Wala‘au at the barbershop

Manii Sanchez has been a professional barber since age 15. His friends paid him 50 cents a haircut, until he raised his rates and started charging a bag of chips and a bottle of Kool-Aid.

He co-owns The Parlor with his brother-in-law, Ian Clements, who he has known for over 30 years.

On Friday afternoon, they were gracious enough to let a TGI reporter sit in an empty barber’s chair and talk story with the people in their shop, among them a music producer who recently worked with a platinum-selling artist, a little boy who fist-bumped The Rock, and a barber who taught himself to cut his own hair using nothing but a comb and a razor blade.

This is what it sounded like.

Manii Sanchez: “Go ahead. We’re all ears.”

The Garden Island: Who was your first haircut?

Manii: My first haircut was Emmanuel Sanchez — myself.

TGI: How’d it come out?

Manii: Beautiful. That’s what inspired me. My mom used to cut my hair, and then I wanted to do it all the time, cause I lived in New Jersey. Everyone wanted to look good all the time. So I told her to cut my hair all the time, and she got tired of it. And I took up the clippers — did it for the first time — and it turned out really good. That’s how, and I continued doin’ it and doin’ it and doin’ it.

TGI: You gave yourself a fade the first time you ever picked up clippers?

He nodded.

Manii: And it was wonderful.

Manii’s noon appointment showed up 15 minutes late. There was traffic at the tree tunnel. He greeted his client with a hug and a handshake. The man sat down, and Manii started prepping him for the haircut, working instinctively, like cutting hair was as simple as driving a car or brushing teeth. Automatic.

Manii: Then, after that I cut ‘em for 50 cents.

TGI: What? Kids around the neighborhood?

Manii: At school. And then I started getting good, and uh, no longer worth 50 cents.

TGI: What’d you pump the price up to?

Manii: Actually, I bumped up the price — you’re gonna laugh — because I bumped up the price to a potato chip and one of those little barrel juice — those Kool-Aid barrel juice. Because I was using the 50 cents actually for that, so for me, I was like, ‘wait a second. If I’m having to go to the store and get it, and bring it, that’s where I want it.’ I don’t have to walk.

I think then, after that, it went up to ten bucks. It was $10 a haircut.

TGI: How old were you when you opened your first barbershop?

Manii: Twenty… Twenty — or twenty-one — yeah, twenty.

TGI: How’d you get the money to do that — to open up a shop?

Manii: My father sold his minivan — his precious minivan, he loved more than anything. He sold it, and I had some savings. And we hustled to open that up, and a lotta people helped me out — friends, you know. Had a really good friend of a carpenter — he was a carpenter and he helped me out. And a year later, we opened up a second barbershop because we overgrew the first one.

A friend ducked into the shop to say hello. Manii greeted him — “Heeey! Compa!”

TGI: Can I take a picture for the paper?

Manii: Wait, wait. Let me get it looking a little better. Cause if it looks bust up, it’ll be like, “Ho man! This is Manii’s best work?”

Manii’s brother-in-law jumped in.

Ian Clements: Ariki got lines in the movie and lines in his head!

Manii: So he’s my brother in law, who I met when he was 10 — never thought he was gonna be a barber. One day he just wakes up and says he wants to be a barber. Now he’s the co-owner of the shop. That’s the good thing you can put in the paper about him. Cause I like him to take care of the majority of the responsibilities. I’m just the face, as you can see.

Manii met Ian’s sister 23 years ago, when they were both in high school in Anchorage, Alaska. They have been together ever since and have three children.

Manii: I met her my senior year, a week before I’m getting, uh, ‘released.’ They said I was overqualified. They were like, “Mr. Sanchez, I think you’re good already.” I said, “Eh, okay. I’ll take my exit now.”

That’s another one that’s like a big cornerstone in my whole life.

TGI: The wife?

Manii: Uh huh. Cannot leave her, man. We got a 20 year old — about to be 21 now — 18 and a four-year-old.

TGI: Wow! 18 and four! There’s a big gap. The four-year-old must have been a accident, huh?

Manii: We call him “Left Field.” Cause he came outta nowhere.

Manii worked while he talked. His customer — a big Islander-looking guy with shaggy hair and scruffy beard — looked through hair clippings in his eyebrows and asked, “So what are you guys doing right now — like a interview thing?”

The customer’s name was Ariki Foster. Last year, he took his son to audition as an extra for “Hobbes and Shaw” — a movie starring The Rock that was filmed partly in Mahalepu — and they both ended up getting parts. An advanced screening of the movie was being held that afternoon at the Lihue cinema for the people of Kauai who worked on the film. Ariki was going, and he wanted to look sharp.

TGI: You been in a movie before, or is this the first one?

Ariki Foster: First one. Actually, I went to take him to get casted.

He pointed to a young kid, waiting by the water cooler who said he met The Rock on the set of the movie.

TGI: What did he say?

Kid: He gave me a fist bump.

TGI: How big was his fist?

Kid: Big.

Ariki: But then they wanted me too. I was the last guy to be casted for a cousin for The Rock. There was like four of us, and they were looking for one more person. But they wouldn’t tell me what the movie was. They just said was “Danny the Nanny.” I was like, man I don’t know if I want my debut to be in the nanny kinda movie, you know?

Ariki said he was picked for the role because he fit the look. Casting called for men over six feet tall, weighing at least 280 pounds. Ariki stands 6’1” and weighs 310. He played rugby in high school. Now he runs a recording studio in Lihue called Dubb City Productions.

Manii: And everybody knows Ariki.

TGI: Dubb City Productions, huh? Make any decent records over there?

Ariki: The last person I edited over there was SZA. You know, the singer, SZA?

SZA — pronounced like scissor minus the “r” — has won Soul Train, BET and Billboard Music awards. She’s been nominated for nine Grammys, and her song “All the Stars,” with Kendrick Lamar was up for Best Original Song at the 2019 Academy Awards. Her debut album in 2017 went platinum.

Ariki: SZA was here. She was on vacation, and she was looking around for a studio. She found mine, and she booked a whole week. And these are not like one-hour, two-hour, three-hour sessions. These are like — we go 15-hour sessions. Then she had her squad in there, and then Childish Gambino came up.

Childish Gambino has won multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards for directing and acting on the TV series, Atlanta. In February, his song, “This Is America,” won four Grammys, including record of the year. He was the guy who played the crazy-genius scientist in that movie where Matt Damon goes to Mars.

A couple minutes went by with little talk. The clippers buzzed around Ariki’s head. The cut was starting to come together. It was easy to forget Manii was doing work. His hands seemed to operate independently of the rest of his mind.

TGI: How did your father get to work after he sold that minivan?

Manii: I worked really hard and got him a lesser of a value car. And then I ended up giving him my best car, when the business, kinda like, started moving. I ended up getting an old Subaru, and I gave him my almost-brand-new Ford Explorer.

TGI: It didn’t take long for your business to get successful then?

Manii: One year. And I owe that to God. Can you write that? I owe it to him. It’s called grace. You pour grace. And it’s the same thing that’s being poured into this shop — grace.

TGI: How old is this shop?

Manii: This November is going on three years. And since we opened up the doors, it’s been a blessing. One of the things I wanted big time for the barber shop was to see fathers come with their kids and find that place — that old place. Cause the barbershop is where you find a lot of information. You know, you kinda grow, if you’re a young kid, listening to what the older men are saying.

Surprisingly, there’s so many barbers that became barbers just by going to my other barbershops that I ran. And they call me today like, “Oh, Manii, I’m a barber. I kept watching you and all the guys in the shop, and I got inspired. And I wanted to be a barber then.”

I’m like, “I can’t believe you turned out to be a barber,” and they was like, “Yeah. That’s why I kept looking so much.”

It makes me feel, like honestly, honored that other people wanted to do the same thing. I felt like they saw that it was a passion and fun at the same time. Cause it could be hard work, but man, we have a lotta good laughs. The best nicknames come outta the barbershop.

Ian: That’s how I got my nickname The Rock.

TGI: Why do they call you The Rock?

Manii: They don’t call him the Rock!

Ian: Hey! Hey! I told my wife to address me as such.

Manii: I tell my wife — I tell her like this — to call me Caballo. Caballo — the horse. Tha Horse!

Ian: I’ve heard though, multiple people, that they don’t come here that much for the haircuts, but more for the conversation. We have a lot of good, either meaningful conversations, or conversations about — a lotta like just sports talk mostly, but it could be about anything.

That’s kinda what the barbershop has always been about, and it’s kinda like a safe place to express exactly how you feel. You can say anything in the barbershop without being crucified, but you will definitely get an opposing opinion.

Manii: Tell him. What’s our motto?

Ian: If the brakes don’t stop you, something will.

Manii: It’s the only place where your opinion is wrong.

Ian: Yeah. No, no. What I always say is, you’ll have two Dominicans in the room and four opinions.

TGI: But don’t nobody get offended really, in the barbershop.

Ian: Well, you’re not allowed to! You can’t help but develop thick skin here. You learn how to deal with it face to face.

Manii: It’s a place of growth. You gotta learn how to bring it. If not, then keep yourself apart. You know what I mean? Until you learn.

Ian: Like Manii talked about — we love seeing fathers bring their sons in. And I’ve heard multiple people say they love bringing their sons into a barber shop because it’s where they learn how to behave and conduct themselves around other men. That’s why when everybody comes in here, they give everybody knuckles, and when they leave they give everybody knuckles. I mean, you shake everybody’s hand when you walk in and when you walk out.

Manii nodded at another barber who sat quietly in his chair, waiting for his next appointment to show up.

Manii: He’s also been a barber for twenty-something years.

The other barber hadn’t said a word the whole time. Even when Manii started talking about him, he just watched TV and pretended he either couldn’t hear or couldn’t understand. I doubt either were true. Benny has been been my barber for the last couple of months. We’ve never had a conversation longer than two sentences, but I won’t get my hair cut by anyone else on the island. Benny is meticulous.

Manii and Benny were childhood friends in the Dominican Republic. They got back in touch a while back, when Manii went back to the DR to visit and found Benny doing fades without clippers, using nothing but a razor blade and a pocket comb.

Manii: When he and I, kinda like, started, I didn’t know that he was into barbering. And I went to a trip to the Dominican Republic, and he was still living over there.

And I’m like, “How are you cutting your hair? You got buzzers?” No. This guy was cutting his hair like this.

He demonstrated the technique, pressing a razor blade flat against the teeth of a comb, sliding it up and down to adjust for length.

Manii: He take one razor blade — so, he would change the guard size, and cut his own hair. That’s what he was doing. And I’m like, “Who cut your hair?” Man like, “I did.”

“With what?” And he go like, “With this.” And I’m like, “Get the freak outta here!” He didn’t have no clippers. So from there, I started respecting his skill. He’s humble, in a way…

Ian: Who?!? Who’s humble?!?

Perhaps, in different company, Benny may not act quite so humble as he appeared on that day.

Manii: Well, when it comes to cutting hair… But he’s a beast. He’s a beast.

TGI: How would you even think to do that, with the comb and the razor?

Manii: You know, it’s a third world country. When you don’t have light, when you don’t have electricity, when you don’t have nothing, you gotta make it happen.

Ian: What’s that saying, like, “Poverty breeds creativity,” or something like that?

TGI: Necessity is the mother of invention.

Ian: Yo. That one was better. Just write down that I said what you said.