The 254 customers at Noggins Barbershop in downtown Tacoma agree on one thing: It’s not about the hair.
Yes, the lawyers, moneymen, politicians and longshoremen say, the haircuts are always exactly what they want. But they come to Brooke Upton’s hideaway shop at 1129 Broadway because she gives them exactly the ear, the perspective, the challenge or the comfort they need.
Now, after 21 years, she is leaving them, and they are bereft.
These powerful men, and five women, are coming in for their last haircuts from Upton, and feeling oddly powerless.
In a harrowing battle five years ago, Upton fought off breast cancer. Now the cancer’s back, attacking her pelvic bones.
During the first struggle, Upton’s beloved clients helped save her.
“You guys have been a major support,” she told her friend Wayne Mannie, senior vice president at Columbia Bank. “When I went through chemo and radiation, I would drag myself to work with no hair and no eyebrows, and I couldn’t wear a wig. You gave me physical, financial and spiritual support.”
She was a single mother, and her friends at Russell Investments took up a collection that made it possible for her to stay home on days when she was too sick to work.
They were relentlessly positive, and, because they were her friends, they always saw her as beautiful.
“I didn’t know how bad I was until a kid came in,” Upton said. “They can’t hide anything.”
And now it’s back.
Three months ago, when the standing was too much, she bought a saddle-shaped stool on wheels, and a pair of red cowgirl boots. She figured if the boots caught customers’ attention, they wouldn’t notice the stool.
It was just a way to buy time for farewells.
To keep the shop, to stand all day cutting hair, would kill her, and she is determined to live.
“I am ready to rest,” she said. “I believe that if I can rest, I can get into remission.”
Upton, 50, believes that if she can hike in the mountains, fish in Montana, walk with her dog, work out at the Y, tend her garden in Summit, and spend time with her two adult children and her husband of a year, she can live.
“She really believes in that inner self and strength,” Mannie said. “She draws on that in times of need. I’ve admired her ability to draw on that.”
In the same way, he’s admired her ability to draw on the civic power of her clients for the community’s sake.
“She’ll share their perspectives with you. We’re always learning,” he said of his time in her chair. “That’s part of the gift that she gives us.”
Then there is the personal part, the privilege of her ear and her thoughts.
When some clients, such as Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor, come in for a haircut, the conversation goes deep as soon as they’re settled in the chair.
Some kid her the way they would their male friends, and she considers that an honor. If they go overboard, she whaps them on the back of the head with her comb.
A few have lost the line that respect draws between bravado and coarseness.
“I’ve ejected two people from my chair,” Upton said. “One made a very inappropriate comment. I asked him to stop, and he just kept going. I picked up the hair off the floor, put it down his back and told him to leave and not come back.”
For peace of mind, Upton has put her affairs in order, and now intends to aim everything she is and has at demolishing the cancer. Her last day at work is Thursday.
She was thinking about just closing down when a customer suggested she put the shop on the online classified site Craigslist.
“I got a lot of creepy callers,” she told Anthony Keen, a math teacher.
“Then I heard from Kelly Bosley. She said to bring my last three years of tax returns, and I knew she was for real.”
Upton bought a Rolodex for Bosley. There’s a card for every customer, with name, contact info and exactly how the 249 men and five women trust her to cut their hair.
It’s a sign of that trust that when they’re in her chair, they look out the window, not in the mirror.
Upton told Keen he’ll like Bosley. She’s quick-witted, able to hold her own in a sparring conversation.
She’s seen her cut hair, too, at Rudy’s in Seattle’s Belltown.
“She’s good,” Upton told Keen.
“I don’t come here for a haircut,” he replied.
“You are much more than a haircut,” she replied back.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street
