the
1960s after they found barbers
were using them to keep
their sandwiches warm.
That all changed last
month, however, when the
business’s sole remaining proprietor,
one of three brothers
who once labored together
over an uncountable legion
of shaggy mops, found himself
cutting hair without his
siblings’ company, and decided
it was time to hang up
his shears.
“I always felt it was my
brother’s place,” said John Fiumefreddo,
74, who worked
in the shop for over 50 years.
“Being there by myself, I just
got these feelings.”
The Fiumefreddo brothers
— including Angelo Fiumefreddo,
who passed away
two years ago at the age of 79,
and Vito Fiumefreddo, who
retired to Florida five years
ago — inherited the barbershop
from their father, who
purchased the storefront in
1948, before leaving it to Angelo
in the wake of his own retirement.
The barbershop had
first opened 45 years earlier,
although you wouldn’t know it
by the awning, which declared
its opening as 1904, nor by
the painting in the window,
which advertised its opening
date as 1906.
“The guy made a mistake
and we said ‘well what’s the
difference,'” said Fiumefreddo.
Even before taking up their
(Above) John Fiumefreddo
(front) works from his
usual chair towards the
back of the shop. (Left)
The brothers at work.
Courtest Fiumefreddo family.
Angelo Fiumefreddo works on a customer.
Courtesy Fiumefreddo family
father’s mantle, the Fiumefreddo
brothers, who grew
up down the block from Park
Slope Barber’s storefront
between Third and Fourth
streets, labored there as
teens, and remained young
men when the great barberdepression
of the 1960s — the
hippie movement — swept the
nation, leading impressionable
young men to eschew
buzz cuts in favor of wild,
unkempt manes.
The siblings didn’t favor
the stylings of the countercultural
movement themselves
— John Fiumefreddo
described it as “sloppy” — but
the barber credits their relative
youth as compared to the
owners of more old-fashioned
barbershops for their ability
to weather the dwindling demands
for a trim.
And as many older barbers
shuttered, the Fiumefreddos
adapted, embracing
this newfangled idea of
a “unisex salon,” according
to John Fiumefreddo, who
said the Park Slope Barber
attracted its fair share of female
customers despite the
shop’s no-frills style.
“We even did a few permanents,
but those were far and
few between,” he said.
Of course, the hippie
movement didn’t last forever,
and after cutting hair for 50
years, Fiumefreddo claims a
modicum of perspective on
the evolution of men’s hairstyles,
which he says are cyclical
in nature.
“What goes around comes
around,” he said. “Right now
you have a lot of hairstyles
similar to those in the thirties
and forties, where it’s short
and neat on the sides and longer
on top.”
From their perch in the
heart of Park Slope, the barbers
were front-row spectators
to the phenomenon of gentrification,
watching as a working
class enclave transformed
into the bougie, stroller capital
of Brooklyn, stripping out
some of the area’s character
in the process, according to
John Fiumefreddo.
“When I was there it was
a neighborhood, now it’s just
a place to come to,” he said.
“It doesn’t have that neighborhood
feel anymore.”
But even as the neighborhood
changed, Park Slope
Barber remained much the
same. Many of the same old
regulars continued to crowd
into the shop — even if they
didn’t need a trim — and local
musicians occasionally
hauled their guitars in to share
a tune, Fiumefreddo said.
And while the barbershop
is closed today, Fiumefreddo
says there are some
rumblings within the family
that a younger relative may
take the reins, but as of now,
nothing is certain other than
his retirement.
“You never know, it might
come back again,” he said.
“It would be nice.”
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
Residents are furious over
a baptist church’s scheme to
build a 13-story building in
Windsor Terrace, saying the
proposal would forever alter
the fabric of the neighborhood.
“You guys have got to be on
crack if you think that’s what
this neighborhood looks like,”
said Mark Duffin at a rezoning
hearing on Thursday.
The International Baptist
Church is partnering with
JEMB Realty to rezone and
redevelop the lot a 312 Coney
Island Avenue — where
a bulky four-story brick building
currently houses a house of
worship, a school, and a large
parking lot.
Under the current zoning
laws, the church could turn
the property into a 17-story
hotel, with space for a medical
office, community facility,
and church elsewhere in
the building — but the organization
feels that a residential
apartment building would
be better suited for the sleepy
residential neighborhood, according
to the developer’s lawyer.
In addition to a new church,
the proposed residential project
would contain 278 units, with
70 permanently designated as
so-called “affordable” — offered
between $856 a month
for a studio and $1,504 for a
three-bedroom.
The apartment tower would
also be home to an 80 car parking
garage that would provide
spaces for churchgoers,
140 bike parking spaces,
and ground-floor retail storefronts.
At 13 stories, the building
would top out at 145 feet with
a 15- to 20-foot bulkhead, reps
for the developers said — but
that stands in stark contrast to
the rest of the neighborhood,
where most buildings top out
at six or seven stories.
At the rezoning meeting,
locals worried that the influx
of housing units would lead
to an increase of traffic during
rush hour, piled garbage
on the street during collection
days, and accelerated gentrification.
“I’m a single mom, I’m a
teacher. I can barely afford to
live in Brooklyn anymore. I’ve
been chased from neighborhood
to neighborhood,” said
Dannette Plagge, who lives
across the street from the proposed
site. “I look at this proposal
and I think what — do
I have to go back to the midwest
where I came?”
Others countered, arguing
that the solution to skyrocketing
prices in the area — where
the formerly majority working
class population has left,
and an influx of young professionals
has settled in — is
to increase building.
“People will move to apartments
that are affordable —
and if they are not moving into
new apartments they are moving
into apartments that already
exist,” said Charles
Mangiardi, a Caton Place
resident, who echoed a sentiment
backed up by urban
studies. “That’s what drives
up the cost of rent.”
If the city doesn’t promote
construction of new housing,
then the old-guard of the neighborhood
will be pushed out,
said Mangiardi.
“The buildings might
look the same, but the people
in them are not going to
look the same if we don’t build
more,” he said.
The proposed development on Coney Island Avenue
that the rezoning would allow.
Photo by Renderings by FXcollaborative
/www.BrooklynPaper.com
/www.BrooklynPaper.com
/welcome