Brooklyn's Pay-What-You-Wish Barber Wants You to Be Yourself!
Plus! Pringles and Reddi-wip!! Park bench dedications!!!
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #156 of CAFÉ ANNE!
Oh boy. Last week’s story about getting an AI robot massage generated a lot of fun comments. My favorite was an exchange that ensued after reader Elise noted my misnaming of the trapezius muscle:
“Hehe where’s the trapezoid located?” she wrote.
The response, from Rob S. in Fort Greene: “I think it's just below your quadrilaterals.”
The passage provoking the most comments pertained to the Hasidic man I spotted in the spa lounge dining on champagne, a can of kosher potato crisps and a canister of whipped cream. “I didn't know bringing chips and whipped cream to a spa was even an option! Some people really are out there just living on a whole other level,” wrote Eden in Brooklyn.
So of course I had to try the treat for myself. I don’t drink champagne, as I’m sober, but I did get myself to the Foodtown to buy a tin of Pringles and a can of Reddi-wip. I arranged the chips on a plate, applied a puff of whipped cream to each and popped them into my mouth whole.
Reader, it’s not a bad combo! Salty and sweet, creamy and crisp. Sort of a poor man’s cannoli.
This gave me an an idea. I’ve been wanting to spend a day as a NYC street vendor and write about the experience. I thought it’d be fun to sell hard boiled eggs. The plan was to sell eggs decorated with silver stars for 50¢ and eggs with gold stars for $1. Then eggflation came along and killed the whole concept. The capital outlay is just too steep.
But now I’m thinking: chips-n-whip! This might be the perfect creation to sell on the street. All I need is a great name for the confection so my snack stand will go viral. Please leave your suggestions in the comments!
In other news, huge shoutouts to new paid subscribers Valentona R. and Deborah. As you’ll recall, I’m aiming to reach 450 paids by the end of the quarter. As an incentive, everyone who subscribes by March 30 gets a bench dedicated to them on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Valentina and Deborah, here are your benches!
I am, of course, every excited for this week’s issue. We’ve got a profile of Greg Purnell, the Brooklyn barber who will cut your hair for free—even if you’re filthy rich! I’ve seldom felt so inspired by someone’s story. Please enjoy.
Regards!
Anne
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PROFILE
Brooklyn’s Pay-What-You-Wish Barber Wants You to Be Yourself!
I've been wanting to meet Greg Purnell for a while. He's known as the Brooklyn barber who travels around the city giving free cuts at schools and shelters. But when I had the opportunity to visit him at his studio in Brownsville last week, I learned there's a whole lot more to the story.
He doesn’t just give free cuts to those in need. His entire business is pay-what-you-wish. That applies to every client who visits his studio, rich or poor!
He showed me how it works. After he cuts your hair, he asks you to leave a donation in the drawer of the cash register to the left of his barber chair.
"This is the drawer," he said pressing a button on the vintage metal register. It popped open with a loud "ka-ching!"
"What's the range of what people decide to pay you?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Greg. "I don't even know what most people give me."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"They just walk up to the register and put whatever in it," he said. "I don't count it. I don't know what's in there. At the end of the day, whatever's in there is in there."
"Well," I said, "That's the damndest thing I've ever heard in my whole life."
And reader, he's been operating like this for 13 years!
Greg's studio, The Golden Ratio, is housed in a graffiti-covered warehouse on a gritty stretch of Broadway under the J train. I walked by twice before realizing I had the right address. There's no sign of a business inside.
But the interior is a sunny oasis. The sparkling salon features white plank flooring, a white tufted sofa and a glowing, gas-lit fireplace surrounded by art and plants. The barber chair faces an antique vanity and massive, carved-frame mirror.
When I arrived, Greg was in the middle of a session with a new client, Coreen "Coco" SewnYa, a local artist known for her fantastic crochet creations. He was cutting her long locks down to the root. "I'm entering a new chapter of my life," said Coco, "So I didn't want to go to just any barber."
She'd heard of Greg through a friend. "He's more of an artist than a barber," she said. "Like, a spiritual counselor. Barbering is just something he does. It's deeper than just cutting hair. We were just having a deep conversation."
"And then I busted in!" I said.
"This is crown work," said Greg, lopping the last lock. "This is the crown of your head, where your highest self resides. You think of halos, you think of kings and queens. When you trust someone to work on your crown, you're trusting them with your deepest being."
Coco said she'd had no idea, when booking her appointment, that she could pay whatever she wanted: "He just told me today that it was donation-based. And I was like, 'Whoa!'"
"What's really important is the people—who we are," said Greg. "I found that when I work from that place, of being connected to my craft and the people, the universe blesses me and provides for me in every way. Even in ways I don't know. There's things I thought I wanted, but the universe prevented me from acquiring it at the time. It knew I wasn't ready. You know, I might have went out and did some crazy fuckshit!"
And then he started to recount how it all started.
Greg, who is 50, grew up in Brownsville’s Van Dyke housing projects. "383 Livonia Avenue, apartment 8B. And I give thanks for it," he said. "It gave me a lot of the tools I needed later in life—knowing how to hustle, maneuver the situation, survive."
His mom was a seamstress and then an executive assistant. She held it together until crack hit the neighborhood in the mid-80s. Greg packed bags at the local supermarket and shoveled snow to earn cash. He gave his first haircut in 1986, when he was twelve.
"An older friend wanted to go on a date with a girl and didn't have enough money to take her out and get a haircut," said Greg. "But he had some clippers and said, 'Hey, just do the best you can.' And when I cut his hair, I hooked him up. He was like, 'Yo, you my barber! Keep those clippers!'"
Others admired the results, and soon Greg was in demand.
"I would go to people's cribs and cut their hair, charging five dollars," he said. "They called me the five-dollar man. I was tripping out. I was like, 'I'm a man!'"
"It helped a lot because at that time, my mother had gotten strung out on drugs, my father was out on drugs," he continued. "While a lot of my peers would go off selling drugs, going off to be stick-up kids, I had barbering to help me. I was the Switzerland of the hood because everyone needs a haircut, you know. So I was somewhat protected."
"Because they didn't want to lose their barber," I said.
"Right!" he said, shearing Coco’s hair with a clipper. "The stick-up kids be like, 'Get 'em!' But it was, 'No leave him alone.'"
"On top of that, I always felt spiritually protected," he said. "My mom instilled something in me. There was a lot of places I've gone, a lot of places I've been where I shouldn't have gotten out safely. But somehow, I did. And I know that was God protecting me. And honestly, my barbering, my cutting hair is more than just cutting hair. This a medium for me to relay my message."
The J train rumbled overhead, making it hard to hear.
"So what's the message?" I asked, when the train passed.
Greg paused his work, thought a moment, and then gave a little speech, gesturing with his clippers.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” he said. “And therefore the Most High is within. You just gotta turn on your Wi-Fi, and it'll connect you inside. And then you start resonating and connecting to others.”
"We're not the God, but we are all representatives. We are all God experiencing itself through us,” he continued. “Which is why it's important for us to be our authentic selves, because we have an assignment—to give a report. And if you're not living in your true self, you're depriving the Most High of the report that only you can give. That's why authenticity is the highest resonance, higher than love…That's my message."
His delivery was so compelling, I couldn’t help but laugh and applaud.
"So this is my little portion of helping people become more authentic," he concluded, indicating his shop. "When I turn you around in that mirror—that moment. You know, nobody said you'll keep this haircut forever. But in this moment, you're going to feel a little bit more of yourself."
Greg applied the finishing touches to Coco's new look and spun her around so she could see the full effect. Her eyes went huge.
“Oh shit, who this?” Coco's face lit up. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! Whoa, whoa, whoa!!”
He’d shaved a lotus flower into the crown of her head—a symbol of rebirth, he said.
She gathered up her locks to keep as a memento.
“What are you going to do with them?” I asked. “You can crochet them!”
Coco gave me a look.
When Coco left, Greg resumed his story.
He got his first barbershop job in East New York, when he was 14. "It wasn't even really a barbershop. It was more like a drug spot," he said. "I didn't know that shit was a drug spot. I was like, 'What the fuck?' I worked there one week, and they was paying me by commission at the end of the week, so I'm supposed to get paid. I'm walking up to the shop, and there's cop cars in front—they did a raid. And there goes my silly ass—I go in there and talk to another barber and say, 'Am I still getting paid?'"
His mom sent him to Newtown High School, in Elmhurst, Queens—a huge institution packed with thousands of students from around the world. "They had a student organization with leadership programs and a chess club and African-American studies," he said. "So it gave me another outlet. And I was cutting hair in school, anywhere I can. If there was a space on the back stairwell, you know, I plug my clippers in and hook somebody up on a lunch break."
One day, his friend Shawn told him that Kid from Kid 'n Play, the 80s hip-hop duo, was opening a barbershop nearby. Greg gave Shawn a fresh haircut with a rose and bumblebee shaved into the front, and they stopped by the shop. The barber in charge glanced at Shawn. "Who cut your hair?" he demanded.
"He cut my hair!" said Shawn.
Greg stood, excited. "Yeah, what's up man," he said. "I'm trying to work here!"
"You got a license?"
"Nah, I don't."
"You need a license to work here," said the barber.
"I left with my tail between my legs," Greg recalled. "But then Shawn was so supportive. He was like, 'We should go back!' This time, I put the New York City skyline on his head, with the moon and with Michael Jordan jumping through the moon."
"That's a lot for a haircut!" I said.
"I was going all the fuck out," said Greg.
This time, he got the job. The shop helped him through barber school, and he got his license.
Greg's career took off. He was a popular barber in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, often cutting from early morning to late at night. "The money was great," he said. He opened his own shop in 2004. But the thriving business left little time for family, including his young daughter.
His mother passed in 2011. "She died in my arms,” he said. "I literally felt her pass through, the strangest thing the world…And her voice started to get louder in me."
His mother told him to write, to find God, and find himself. Greg reconsidered his whole career. "I was losing the love for what I was doing," he said. "It was becoming too money focused.”
The lease was up on his storefront, so he shuttered his shop and started cutting hair in his home, a garden apartment in a Fort Greene. He also began inviting down-and-out folks he met at bars or on the street to come by for a free cut.
He was startled by how much the service meant to his clients: "So that inspired me to say, 'People should never feel like they don't have enough to look good or feel good about themselves,’” he said.
Greg adopted his pay-what-you-wish strategy a year later, and never looked back. Even through stretches when he was living on noodles. Even when the rising rents in Fort Greene forced him, in 2018, to move back to the old neighborhood.
"What I have is a gift," he says of his skills. "It was given to me, so I should be able to give it freely. It's not mine to begin with. I just give, and release the stress of money. And it just works out."
Some days, after cutting all day, he counts the money in the drawer, "And I'll have freaking $100 in there,” he said. “And then there's days when it's $600, and I only cut a few people. So honestly—I don't know, and I don't care. I'm not like a holy man or no shit like that. Because clearly, I got a lot of shit I'm still working on. But I know God. So I don't worry."
Last year, Greg's faith was rewarded, one might say, when he won The David Prize. This is a very cool award given to five New Yorkers every year who are working on solutions to the city's challenges. The prize: $200,000—no strings attached! The recipients can spend it however they please.
When he first heard of the contest through a friend, Greg dismissed the idea. "I said, 'Whatever, sounds like a scam to me.'"
But when the prize came up again in his Instagram feed, he decided to apply. And wasn't surprised to win. People ask him if the competition, with its multiple interview rounds, was difficult. "No," he said. "It was fun, it was easy. I had the energy of, 'If it's for me, it's for me. If it's not, it's not.' But it will not stop me from doing what I'm doing."
Greg used some of the money to buy new portable barbering equipment and expand the days he spends giving free haircuts at schools and shelters from twice a month to twice a week. He's also hiring barbers to accompany him.
Barbering those who are street homeless can be especially challenging. "They're going through a lot," Greg said. "Emotionally, psychologically, mentally. There's a little instability sometimes, just navigating the personalities of them in the chair and bringing the calm to that moment. It takes them a while to embrace what's happening. And hygiene, sometimes—they don't have access to certain things that we have."
"What do you feel a good haircut does for someone who can't afford a haircut?" I asked.
"It makes them feel they can afford a haircut!" he said. "It makes them feel like they can get into that club. That they can talk to that girl or guy they want to talk to. It can make them feel like they deserve to be here. And I think we all need to feel that feeling."
He next plans to get to social service agencies distributing vouchers that folks can redeem for free haircuts at a network of barber shops around the city. He's also planning to buy and outfit a bus so he can take his barbering to the streets, offering free toiletries, showers and cuts to whomever needs it.
"Do you feel you're happier than most people?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I'm just as miserable as any other motherfucker."
We laughed and laughed.
"I have my moments, I damn sure have my moments," he continued. "I have my times and, you know. Shit."
"Isn't helping people supposed to make you happy?" I said.
"You know, I feel fulfilled," he said. "I'm fulfilled helping people."
"I'm never going to stop giving out free cuts," he continued. "Never. I love it too much. I love seeing what it does for people. I love seeing what it does for me. I fucking love it. I give thanks every day. I get up, excited about my day, being able to think about who I can help next. What can I do next? I want to be the greatest giver ever. I want to start a giving competition!"
Sign us up, right?
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Following your heart is fun!”
—Coco
CAFÉ ANNE is a free weekly newsletter created by Brooklyn journalist Anne Kadet. Subscribe to get the latest issue every Monday.
This is my very first comment. 🙃 This is also my barber and friend.💪🏾 Thank you for showcasing his humanity AND his "shit". He truly helps to bring balance to the world. One love.
What an absolutely lovely story that we very much need to hear in 2025.