Western Pa. hair salons make the cut on latest covid restrictions - TribLIVE

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Becky Goodwin was on “pins and needles all week.”

The owner of Tula Organic Salon & Spa in Squirrel Hill was worried about Gov. Tom Wolf ordering another shutdown.

Goodwin’s business, along with other salons and barber shops in the state, was ordered closed for three months between March and June. She dreaded the thought of going through it all again.

But on Thursday afternoon, while the governor was ordering the closure of restaurants, bars and high school sports until Jan. 4, he gave her and other salon owners a reprieve.

Why would hair-cutting joints be allowed to remain open? State officials presented Meda Higa, an assistant professor of biology at York College. She referenced a case study of hair salons where masking kept people from contracting the coronavirus by stylists who had tested positive for covid-19.

“There were two infected and symptomatic hairstylists that ended up treating 139 clients between the two of them,” Higa said.

“They wore masks, their clients wore masks … properly over the nose and the mouth the entire time. Zero symptomatic cases were reported. And of the 67 clients that were tested, all of them ended up negative,” Higa said. “So, proper mask usage can work.”

At least partially on that basis, barbershops and salons were allowed to remain open in Pennsylvania.

While, for the most part, salon owners say they are happy, there is constant worry.

“We don’t know day to day if he’s going to shut us down. And we’re all doing safe things, we’re doing what we’re told,” Danielle Rotto, owner of Danielle’s Beauty Salon in Harrison, said Friday. “I’ve been open since June, and no one has gotten sick. I wear my mask constantly. All my hair dressers, we don’t all work together. I only have two in here at a time because we have to do everything six feet apart. It’s very stressful.”

Rotto said she received many phone calls and text messages from her customers following the governor’s announcement Thursday.

“They were so happy. People were praying for us,” Rotto said. “Especially over Christmas, this is our busy season. I feel so sorry for the bars and restaurant owners.”

Goodwin was relieved after Wolf’s announcement. Sort of.

“We are still in a very awkward position because, even though we weren’t directly ordered to close, the state is still in a stay-at-home advisory,” Goodwin said. “Should we have voluntarily closed for people’s safety? It still isn’t great, even though technically we’re allowed to be open.”

Jamie Henderson, who manages Comrades Barber Shop in Greensburg, said he feels somewhat conflicted about Wolf’s decision.

“Ultimately, I think that people have to make money. But we have to get (covid) under control,” Henderson said. “I’m kind of at a crossroads with it. I know that safety measures are important, but the suffering of our industry here — I mean, it’s just bad.”

No one knows that better than Kevin Andrews, owner of Bat’s Barber Shop in East Liberty, a shop in the heart of the area’s business district on Penn Avenue. When barbershops and salons were shut down earlier in the year, he came close to losing his business.

“We still had to pay rent and other things with no money coming in. It was a struggle,” Andrews said. “The business was in jeopardy. The building was sold the week before the pandemic hit, and I had no rapport with the new owners, so I was in between a rock and a hard place. They had no sympathy. It was just business as usual for them.”

Andrews survived on his savings but said he has depleted his reserves.

“That’s why I was so nervous this time. I can’t go through another (shutdown),” Andrews said. And like other barbershop and salon owners who spoke with the Tribune-Review, he believes he deserves to remain open, having done his utmost to follow safety protocols and maintain ultra sanitary conditions.

Tracy Ponderendolph owns Rambler Hair Design, a large salon on Route 136 near Hempfield High School. The salon has gained a reputation for being especially diligent about sanitation.

“I consider us to have a very clean salon,” Ponderendolph said. “We still ask the customers to call when they arrive. They need to wear a mask, and we do a temperature check at the front door.”

When clients come for nail services, the first thing they have to do is wash their hands for an allotted time, then their hands get sanitized before they get their nails done, Ponderendolph said. Plexiglas dividers have been put up between manicure tables, and employees are required to wipe down each chair between the clients’ use of them.

“The shampoo area is disinfected every time a client sits in that chair and at that sink. That area is wiped down before the next client can sit in there,” Ponderendolph said. “The receptionist and myself go through the salon several times a day wiping all the door handles down, the counter surfaces, the bathrooms, the phones. I don’t think we’ve left any stone unturned.”

But for some clients, all the precautions in the world are not enough. Sherry DiCristofaro, owner of Norwin Barber Shop in North Huntington, said there was a two-week blitz of customers who had waited some 90 days following last spring’s shutdown. But since then, she said business has really slowed down.

“It’s been very slow because people are afraid to come out,” DiCristofaro said. “They’re afraid to be here. I would say half of our clients have not been back since we’ve opened back up, and they probably won’t be back until there is some kind of relief from the virus.”

And yet, hair cutters like Henderson, the manger of Comrades, said despite all the misery the pandemic has brought, some good things have resulted from it — including what some might call the pandemic look.

“Prior to the pandemic, a lot of things that we did were short hair, comb-overs and things like that,” Henderson said. “When people just started letting their hair grow, they wanted the top of their hair to stay long.

“So it kind of ushered out a hairstyle, and now people are wearing mop tops and people who never grew beards are growing beards now. It’s an interesting time, because a pandemic changed hairstyles.”

Paul Guggenheimer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Paul at 724-226-7706 or pguggenheimer@triblive.com.

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