A Northeast cornerstone: Phil Holinger, who’ll turn 80 on Sept. 4, gives one of his regular customers, Pat Foy, a trim. MARIA S. YOUNG / TIMES PHOTO
Phil Holinger recalls working at a machine shop, making $1.68 an hour.
Holinger, then 21, approached his boss about a boost in salary.
“I asked for a nickel raise. He said, ‘No. I can hire somebody tomorrow at the same price,’” he recalled.
The young man told the story to his dad, Konrad, who owned a barber shop at 4th Street and Nedro Avenue.
“He told me, ‘If you become a barber, you’ll never be out of work,’” Phil remembered.
Holinger took his dad up on his advice, enrolling in 1956 at the old Philadelphia Institute of Barbering.
In those early days, he worked as an apprentice, which guaranteed him $50 for 50 hours of work a week. At the first shop he worked in, at Front and York streets, haircuts cost 90 cents.
Later, he worked in shops in Croydon, Oxford Circle, Lawncrest, Fox Chase, Feasterville, Elkins Park and Olney, often filling in for barbers who were on vacation.
In 1958, he was drafted in the U.S. Army, where he spent two years. After his service, he worked from 1960–65 at a barber shop at Tabor Road and Howard Street in Olney.
In 1965, he learned of an opportunity to purchase his own shop. Leon’s Barber Shop, at 966 Granite St. (at Loretto Avenue), was for sale.
Holinger bought the business and opened on June 20, 1965, a time when he was one of seven barber shops in the small territory bounded by the Boulevard to Langdon Street, and Pratt Street to Oxford Avenue.
The demographics in Summerdale and Oxford Circle have changed drastically in the last 50 years, chasing most of the customers of those barber shops to other neighborhoods and the suburbs.
Phil’s Barber Shop, though, remains open.
“They all closed. I’m the last one standing,” he said.
Phil Holinger never envisioned cutting hair at the same barber shop in Northeast Philly for 50 years when he was a kid.
An ethnic German born in Serbia, he and his family came to the United States in 1952 as “displaced persons.” The Holingers took a ship to New York, and Konrad Holinger worked in a factory in Bridgeton, New Jersey for a year.
In 1953, the Holingers joined relatives in Philadelphia. They lived in a home near 5th and Cambria streets in West Kensington before settling in a house at 144 W. Olney Ave.
Phil Holinger, whose early jobs included inspecting eggs and feeding chickens on a farm, attended night school at the old Northeast High School, at 8th Street and Lehigh Avenue, and later at Olney High.
After settling into his career as a barber, he and his wife Kathrina, also an ethnic German born in Serbia, bought a home on Montour Street in Lawndale. They raised two children, Kim and Bruce.
Today, Holinger, 79, and his wife live in Upper Southampton. They have two grandchildren.
Phil’s Barber Shop has changed a little over the years. Smoking isn’t allowed anymore, for instance.
Yet, the shop remains old school in many ways. The first dollar Hollinger made — cuts were two bucks when he first opened — is tucked inside the ownership plaque hanging on the wall. The mirrors and cabinets are from the first day in 1965. The chair arrived in ’68. A small color TV from the 1960s is mounted on a wall.
Holinger hasn’t raised his prices since “retiring” in 2000. It’s $9 for kids, $10 for retired men and $11 for working men and high school students. He’s long taken a mere 15-minute lunch break in the early afternoon.
A red, white and blue barber pole stands just outside the front entrance. The pole, though, spins only two days a week nowadays. Phil’s is open Fridays and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Since 2000, Holinger has cut his schedule to four days, then three and now two.
“The neighborhood changed. I didn’t have enough business,” he explained.
Over the years, of course, the shop was open five days a week, with brisk business, except for a time in the late 1960s.
“The Beatles came here in ’64. I came in ’65. Long hair became fashionable. Business dropped 40 percent,” he said of the popularity of the long-haired Fab Four.
Many of the customers were neighborhood men and boys who attended St. Martin of Tours Elementary School and played sports for Summerdale Boys Club.
“There were so many kids here. There were 50, 60 kids on one block,” Holinger recalled. “When short hair came back, I had more business than I could handle.”
Usually, leading up to the first day of school, there would be 15 kids waiting in the small shop.
“St. Martin’s used to have over 2,000 students,” he said.
The veteran barber’s most loyal customer is a man named Joe, who has been going to Holinger since his days working on Tabor Road. Another man named Dan has been a 50-year customer of the Granite Street shop.
So, who cuts Holinger’s hair? At one time, it was his dad. Then it was a man named Frank, an old barber school buddy who owned a shop at Cheltenham Avenue and Horrocks Street. Now, he goes to a former colleague’s daughter at her Warminster shop.
Holinger, who’ll turn 80 on Sept. 4, is enjoying himself. For the first time, he’s been able to take two weeks vacation.
And, like his dad said so many years ago, becoming a barber has meant he’s never been on the unemployment line.
“It went fast. I can’t believe time goes so fast. The older you get, the faster it goes,” he said of his 50 years at the same shop. “I like coming here. I like to be active. I like to keep busy. I don’t like to sit too long.”
Holinger is grateful for the neighborhood guys who still patronize his shop and the onetime Summerdale and Oxford Circle men who trek back to Phil’s.
“People have become friends. I’ve known them 30, 40, 50 years,” he said. “A lot of them still come back. Seventy-five percent of my customers have moved but still come back. I’m glad people still come back.” ••
Still going strong: Phil Holinger purchased his barber shop at 966 Granite St. on June 20, 1965. He’s worked more than a half-century at the shop, which remains open on Fridays and Saturdays. MARIA S. YOUNG / TIMES PHOTO
