This year the shop celebrates its 70- year anniversary in Orlando. A lot has changed over this period. Today there are women and children customers as opposed to years ago when customers were strictly male.
City-imposed eminent domain moved the shop from its well-known Goldenrod Road location to a smaller building on East Colonial Drive 17 years ago (before that Yates was known as the “Largest Barber Shop in the U.S.” — a claim hung proudly on the wall at the original, 24- chair shop). Perhaps the biggest change occurred after Yates’ death in 1980 at age 76.
Succeeding owners tried to keep things the same, but as the area grew, the slowpaced atmosphere disappeared. “Yates was truly a man’s barber shop.
There was a lot of political talk because that was men’s talk then,” said Joe Regner, local business owner and Yates’ customer since 1979. “The same people were in there every two weeks so it was easy to start a conversation and end up hanging out there.
People don’t do that anymore.” Joe Manfre, retired Yates’ barber of nearly 40 years and former owner, said many customers are second or third generation, drawn to Yates because their father, grandfather and even greatgrandfather were customers.
“We have people coming because their grandfather brought them in for haircuts when they cost $1.25,” Manfre said. Sheriffs, mayors and senators came into Yates regularly, all of whom, plus good friends, were serviced by Yates in a back room so they could carry on private conversations. “He would keep them back there an hour just talking politics and old times,” Manfre said. This is not to say the shop was reserved for the elite.
Yates was known to give haircuts for free if a customer could not afford it, and he cringed at raising prices even by a quarter. Today a haircut costs $10. “Everybody loved the guy. It was always the cheapest place, but if you did not have money, he would cut it anyway. He would say, ‘If you pay later, that’s fine, and if you don’t, that’s fine too,’” Manfre recalled.
“He played checkers with people in between customers and gave free watermelon to people who picnicked on the Yates’ property, which was nothing but orange groves.”
The barber of civility Yates is described as soft-spoken and subdued, treating people like family, but stern when he had to be. His daughter, Linda Yates Brock of Quincy, Fla., said she and her sister, Carol Ann, have wonderful memories of being in the shop, saying it was the center of their lives.
“Daddy was a very kind and compassionate man who always wanted to help the underdog, and most of the time he did this anonymously. We knew of several ways he very privately helped people, from giving free haircuts when money was tight for customers to mentoring a former employee who was an alcoholic, and many other things too numerous to list,” Brock said.
“We grew up watching our father practice his faith in God by the way he lived his life and how he treated others, regardless of their station in life.” Although people today have no time to hang out at the barber shop, a few chairs remain at the shop’s front in case that changes. Inside, a long, white bench lines the waiting room, inviting prolonged visits. “Today is nothing compared to what it was.
We had people coming in, taking their time, and still cut thousands of customers a week [in the 1970s and 1980s]. Now everyone is in a hurry. [Yates] would turn over in his grave if he saw the way people come in and out,” Manfre said. “A haircut can still take a half an hour.
If they are willing to spend the time, we’d love to get to know them.” Brock said shop owner Tommy Upton has kept the barber shop’s appearance similar to the way she remembers it as a child. “The interior looks remarkably like it did years ago when Daddy owned it.
The day we visited [in January 2007] it looked like Daddy still owned it and would walk back in the door any minute. Our hats are off to Mr. Upton in the way he has upheld the Yates’ name and legacy, and we deeply appreciate that,” she said. Upton was a barber in the Navy and head barber at the Orlando Naval Training Center for 20 years.
He was stationed in Keflavik, Iceland, when he heard the Yates business was for sale. “I flew here right away to buy it because I knew the Yates’ name,” he said. “I wanted to work with people who have generations of Yates’ customers in their family.
That is something you cannot find anywhere.” People return to Yates Barber Shop not only for the history but for the service. Barbers there do flat-razor facial shaves, razor-edged haircuts (for a cleaner cut) and high-skilled cuts like flattops, which have to be perfectly flat on top and take double the time of a regular haircut.
Only a few of Yates’ barbers can do a flattop and one is Upton. He said about half of their customers come in for flattops and people travel from as far as Jacksonville — and once from Switzerland — to get them. Each barber at Yates has worked there for at least 10 years. Pam King, a barber at Yates for 23 years, loves the stories her customers tell about the “old days.” “People used to ride horses to get their haircut.
It was a bunch of old, country town people,” she said. “As barbers we are not unlike bartenders or therapists, if you do your job right. They are not just here for a haircut. They call me the Ann Landers of Yates.” Regner, who is also the past president of the Goldenrod Chamber of Commerce, said it is rare to find a business that can “roll with the punches” of the economy for as long as Yates.
“Businesses that last that long have a solid foundation to begin with,” he said. “The name Yates is synonymous with haircuts for people from this area, which is a big reason they have succeeded this long.”
