Page 4 • April 4, 2011 •
ny2knox
A special publication of the Shopper-News
I
By Anne Hart t’s unlikely that many people who call Knoxville home spend as much time in New York City as Frank and Belinda Gambuzza. The owners of Salon Visage, Spa Visage and Frank’s Barber Shop have a house here and an apartment in the big city, which they visit often for both business reasons and to spend time with family. Frank is a native of New York who came to Knoxville in 1985. His love for this area is apparently contagious – two of his four brothers have followed him here. Before he opened his barber shop a year ago, not many people were aware that Frank started his haircutting career as a barber. I asked Frank to tell me the back story, and he put me in touch with a charming elderly gentleman named Joe Vito Lupo. Here’s what I learned.
The back story At fi rst it was all about the tips – making sure the wooden handle on the shoe shine brush didn’t hit an ankle, and that not a speck of shoe polish stained a customer’s sock. Either one of those mishaps meant no tip for the shoe shine boy. It all started in a barbershop in an Italian neighborhood in New Jersey, just west of New York City, where the industrious 10-year-old shoe shine boy quickly learned that if he kept his clients happy, he made big tips. To young Frank Gambuzza, it was an exciting world – one fi lled with men in
Marcus Blair gets a shave and haircut from New Yorker and Knoxvillian Frank Gambuzza, founder of the award-winning Frank’s Barber Shop. Photos by R. White
expensive hats and elegant cashmere overcoats who appreciated a hot lather shave, a good haircut and a perfect shoe shine. Frank listened, he watched, he paid attention, he learned fast. And his hard work meant he always had plenty of cash in his pockets. “He was a pushy little kid,”recalls Lupo, Frank’s mentor. “But pushy in a good way. He always wanted to learn more.” Lupo owned the barbershop, J. Vito’s Continental Barbershop on Park Avenue, where the shoe shine boy got his start. “He would watch everything I did and ask lots of questions. Before long he wanted to cut hair, so I trained him. I didn’t want him to ruin my customers, so I let him bring his friends in to experiment on. He learned quick.” It wasn’t easy. At age 13, Frank spent countless hours standing in a doorway in the shop, running a pair of scissors up and down the door jam, onehanded, learning how to use his thumb to manipulate the scissors, the most critical skill in cutting hair. And he learned discipline. No wild Friday nights for this teenager. Joe Lupo’s people had to be at work at 8 a.m. on Saturday mornings. One minute late and you were sent on your way. The barbershop was right across the street from Memorial High School, where Frank became a student, and soon he was cutting his teachers’ hair. If he didn’t show up for a class, they knew where to fi nd him.