Dateline Dixon: Barber shop abundance downtown

The Cutting Edge on Peoria Avenue is down the street from The Shaggy Edge. Head a block east of Stouffer’s Barber Shop on First Street and you’ll find Ken’s Barber Shop. You can find three salons on First, and three other barber shops on Hennepin Avenue.

Is this the Petunia City, or the city of spinning barber poles?

I set out Wednesday with one question on my mind: Why does downtown Dixon need so many people cutting hair? Not even the barbers seem to know the answer.

“You can only have so many liquor licenses in this town,” said Ken Masters, owner of Ken’s. “But you can have as many barber shops as you want.”

I measured a one-block radius. From Highland Avenue to Hennepin and the Rock River to Second Street, there are 10 shops and salons: Bill & Dick’s; Jay’s; Don’s; Dion’s & Derrick’s; Fusion Salon; Dreama’s Salon; and the aforementioned.

As a newbie, at first, I was all mixed up. in May I was supposed to write a story about Dion & Derrick’s. I stumbled into Don’s, which is, literally, the shop next door.

Kathleen Schultz, my editor, said concentrated business types aren’t that unusual. She pointed to Dixon and Rock Falls – two cities that have a high concentration of bars and taverns.

But the alcohol game is a different beast, I explained. If I’m going out for a night, I might want to hit up multiple bars. I may also decide to go out once or twice a week.

I need one haircut a month – if that. And, hopefully, I’d need only one barber in town to get the job done.

I visited several shop owners and discovered many of them have been downtown for decades. Ken’s, Don’s, Stouffer’s and Bill & Dick’s have been cutting Dixon hair for 50 years each.

Recently, said Stouffer’s owner Paul Stouffer, the hair salons have caught on. Back in the day, he said, barber shops were a “men’s only” club, and there weren’t many women cutting hair.

“Now lots of women are getting into the business,” he said.

Fusion co-owner Kami Lappin couldn’t put a finger on why there’s such a high volume. The downtown stylists she talks to are friendly, and there’s no bad blood from one shop to the next.

“Everybody has their own style,” she said. “Everybody has their own atmosphere. The barber shops, I think, are really great for a quick men’s cut. At salons we do a lot more women.”

That’s disappointing. I embarked on my investigation hoping there was a less gory Sweeney Todd plot under the surface. Revenge. Betrayal. A tangled tale of hair and histrionics.

Nothing to report, said Don’s owner Don Johnson. Everyone gets along, and they mind their businesses with pride and personal touch.

As for why the volume, Dick Dir, owner of Bill & Dick’s, has a theory.

“It’s the downtown,” he said. “It’s a boomin’ place to be.”