![]() ![]() ![]() "I didn't picture myself as a barber." But brother Wayne, nine years older, had already started barbering. haircut with Levis and motorcycle boots," Garry said. Both ended up cutting hair early on, Garry at 17. Wayne and Garry Oster grew up in Cumberland in Western Maryland and came to Baltimore to seek their fortunes in their teens. Garry also cuts what he calls a "Caucasian fade," a "high 'n' tight" design "that a lot of white kids like, especially football players and Marines." High-top fades are popular with black youths, who often ask Garry or Wayne to inscribe letters, numbers and arrows on the close-shaved sides of their heads. But there are other newer styles: mushrooms, skateboards, fades. There's a lot more fancy hairstyles now."Ĭrew cuts and flattops are coming back too, Garry said. Things haven't changed much, Wayne said, "except the styles. "I came here when I was in the fourth grade," said George Eaton, who dropped by recently while his sons, Clifton, 9, and Raymond, 6, got their locks lopped. Garry and Wayne are now into their second generation of customers: children of parents whose hair they started cutting a quarter of a century ago. "Cutting hair is cutting hair," Garry said.Īnd the customers keep coming back - children and adults, men and women, blacks and whites. But that hasn't had much impact on Garry and Wayne. They've become surrounded by trendy new stores such as the Gap and TCBY in the recently refurbished Belvedere Square shopping center. Wayne, 53, and his brother, Garry, 44, have been cutting hair for almost 60 years between them, most of those years in their present shop tucked in a corner of a Hess Shoes store off busy York Road in north Baltimore. Take a gander? When's the last time you heard that phrase inside the Capital Beltway? And when he's finished cutting, Wayne Oster holds up a mirror to the customer's face and says with ritual regularity. The basics also include the idlest conversation: weather, Orioles, gardening, auto mechanics, fishing. The basic price: $6, "and throw in a beard and mustache trim," Garry said. Two swivel chairs, a rack of dog-eared magazines, green counters and easy, neighborly chitchat, circa 1950. ![]() BALTIMORE - Stepping into Wayne and Garry Oster's barbershop is stepping into a time warp, Baltimore-style. ![]()
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