Master barber Alec marks 45 years in Leigh St
Leigh St institution Alec’s hairdresser celebrates a milestone as owner Alec Mastrangelo celebrates 45 years in the premises, styling the powerful, the poor and all in between with equal care.
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He arrived in Adelaide with no English, not much cash but with hope in his heart — and this month the Figaro of Leigh St marks 45 years as an Adelaide institution.
Alec Mastrangelo, master hairdresser and stylist, recalls when Leigh St had two-way traffic and you could park on either side. Now it is blocked to through traffic and full of cafes and small bars.
In 45 years on site as a traditional barber he has styled mullets and mohawks, hippies and hipsters in a career treating the powerful and the poor with equal care. His barber shop with four working chairs and eight waiting chairs — often full of people just popping in for a chat — is like an Italian village square where robust opinions from politics to football are exchanged over strong coffees and humorous insults.
While reluctant to estimate how many haircuts he has done in Leigh St over the journey, a typical day tops 20, and he is open five and a half days a week. That’s a lazy 250,000 cases of men, and a few women, being trimmed and tidied complete with neck shaven and errant eyebrow, nose and ear hairs cut. Plus gel if desired.
“In Italy as a boy I milked the goats and cows, worked the land, and at eight started to learn to be a barber because my father thought it was good inside work — and people always need a haircut,” he recalls.
Life in the village of Anzano di Puglia was tough, and his elder brother Michele who had emigrated wrote to suggest he try his luck in Australia.
With no English and little money, Alec — real name Euplio — embarked alone on a three week sea voyage, sea sick the entire way, aged 18.
“We were the last ship down the Suez Canal in May 1967 before war there,” he recalls. “It was pretty scary when I got here. I couldn’t speak the language and everything was new and different. Even the streets all looked the same.
“I needed a job straight away so worked at Arndale for a few weeks, then Alberton for a few months then six-and-a-half years in Gouger St for two different people. It was pretty tough but I saved hard.”
In October 1974 he opened his own shop in Leigh St and has never looked back.
Nor has he been back to Italy. In January he celebrates 50 years of marriage to Michelina who he met in Adelaide’s welcoming Italian community.
Raising four daughters, and helping with eight grandchildren, while running his own business meant time and money put paid to such a trip. He has been to Northern America to visit family, and family have been her to visit him.
The nickname Figaro, from the Barber of Seville opera, has stuck over the years as he has styled luminaries from Jay Weatherill and Barry Humphries to sports stars, corporate heavyweights, city workers and the battlers, all welcomed on equal terms.
Like a good bartender, barber work requires a touch of social work as customers open up about families, relationships, work — and like a good bartender such confidences remain in-house.
As he steps outside the shop for a chat and to survey his patch of Little Italy in Leigh St, Alec, 71, says he has no intention of retiring.
“I enjoy all this too much,” the diehard Crows supporter says. “I believe in hard work, treating people with respect — and I’d also suggest young people work hard, save hard and have patience to reach their goals rather than wanting everything now and getting into debt.”
Keep that philosophy in mind when you pop in for a trim, a shave, or perhaps the latest “fading” men’s hairstyle — it is a cash-only operation, with a coffee thrown in for regulars.