November 2024

The longstanding French Quarter barber keeps tradition alive on Bienville Street, one great haircut at a time.

– by Doug Brantley

– photos by Ellis Anderson

“How do you want to cut that hair today?”

It starts as it always does: Me, seated in the second chair from the left, facing the bank of mirrors; Pat O’Connell, my barber of 20-plus years, standing behind, fastening a black nylon cape around my neck, then resting his hands on my shoulders.

Back in the day, my standard reply would have been, “Short on the sides and back, a little longer on top.”  Now, my once-blond hair gray and thinning, I ask that he make it all thick and full.  “Work your magic.”

Here, in the Hotel Monteleone Barber Shop, just off Royal on Bienville Street, O’Connell has been working his magic and perfecting his craft for more than 50 years.  And it feels it—in the best of ways.

The vibe is decidedly old-school, with the shop’s mid-century vinyl-and-chrome Koken President chairs (complete with ashtrays), Formica-topped built-ins, and Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin tunes on the CD player next to the hand-crank cash register. 

“There used to be barber shops all over the Quarter and downtown,” O’Connell recalls.  “There were a couple on the 100 block of Royal and another on Bourbon. 

“When I first opened here, this was not considered a good location at all.  There were shops with much better locations than this.  But with the storms, the virus – times change.  I’m just lucky to have survived.”

And it is providence he credits for getting him into the profession to begin with.  With a hardscrabble upbringing Uptown (“We lived in every kind of substandard housing you can think of”) and little formal education, he spent much of his youth living day to day.

“If there was a dance or something a week away or a movie I wanted to see was coming, that was about as far into the future I looked,” O’Connell says.  “I had no skill, no education, I had nothing.”

But he did have a girlfriend, still in high school at the time, who questioned what he wanted to do with his life.  His answer: to become a firefighter…or a barber.  So, once she graduated and had a job, she offered to send him to the New Orleans Barber and Beauty College. 

“When you come from a household that’s as dysfunctional as mine was,” O’Connell says, “it’s very hard to sit in a structured environment like a classroom.  So even in barber school I didn’t study, and I came out knowing nothing.”

What he did know was he needed work, now that his former girlfriend was his wife.  He applied for a position with a barber who agreed to take him under his wing at an upstart shop in Chalmette, when Judge Perez Drive was still a shell road.

“I was just lucky that one day, looking for a job, I called the right guy by accident,” O’Connell says.  “His name was Tony DeSalvo and, like my first wife, he had a tremendous impact on my life.  He taught me everything I should have learned in school but didn’t.”

His apprenticeship under DeSalvo paid off.  O’Connell would go on to barber at Loyola University, the Royal Orleans, and even Schwegmann’s supermarket in Gentilly, before landing a stint at the Roosevelt Hotel, which bustled with business with 10 on-duty barbers, four manicurists and two shoeshine men. 

At the time, barbers were considered integral amenities to a hotel’s success, with the St. Charles Hotel touting a 15-chair shop in its central lobby.  When O’Connell arrived at the Monteleone in 1973, its shop was situated just to the left of its main Royal Street entrance.

But tides changed soon after, and owner William Monteleone, Sr., thinking the shop occupied too much prime footage, relocated it—circa-1957 fixtures and all—to a space carved out of the hotel’s parking garage.

“The old man who had the place retired and offered it to other barbers in the shop,” O’Connell recounts.  “But nobody else wanted it because this street was so quiet at the time.  I was the last person, so I took it. Just luck.”

Starting out with a five-member team, O’Connell would grow his small business into a profitable one over the years, with a steady stream of loyal locals buffeted by visiting hotel clientele and the occasional celebrity passing through town.

Actor Alec Baldwin (“A quiet guy; he didn’t have anything to say to anybody”), basketball great Julius Irving, and playwright Edward Albee have all taken a seat in O’Connell’s chair, as did “King of the Road” crooner Roger Miller.

“Strange guy,” O’Connell says with a laugh, pausing his clippers.  “He brought his own tools.  He didn’t want me to shorten his hair, just thin it.  I don’t know why he was so particular; he wasn’t much of a looker anyway.”

Scissor cuts were the rage, clippers verboten, and men would often be accompanied by their girlfriends or spouses, who would stand guard to make sure he didn’t trim their hair too short.

“People were paying enormous prices for scissors,” O’Connell recalls.  “Now it’s all clipper cuts and altogether different.  People come in and want skin up to here, skin up to there.  Now if you can’t use a clipper, you’re not going to survive in this business.” 

He’s witnessed other changes to the industry as well, from the rise and fall of big production salons and “McDonald’s kind of shops that don’t charge much” to the recent revival of traditional hot shaves and a generational shift among stylists.

“This business has changed dramatically,” O’Connell notes, dusting the nape of my neck with Pinaud Clubman talcum.  “When I first started the only competition was old men, very few of whom could even give a good haircut.

“Now you’ve got these young guys and young women, especially Latinas and Black guys, who are very good.  The competition is much, much tougher.  All of a sudden, barbering is sort of in.  Little by little, barber shops may make a comeback.” 

He unsnaps the cape from my neck and shakes it off, pointing to the near-constant flow of passersby along the sidewalk as I rise to exit.

“Look how lucky I am to be in the French Quarter, up here where the action is,” he says, “and to be associated with a hotel that’s very good to me. 

“I work with a lot of interesting people, pleasant people.  I think I’ve lived an interesting life.  It certainly hasn’t been ho-hum.  Luck.  It’s an important ingredient in life.”

As luck would have it, the shop’s door swings open, and a customer steps inside.  “Good morning! Do you have time for a haircut?”

“Sure,” O’Connell says, patting the back of the chair.  “Have a seat.  How do you want to cut that hair today?”

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