Astor Place Hairstylists has been saved from closing
Mayor Bill de Blasio celebrated the Phase 2 reopening with a visit to Astor Place Hairstylists on June 23, 2020. Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office on Flickr
Just two days before it was set to close for good, Astor Place Hairstylists was saved by a group of New York investors. As the New York Post first reported, enough money has been raised to keep the East Village basement barbershop “open for at least another 75 years,” businessman Jonathan Trichter told the newspaper on Monday. Astor Place Hairstylists announced last month plans to permanently close just before Thanksgiving due to a lack of business because of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Post, investors in the barbershop include Trichter, former aide to Hillary Clinton Howard Wolfson, Global Strategy Group founder Jeffrey Pollock, and real estate developer Jeffrey Gural.
“We were going to close this week,” Paul Vezza, a manager at Astor Place Hairstylists, told the Post. “This was an 11th-hour save. Better days are ahead.”
Although the barbershop opened during the city’s second phase of reopening during COVID-19, business was down by nearly 90 percent. Before the pandemic, the shop operated 40 stations and employed 54 barbers and beauticians, as Gothamist previously reported. Now, it employs at most 25 stylists.
Astor Place Hair has been an East Village institution since the 1940s. Called “the United Nations of hair cutting” because of its diverse, multilingual stylists, the single-room shop has served customers like Robert DeNiro, Andy Warhol, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who even got a hair cut at Astor Place Hair when it reopened in June.
[Via New York Post]
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