New wave old school at Lee’s Barber Shop
Lee’s Barber Shop is in a tiny strip mall on the near north side of Naperville, Ill. A seasonal Dairy Queen sits south of the barbershop and a shuttered dry cleaner is on the north end of what is known as Modern Way Center. Lee’s has as much in common with the Las Vegas Strip as hair on Bruce Willis.
The new master barber at Lee’s is Noe Hernandez, Jr.
Hernandez grew up in the Naperville area, about 40 miles west of Chicago, before embarking on a career that took him to the Palmer House in Chicago, H.R.H. Truefitt, and Hill Barbers in London (the oldest barbershop in the world) and most recently master barber at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Noe Hernandez, Jr.
You get more than a haircut from Hernandez.
He is filled with stories of Siegfried & Roy, Pete Rose, Celine Dion, Aerosmith’s Stephen Tyler, boxer Floyd Meriweather, actor Bruce Willis. And more.
Ironically Lee’s next-door neighbor is a Little Caesars pizza store. Hernandez has seamlessly moved from one Caesars to another.
I had been getting haircuts in Chicago, but also relied on Lee’s in a pinch.
Richard “Lee” Neurock opened his first Lee’s in 1964 in downtown Naperville. It was a two-chair store and Lee became known as the “Floyd” (from “The Andy Griffith Show”) of 1960s Naperville. Lee also worked with Rick Motta, the legendary Naperville barber, and actor. Hernandez knew all this history, too. Where else can you get your hair cut and talk about Rick Motta and Jake LaMotta?
Hernandez began styling hair at Caesars Palace in 2006. Last summer he was furloughed because of the pandemic. He came home, in part, to take care of his parents. We found that common denominator as well. My Dad was a fan of Lee’s and I took him there for his final haircut before he passed away in 2015.
Over the years Lee’s clients have included the late Dick Tracy cartoonist Dick Locher, who lived in Naperville, and Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Thome. A regular guy, no one knew Thome had been in the store until after he left. An autographed picture to Lee’s from former Chicago Bear Kyle Long hangs near the entrance.
Owner-barber Michael Densford sold Lee’s last year to his stylist Annie Coleman. She had worked at Lee’s from 2016 until the shop closed in March 2020 due to COVID. She recently returned for weekend shifts. Hernandez heard about new ownership through a mutual barber friend in Arizona.
Legacy reading material at Lee’s.
Hernandez, 55, got his hair cut at Lee’s as a kid. “A lot of us did,” he said. “Back then barbers weren’t like they are now. Your parents took you wherever they were closest. When I graduated from barber school (the historic Moler Barber College) I went to work for Henczel’s Barber Shop on the riverwalk. Downtown Naperville flourished and Lee relocated here because of rent.” Lee Neurock died in 1996 and the business moved to its present location in 1997.
“I was thinking of coming back because my parents live in Oswego and they need help,” he said. “I wanted to get my parents back on their feet, health care wise. I also have a daughter who lives in Westmont who just had a baby. It is my first grandkid. And as we all know, Vegas is done.”
Noe Hernandez, Sr. is 76. He did construction on General Mills plants. His wife Beda, 73, worked at Western Electric/Bell labs near Warrenville, Ill. Hernandez attended Naperville Central High School for a semester before transferring to Aurora East High School, where he graduated.
As Hernandez thought about relocating to Chicago, he spoke with the owner of Merchant & Rhoades, the high-end barbershop at 900 N. Michigan Ave. in Chicago. Merchant & Rhoades gave manicures to then-state senator Barack Obama, while other clients included the late Ernie Banks and Roger Ebert.
Noe Hernandez, Jr. (left) cut the hair of Packers QB Aaron Rodgers in Las Vegas after Super Bowl 45/2011. (Provided photo)
“With my credentials, they wanted me,” he said. “By the time we started talking the riots had happened downtown and there was the downturn in the economy with COVID. It was, ‘At this point, it would be a waste of your time in downtown Chicago. The high-end customers aren’t coming. They said to find a place in the far west suburbs where the money is.
“So it’s local kid leaves, sees the world a little bit, and comes back home.”
Bruce Willis; clean-cut man.
The high-end Caesars Palace barbershop is upstairs in the executive tower. The shop is not open to the public. “Bruce Willis had a new handler,” Hernandez said. “He had to go shake some hands and take some pictures. He had a barbershop appointment. He comes in and he’s flustered. I go, ‘What’s going on?’ He goes, ‘How do I say this politely? What I’m starting to realize is that I’m famous, not a barback from Jersey and that no matter how much fame you have, I’ll always be who I was out of the womb. That’s who you are.’ So don’t get offended if your childhood hero turns out to be an asshole.
“What Bruce Willis was trying to say is that if you come across a celebrity that rubs you the wrong way, that guy is going to be a dick next week. You just happened to be in his crosshairs.”
I love barbershop philosophy.
Hernandez continued, “Whatever you do for a living do it well. Kill people with kindness. Bruce was like, ‘You’re at the top level of your game. Don’t let anybody push you around.”
With that kind of attitude in a lofty environment, Hernandez received good tips. “The whole rationale behind having that shop was to capture the top ten percent player,” he said. “They come up and they have carte blanche. Cocktails. A menu. I’m providing top tier service with a haircut and a shave, the whole kit kaboodle. Basically, my job is to get them to come back into play. A guy has been up 36 hours on the blackjack table, he’s losing his ass, he wants to get on a flight and go home. So, give him a little wink-wink and get him back into play.”
And his best Vegas tip?……
“About nine grand,’ he answered. “Off the books, of course. A Korean guy owned an electronics company. He had pockets filled with chips. He goes, ‘This should be enough, right?’ They were thousand-dollar chips. He says, ‘That’s all right..’ I cashed them out once a week.”
Long-time Naperville entrepreneur Tom Harter, Sr. is the new majority investor at Lee’s. Coleman holds the license and ownership to the six-chair barbershop. Hernandez said, “I remember Lee’s from when I was a kid. It’s got its reputation, it’s got its legacy. It needs to be saved.”
* * * * *
My new friends at Lee’s (from left), Tom Harter, Sr, Kimberly Walker, Hernandez, and Annie Coleman. (D. Hoekstra photo)
A few weeks after I stumbled into this story I returned to Lee’s for fact-checking and to take some pictures. This time Hernandez was not alone. Harter was getting his beard trimmed by Coleman. Harter’s right arm was in a sling. Harter’s nurse Kimberly Walker was on hand. “It’s a coincidence you walked in,” Hernandez told me.
Harter, 74, owns Harter Investment Strategies, a Naperville-based private equity firm. He also owns the Luxeskin Med Spa in downtown Naperville. In 2018, Harter partnered with Chicago-based Ipsento Coffee that began on 2035 N. Western in Chicago. “Ipsento means ‘in search of’,” Harter said from his circa 1960s black leather barber chair. “It’s almost spiritual. We go all over the world looking for beans ” Harter is considering opening an Ipsento drive-through next to Lee’s, which would be the company’s first suburban operation.
Harter has lived in Naperville since 1974. He said, “I love Naperville. I’m a computer guy. We own Micodynamics (a national provider of personalized transactional printing and mailing services out of Naperville) and Estatement.com (an electronics delivery system).”
Coleman is a single mother from suburban Chananaon who has three boys between the ages of 14 and 25. Her son Tyler Holcomb is going to barber school in Plainfield and she hopes he works at Lee’s someday. Walker said that someday she was going to work in extensions at Lee’s. Upon my third round of fact checks, I learned she was kidding. I think. Harter explained, “In June 2015 I had a house built in Austin, Texas. I’m shooting down a hill in a bike and the front tire blew out. I broke my neck. Destroyed my nerve system. I’m still recovering. Kimberly has taken care of me. If I make a commitment I follow through. Anyone who took care of me while I was injured, I’ll take care of them. I was a fighter pilot, and to get injured on a bicycle……”
I had to go home and lay down after this encounter.
I had enough material for a screenplay. I also had to determine if this story was weird just because I grew up in Naperville, or if it was equally unique if it was based in Tinley Park or Chicago.
I forged ahead.
Comic Lewis Black (left), happy Hernandez Vegas client (Provided photo.)
With Harter’s backing, Lee’s will take an upscale turn. The store has already been COVID-cleaned and screens hang between chairs. Once COVID restrictions ease, the menu will be expanded from basic haircuts to English hot lather shaves and shampoos. “I want to change how it works,” Harter said. “Things I get into are either a disaster or work well. Things work right with the right people.”
Hernandez is the right quarterback.
His Uncle Joe Hernandez gave him his first haircut in his native San Benito, Tx. “Uncle Joe still runs a barbershop in San Benito,” he said. “He and my Dad went to barber school together and my Dad worked for him. He was voted in mayor (2004-2014) from the barbershop.” Noe and his family moved to unincorporated Naperville in 1974.
“Initially I didn’t have the right skills because I was shy and introverted,” Hernandez said. “I learned at the Moler Barber College because I was with the older guard–first-generation guys from Italy and Greece. These were seasoned. The mean streets, the ‘68 riots. So I’m coming in not secure of my skill sets. You hit the ground running. They go, ‘You need to speak up. You need to get faster.’ In the beginning, I wasn’t allowed to cut hair. I was only allowed to strap razors, do shaves and run errands. It was like boot camp. They said, ‘If you’re going to do this for a living, you need to grow a passion for it.’ It wasn’t just a job, it was a career path. It is a grind. I’m being honest with you. Everything I learned about being a man, I learned in a barbershop. I had my first cocktail in a barbershop. I had my first cigarette and cigar in a barbershop. I learned how to gauge someone’s conversation.”
Hernandez eventually became a Master Barber. That status is attained after a two-year apprenticeship following the two years it takes to become a registered barber. Hernandez now has more than 30 years of experience in cuts and straight shaves. Between 1987 and 1991 he had a chair in a since-closed shop on the lower level of the Palmer House hotel in downtown Chicago. “I did a lot of the vaudeville guys,” he said. “Red Buttons, Red Skeleton. Dennis Farina would come down. All the First Ward guys like Ed Vrdolyak came in. I was young, I didn’t know anything about that dirt. You start hearing it.”
In Las Vegas, Hernandez would travel to the homes of Siegfried & Roy and Celine Dion when clients were in poor health. He cut the hair of Dion’s husband-manager Rene’ Angelil as he battled throat cancer. “When Celine was doing her residency (at Caesars from 2011-2019) Rene’ was a frequent client,” Hernandez said from under the bill of his silver Las Vegas Country Club baseball cap. “We had a good relationship. As his health declined, it became more convenient to do services at his home. You are very respectful of his space and conversation space.
“(Actor) Steve Buscemi is a great animal. They were at the Flamingo shooting ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’ (2013). He’s just another guy. Some people push away their audience, he moved them in. They were the people that mattered to him.
“When I first got to Caesars I cut Shecky Greene’s hair. That was a great introduction. I didn’t know who he was and that irked him. He kept looking at me, ‘Hello!’ I go. ‘Hello?’ And he goes, ‘No, no HELLO! I’m Shecky Greene.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, good for you.’ Even before he sat in the chair he said he was the real deal. He had a lot of Vegas stories like, ‘They think they’re mobsters, well I’m so cool I drove my Cadillac into the fountain, threw my key to the valet, and said, ‘Park it.’ He said, ‘If you’re going to survive in Vegas, you’re going to have to tolerate guys like me.”
The wacky Shecky Greene
Greene was born in 1926 in Chicago. In 1968, he did drive his car into the new fountain at Caesars. Greene is the last living Vegas pioneer. He debuted in Vegas in 1953, opening for singer Dorothy Shea, a.k.a. “The Park Avenue Hillbilly.”
Just before the pandemic when Hernandez exited Caesars, the average haircut was $120 average haircut, shaves started at $100 and went up to $300. “Those were good margins,” he said with a laugh.
Currently, at Lee’s a haircut is $18 for seniors and $20 for high school students, Men’s hair cuts are $25. Military, fire, and police departments are $18. “We’re going back to the old school,” he said. “No shops are run like this anymore. These are dying by the day. Now because it’s become such a grind there’s not as much passion behind it.”
You will uncover a world of passion at Lee’s. It is a gamble worth taking.
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