Rio Linda Barber Cuts Hair, But That’s Just The Beginning

If you dial the Rio Linda Chamber of Commerce, chances are you’ll get a barber on the other end of the phone. And not just any barber.

Sid Allen, 42, often picks up the chamber’s calls at his 65-year-old Front Street shop. ‘No one mans the chamber office,’ he said. ‘I either take a message or run down the people they need.’

But the Rio Linda Barbery, a mainstay in this northern Sacramento County community of about 14,000 people, also is the answer for residents with broken appliances, parched throats and lonely hearts.

‘You can find things out here, things you need to know,’ said Rio Linda resident Diane Whaley, 37. ‘Say I need some help with the patio or refrigerator repair . . . Sid might know where I could go.’

Stopping by Allen’s shop for the latest town gossip, a cold beer or soda from a 1924 refrigerator named ‘Old Rosebud,’ or a World War II television movie is a daily routine for many regular customers.

‘We all come in and drink coffee for free and spread a lot of lies,’ joked Richard Trimmell, a 63-year-old customer. ‘It’s a good, friendly corner to stop at for people with nowhere to go.’

Daily conversations, commonplace at the two-chair shop since it opened around 1920, can last for hours. Talk ‘gets kind of deep occasionally,’ said Trimmell.

Of course, Allen also cuts hair. But not always the way the shop’s three former owners did.

‘Before I took over, it was strictly old-fashioned haircuts like mine – a straight taper,’ said Allen. But recently, he said, he created a ‘punk rock (cut), frizzed up in blue.’

Children receive pizza-shaped bubble gum instead of all-day suckers after their haircuts, and the National Enquirer competes with cribbage and boxes of dominoes as entertainment.

But despite changing times, Allen, who took over the barbershop in 1982, tries to keep his establishment old-fashioned. Customers swear by his five dollar haircuts, and regulars are treated to free cuts if they are sick at home or in the hospital.

‘Sometimes a haircut makes people feel 100 percent better,’ said Allen. When people are sick, he said, ‘they don’t want to be thinking about having to pay.’

Allen is collecting antiques, like a striped, wooden barber pole and a radio from the 1930s, to help ‘get the shop back like barber shops at the turn of the century,’ he said. He also plans to buy a wood burning stove, a standard feature in old-time general stores.

But the steadfast shop, whose customers were once mainly chicken ranchers, is not the only reason local families have frequented it for several generations.

Many customers say it’s Allen’s generosity and friendliness that keeps them stopping by.

‘Sid’s like the typical hometown person you’d find in a barbershop,’ said Whaley, whose husband’s family has had haircuts there for five generations. ‘You know he won’t take advantage of pricing, and he always gives the kids a treat.’

Allen’s kindness has extended past the barber shop’s doors. Last year, when the Rio Linda Little League’s 13-year-olds found themselves stranded without money at a tournament in Winnemucca, Nev., Allen organized a collection of $2,000 to help.

‘No one works harder for the community than Sid Allen,’ said Rio Linda resident Mel Griffin. ‘He’s really a giving guy you don’t find just anywhere.’

Allen said a barber shop’s ‘gotta be a place where people can talk, tell jokes, watch TV and read the papers.’

But Allen, a 12-year resident of Rio Linda , said the community’s small size makes it easy to maintain a neighborly atmosphere in his shop.

‘I’ve never considered barbering anywhere else and I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s just home.’