One shop.
Many hands.

A barbershop is not a logo. It is a line of chairs and the people who stand behind them long enough that customers stop explaining what they want. When DCist visited in May 2019, Tony Puglisi was finishing a cut in the back while the room filled with chatter and hair on the floor. Asked for the secret to a good haircut, he did not invent a manifesto. “Just listening to people,” he said. “If they ask for a certain style or way they want [their hair], do it the way they want.”

That ethic is why the barbers sound less like staff and more like family. “We’re family. You know, they are like my own boys,” Tony told DCist when asked how he inspired loyalty. WJLA heard the succession version months later: he was giving them part of the business. Eventually they would take over. He still did not want to retire.

Four of the people DCist met that spring still stand behind these chairs.

Craft here is not a menu of invented package names. It is classic cuts, walk-ins, cash on the counter, a straight razor on the neck when the chair calls for it, and the patience to fix a bad cut someone else left behind — José especially. Prices have climbed the way prices do: $1.50 in 1960, about $40 today. There is no laminated menu. Bring cash and ask the chair.

The shop speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian. Bring a photo of what you want, be specific, and be patient. The immigrant roster is how Tony hired people who already understood the trade as inheritance.

Quotes from DCist (2019), WJLA (2019) and The GW Hatchet, linked on the Press page.