The story below first appeared in American Crime Magazine.
Mouth
By Paul Davis
I recently went for a haircut to a local barber shop located about four blocks from my home in South Philadelphia.
The barber in residence was a young man and a good barber who had a mostly younger clientele. I happened to sit next to another old timer who, like me, missed the good old days when Frank and Sonny ran the shop.
Originally from Sicily, Frank and Sonny Provenzano came to Philadelphia in 1955 and opened their barber shop in 1965. In the 1960s, when I frequented the shop as a teenager, and into the 70s, 80s and 90s, Frank and Sonny’s barber shop had a congenial atmosphere akin to an old-fashioned taproom bar or a social club, minus the alcohol.
But the barbers did put out bottles of scotch, vodka and sambuca during the Christmas and New Year season. Back then, the barbers and customers smoked cigarettes freely in the shop, and some customers smoked cigars. The barber shop was authentically “South Philly.”
The barber shop back then was always crowded, and on any given day, customers came and went after getting a haircut as well as participating in the day’s running debate on sports or current events, moderated by the two barbers. The ongoing debate, often enlivened with abundant humor, made the long wait for a haircut enjoyable in the always crowded shop.
Frank Provenzano, the older brother, was a short, balding, avuncular man who retained his Italian accent even after all his years in America. Sonny, who was some years younger than Frank, was short with curly black hair and possessed a sardonic wit that sometimes offended his customers.
The two barbers supplemented their income by operating as bookmakers and loan sharks, and my crowd often made sport bets there and borrowed money from them when the bets didn’t work out. Like many of the young guys from my crowd, I thought of Frank and Sonny as my uncles rather than just my barbers.
In the late 1970s, when I was in my late 20s and a bachelor, the shop was so busy that the two brothers brought in a pretty young girl to cut hair in the third chair they had in the barber shop.
I recall one Saturday afternoon when the shop was standing room only. When it was my turn for a haircut, the young girl waved me towards her chair. I told her that I would wait for Sonny.
Although my short dark parted hair and my short trimmed dark beard were easy to cut, I was fussy and particular about who cut my hair. Not counting the four years I spent in the Navy, Frank and Sonny were the only barbers who had cut my hair since I was a kid.
“Go ahead, let her cut your hair,” Sonny said. “She’s good.”
Reluctantly, I agreed.
I sat in her chair as she wrapped a long white sheet around my shoulders and placed a white strip around my neck. She then just stood there beside me as I sat in the elevated barber’s chair and looked at me with her head cocked to the right. She turned to Sonny in the middle chair.
“I can’t cut his hair,” she said with an exasperated air. “He’s too good-looking.”
Sonny frowned, Frank chuckled, and the other customers in the barber shop roared with laughter. The girl was soon let go by the brothers and they arranged for her to work at a nearby woman’s beauty salon.
I was teased mercilessly both in the barber shop and elsewhere for some months after that. Friends would greet me with “Hey, Good-looking.” And a bartender and friend at our neighborhood bar looked at my other friends when I walked in and said, “I can’t serve Paulie a drink. He’s too good-looking.”
That got a big laugh at my
expense.
When I wrote about the barber shop in the mid-1990s in my column in the local newspaper, I quoted Frank stating, “We are a friendly shop. Everybody is more of a friend than a customer. We have customers who have moved to New Jersey and other places far away, but they still come back here for a haircut. A lot of shops give them a haircut and throw them out. Our friends stay about talk about the salaries of ball players and such. This is an Italian neighborhood, although we have all kinds living here, and we all get along.”
Thanks to their loyal, multi-generational following, the shop remained open for years even during the long hair days of the 1960s, when many other barber shops folded.
Frank and Sonny always seemed
to have a handful of oddball characters hanging around the shop. They would
sweep up the hair from the floor and make coffee runs to a nearby delicatessen for
the two barbers and any customers who also wanted coffee. But mostly the
characters entertained the barbers and the customers with unintentional humor.
One of their most entertaining and often annoying characters was Martin Alberto.
Alberto was around 5’10, lean
with dark wavey air and a permanent five o’clock dark shadow on his face. He
was a minor criminal, into “this and that,” but he often spoke like he was a big
shot mobster, even though everyone knew he certainly wasn’t.
As he was a non-stop, speed-talker, known as a chiacchierone - a chatter box in Italian - Alberto was called “Marty Mouth,” Motor Mouth,” Mighty Mouth,” or simply “Mouth.”
I recall one early weekday evening when I entered the shop and Alberto was pacing up and down the shop and talking fast. Sonny had an older man I didn’t know in his chair and Frank had my friend Bob Longo in his chair. Frank and Bob were smirking as Alberto went on and on.
“I know it ain’t right to do a cop,” Alberto said. “But I gotta tell ya this prick detective is getting on my last nerve. He’s always pulling me over when I’m driving around the neighborhood and questioning me right in front of everyone. He even pulled me into South Detectives and grilled me for an hour, but I didn’t fold. I didn’t tell him shit.”
Alberto, voice high and fast, spoke of how this detective was pressing his luck by harassing him.
“He don’t know who Marty Alberto is! I’m into some heavy shit right now, and this cop is crowding me. If I gotta go to the bosses and ask permission to whack this fucking cop, I will. And if they don’t give me the OK, I may whack his fucking fat ass anyway. I tell ya, I had it with this prick supercop.”
Just then Frank pulled off the barber’s neck to knees white sheet and Alberto saw Bob Longo’s blue police uniform, badge and sidearm.
Martin Alberto was – for perhaps the first time in his life – speechless.
Alberto turned quickly and bolted out the door as Bob Longo just shook his head and I, the two barbers and the other customers roared with laughter.
© 2025 Paul Davis
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