Ruthie's Neighborhood Barber Shop: The Art of the Straight Razor

Her hands are steady and controlled while she drags a straight razor down a man's scalp, wiping away hair with the ease of spreading butter on toast.

Just inside a storefront window on St. Marks Avenue on a Wednesday night, three customers sit on wooden benches, which the barber made her self, at Ruthie's Neighborhood Barber Shop.

The patrons wait patiently while talking with the owner, Ruthie Boirie, about their shared Buddhist beliefs-- how human relationships are all about heart to heart connection, how life boils down to love, and how important it is to support one another through struggle. All the while, Ruthie is shaving a high and tight into a patron's head with a straight razor-- the same haircut she has given him for the past 25 years.

"Cutting hair with a straight razor is a skill, it's an art of fades and blends," Boirie said while in her shop just off Sixth Avenue, which she has owned now for 17 years.

James, the patron who was getting a high and tight and works as a police officer in Queens, finished Boirie's thought:

"It's like taking a chisel to a stone block, and an hour later you have a sculpture," he said, explaining that Boirie is the only barber he has let cut his hair for the past quarter of a century. "It's a lost art, but Ruthie hasn't lost it."

But another aspect of the straight razor, James said, is its intimacy.

"Getting your hair cut is a personal, intimate thing and Ruthie makes you comfortable. That's why we all keep coming back," James said, explaining that he first met Boirie when she worked at Jake's Barber Shop on the corner of Washington Avenue and Bergen Street in 1987. "I can only describe her as phenomenal."

Boirie, who is a 65-year-old woman who has been practicing Buddhism for 32 years and is also a self-taught carpenter, learned the barber craft from "Mr. Jake" at his shop in the late 1980s.

"Jake taught me how to cut hair, how to shave and all the techniques to cut all types of hair," she said, adding that he also helped her get her barber's license. "Before he passed away in 1987 he said, 'Ruthie, you'll own your own barber shop one day.'"

And one day after "Mr. Jake" passed, Boirie heard his voice: "'Open your own shop, Ruthie. It's time,'" she remembered his voice reverberating in her head.

So, she walked around Park Slope praying and chanting a Buddhist montra, "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo" and she found her storefront. And she's been there ever since, almost two decades later.

Ruthie's Barber Shop, 66 St. Marks Avenue, 718-857-1594.