When Lou Reynolds entered Toni’s Barber Shop one Friday morning, he was quickly immersed in the “Twilight Zone” – or at least that’s what hairdresser Nickole Harders called it.
Harders, 47, was referring to the shop’s recent renovation. After a decade at 130 W. Olive St., the old blue carpeting and linoleum were replaced with shiny new laminate flooring and the three barber chairs were moved from the shop’s south wall to the north wall.
As this was my first time at Toni’s Barber Shop, the cozy space felt less like the Twilight Zone and more like a trip back in time, littered with relics from owner Toni LaBadie’s 44-year career.
The shop only accepts walk-ins and cash, so it’s fitting that a hundred-year-old cash register sits in the corner. The barber chairs are all leather — like in the good old days, LaBadie said — and the electric shaving cream warmer and dispenser are from the 1980s, Harders estimates.
“Mom keeps the shop alive by buying parts and stuff, but you can’t buy those special things anymore,” says Harders, who has worked alongside her mother, LaBadie, since Toni’s Barbershop opened in August 2014.
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The store received a new shaving cream dispenser as a gift from a customer, but it doesn’t work quite as well as the original, added hairdresser Amber Harders, Nickole’s daughter and LaBadie’s granddaughter.
“So we thought, if it ain’t broke…” said Amber Harders.
“And if so, then fix it!” Nickole Harders interrupted.
Toni’s Barber Shop represents a bygone era – right down to the old-fashioned cash register, the straight razor neck shaves, the decades-old leather chairs and the three generations of women who work behind them.
A family business
LaBadie, 66, began working as a hairdresser in 1980. Her first job was at Headquarters Hair Styling, a Fort Collins hair salon at 124 W. Laurel St. — the former bar area of the recently closed Pickle Barrel sandwich shop.
At the time, it was one of 20 hair salons in the city, according to the 1981 Fort Collins city directory.
A few years later, LaBadie and two other hairdressers opened Hairs to You, a hair salon, down the street at 118 W. Laurel St.
LaBadie said she didn’t always know she wanted to be a hairdresser, but there were signs.
“All my dolls were bald,” she said.
“You cut your dolls’ hair?” I asked.
“Yes, off,” she answered, laughing. “Not trimmed, but off.”
“So maybe subconsciously I knew,” LaBadie added. “I’ve tried to get away from it over the years, but it keeps pulling me back.”
LaBadie said she eventually gave up the daily grind of working in a barbershop and cut people’s hair at home for several years. Around 2004, she returned to Laurel Street to work at Lloyd’s Barbershop – an on-campus establishment that barber Lloyd Gomez ran for nearly 45 years until his retirement in 2014.
“When Lloyd retired, (Mom) asked, ‘What should we do?'” Nickole Harders recalls. “Well,” she remembers answering, “we’re opening a hair salon.”
Toni’s Barber Shop opened in August of this year.
Lloyd’s Barbershop was eventually reopened in late 2014 by Gomez’s daughter, Benita Cederquist, at 226 S. College Ave. Gomez died in 2017.
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LaBadie welcomed some of Gomez’s regular customers into her new shop. By this point, she had been a hairdresser in the Fort Collins area for nearly 35 years.
“After so many years, you really learn all about (your customers) … their families. Their kids going to college and then having babies … and grandkids,” LaBadie said on a recent Friday as he said goodbye to a customer just before leaving the store.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she called. “Have fun.”
Nickole Harders grew up as the child of hairdressers – Nickole’s father and Toni’s ex-husband Warren Thomas began working in the profession in the early 1980s – but she was initially reluctant to pursue this career.
It’s an incredibly social job that Nickole Harders said she wasn’t excited about at first. When she graduated from high school, she realized she had the personality for it and began training in 1997.
“It was very good for me,” said Nickole Harders.
“Amber didn’t stand a chance,” she added, pointing to her daughter.
Amber Harders, 24, grew up around hair salons thanks to her grandparents and mother. After initially starting out as a women’s hairdresser in 2020, she preferred the more relaxed atmosphere of hair salons and joined her grandmother’s business in January.
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“I’m incredibly grateful to be able to be with my mom and grandmother and learn all of their techniques,” said Amber Harders, sitting in a chair against the south wall of the shop in a rare moment between morning customers. “I love being here because I get to be with my family.”
The trio’s daily routine follows a familiar rhythm. Toni’s Barber Shop is open Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. He usually sees the heaviest flow of customers in the morning and around lunchtime, says LaBadie.
Customers often walk in and greet Nickole’s one-year-old black Labrador retriever and her beloved shop dog, Caesar. Inside, they are often greeted by a cacophony of snipping scissors, buzzing electric razors and Pirate Radio 93.5, which almost always plays oldies in the background.
Since no appointments are made, there is no telephone. Instead, spontaneous visitors can wait until all three hairdressing chairs are occupied.
“You know, in a real barbershop, you go in and you have to wait,” LaBadie said. “You talk to the other customers and tell jokes. That’s how it was years ago.”
“Everything is in a hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry,” she added. “When you come in here, you have to slow down.”
A familiar rhythm
After Reynolds sat down for a haircut at Nickole Harders that Friday morning, Loren Coe came in and waited his turn, meanwhile regaling the shop with stories of his recent pickleball misadventures.
He lifted the sleeve of his polo shirt, revealing a painful-looking lump on his upper arm. Nickole and Amber Harders flinched.
“How did you do that?” asked Reynolds, his wet hair combed back and waiting for Nickole Harder’s scissors.
“I came up with an overhand punch,” Coe said, describing how that unfortunate punch resulted in a bicep tear. “I ripped it right out of the rotator cuff.”
Soon Coe had settled into Amber Harders’ chair for a quick cut.
“Do you want it away from your ears or still touching it?” asked Amber Harders. “Pretty much gone,” he replied.
A typical haircut takes about 20 minutes and usually ends with a shave of the back and sides with a straight razor. The three barbers always hold a large hand mirror in front of their customers’ faces for a final check. Then the cash register rings like clockwork, the hair is swept away, and another customer – a young man in a snapback cap and Birkenstocks, a middle-aged father who just sent his daughter off to college, a silver-haired regular with a cane – walks through the door.
The cost of services at Toni’s Barber Shop ranges from $16 for a beard trim to $26 for a regular adult haircut. When she started as a barber, a haircut cost about $8, LaBadie estimated.
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In the past, Saturdays were also very busy as people got ready for Sunday services. And at Christmas time, clients were busy preparing for their fancy office Christmas parties.
Today, people go to church in sweatpants or attend services virtually. Large holiday parties are not as common as they once were, LaBadie says.
Styles have also come and gone.
“I got the end of what mom started. She wore mullets. I got the end of the mullets and the beginning of the bowl cut,” said Nickole Harders. “Now the mullets are coming back.”
Not long ago, LaBadie’s youngest granddaughter accidentally dabbled in the family business. The four-year-old cut her own hair, like most kids do. But unlike most kids, she ended up with a “perfectly feathered mullet,” Amber said.
“So we thought, ‘Yes!'” Nickole said. “There’s the next generation.”
