Sixty years of haircuts in the same Mile End chairs

Up in the Mile End, there's a line of 1950s Koken Presidential chairs that've been there for about as long as their manufacturing date. Only difference is that their sage green leather's been worn smooth by seven decades of Montreal elbows.

When Ralph Bou Jaoude saw these chairs, "that was it. These are everything."

Everything, in this case, is Hollywood Barbershop on Fairmount. Not to be reductive, but it all came down to three vintage chairs, a vintage cash register, a custom hand-painted clock, and neighbourhood history. A place of greater importance than one might notice at first—the quality of many good old things in Montreal these days. As for Ralph, he considers his stewardship of the business two years ago more like inheriting the weight of keeping something alive than it is a straightforward business acquisition.

What came before

The 29-year-old Lebanese-Canadian barber could have slapped his own name on the door when he took the place over from a Pakistani gentleman who'd struggled through the pandemic and decided to return home. Instead, Ralph made a choice that his generation doesn't always make: he decided to be a custodian.

"The ego was playing tricks, you know?" Ralph admits. "You want to put your own name, you want to do something for yourself. But this wasn't about that."

Hollywood Barbershop has been cutting hair since the 1960s, only with different pairs of hands. It began with three Jewish brothers that opened the place with its now-iconic green chairs. Then an Italian barber named (or at least known by Ralph as) Joe Giovanni took over in the '70s, followed by another Italian whose name from our research only appears to be Michel. He ran the shop for twenty years until 2017, and it was during his tenure that the shop was immortalized in Barbershops (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2005), a book filled with more than 200 photographs of dozens of barbershops scattered throughout Montreal. After Michel, Ahmed kept it going until COVID forced his hand.

Each owner respected what came before—the name, the chairs, the clock, the trust that builds over decades of cuts and conversation.

Barber = therapist

As for Ralph, he learned his craft the old-school way, working alongside his father in Lebanon after abandoning electrical engineering studies that never felt right. "I was more handy," he says simply. "I like working with my hands."

His father had been cutting hair for thirty years, and in that cramped barbershop in Jdeideh, north of Beirut, Ralph discovered something university couldn't teach him: the art of making people feel better about themselves.

When civil unrest pushed the family back to Montreal in 2021, Ralph brought those skills with him. He worked in other shops, learned the rhythms of a city where customers speak French, English, Arabic, and everything in between; where trends shift from Lebanese-style sharp fades to Brazilian designs to classic Quebecois natural cuts. Montreal's diversity, he realized, makes you a better barber—every client teaches you something new about hair, culture, expectations.

But Hollywood Barbershop also offered the chance to be part of a story bigger than himself.

Earning trust

The shop Ralph inherited needed love—Ahmed had left it a little worn around the edges, the way places get when survival becomes the only priority. He repainted the walls to brighten the space, installed better lighting, added aromatherapy diffusers that fill the air with essential oils. He kept the old cash register, the Hollywood Barbershop memorabilia—traces of authenticity that make the place feel timeless. The harder work was earning the neighbourhood's trust.

"You have customers of the barbershop that you don't know," Ralph explains. "They're going into the barbershop not knowing who you are, and they're not ready to see another barber at all."

Some longtime clients drifted away no doubt, but others stayed, drawn by Ralph's careful attention to the old-school service his father taught him: respect for the craft, respect for the customer, respect for the community.

Mile End has seen plenty of changes over the decades—Orthodox Jewish families giving way to francophone artists, then tech workers and young professionals pricing out the artists. But Fairmount Street maintains something authentic, anchored by institutions like Wilensky's and Fairmount Bagel, even as others have been forced out. Ralph sees Hollywood Barbershop as part of this precious ecosystem, a place that serves the neighbourhood rather than trying to transform it.

Timelessness, not time travel

"It's all about therapy, man," Ralph says, pointing to a small sign on the wall that defines a barber as a therapist who cuts hair.

For many clients, especially those working from home, the barbershop provides their main human contact of the week, he explains. "Maybe I'm the person they're seeing in the whole day, maybe the whole week—the only one to maybe chat or have a conversation with outside their work, outside the rat race."

The three-chair setup keeps things personal. Ralph works alongside his colleague Jordi, a barber from Montpellier, France, maintaining that one-on-one attention that chain salons can't replicate. "It's not a factory," Ralph insists. "The service is going to stay special to every client."

Those green chairs anchor everything—artifacts from an era when personal presentation mattered enough to justify their $5,000-each value on today's vintage market. Ralph knows their worth, but he also knows their purpose: they're not museum pieces but working tools, still serving the same function they did seventy years ago.

Some traditions survive because they adapt. Ralph maintains Hollywood Barbershop's Instagram account, books appointments online, accepts modern payment methods. He's learned to navigate Mile End's linguistic complexity, switching between languages mid-sentence to make everyone feel welcome. But the core remains unchanged: a place where men can sit in vintage chairs, get a proper cut, and talk or stay quiet as the mood strikes them.

The irony isn't lost on Ralph that he's preserving something his generation supposedly doesn't value. While the world obsesses over disruption and innovation, he's chosen continuity. While his peers chase tech fortunes, he's mastering the ancient art of making people look good and feel better. While corporations homogenize everything they touch, he's keeping a pocket of authenticity alive on a street corner in Mile End.

"Whatever happens, happens," Ralph says, with the calm of someone who's found where they want to be. "We work hard, we stay consistent, and we keep our job happy."

What are the chances that Hollywood Barbershop could endure the way it has, as something worth preserving because it refused to change? Because it's timeless? That's what Ralph saw when he took on the business, becoming the de facto guardian of not only the place itself and its vintage chairs and hand-painted clock, but also of a belief that tradition and progress can coexist.