"Barbering Is an Art"
Character study
Arthur Rubinoff, surrounded by memorabilia he’s been collecting for the NYC Barber Museum Shop, which he will open soon on the Upper West Side.Credit...Levi Mandel for The New York Times
Arthur Rubinoff, 43, opened the roll down gate on a storefront along Columbus Avenue in Manhattan.
“Coming Soon,” read a sign on the door. “NYC Barber Museum Shop.”
Inside the space was under construction but already Mr. Rubinoff’s signature décor — with all the subtlety of Versailles — could be seen in the six ornate chandeliers being hung on a small ceiling and the elaborate gilded trim along the edges.
“That’s all gold paint, 24 karat,” said Mr. Rubinoff, who owns the Reamirchain of shops in Manhattan and plans on opening the New York City Barber Museum by mid-June.
“I’m doing it to give respect to all the barbers in the world, and to show that barbering is an art,” said Mr. Rubinoff, who explained that the museum, at Columbus Avenue, between 73rd and 74th Streets, will double as a shop.
Visitors can get a haircut and peruse displays of antique and vintage barber equipment, from chairs and striped poles to towel steamers and straight razors.
In addition to the displays, the space will have sets of antique chairs and mirrors that will serve as functioning haircutting stations.
Arthur Rubinoff, surrounded by memorabilia he’s been collecting for the NYC Barber Museum Shop, which he will open soon on the Upper West Side.Credit...Levi Mandel for The New York Times
Arthur Rubinoff, 43, opened the roll down gate on a storefront along Columbus Avenue in Manhattan.
“Coming Soon,” read a sign on the door. “NYC Barber Museum Shop.”
Inside the space was under construction but already Mr. Rubinoff’s signature décor — with all the subtlety of Versailles — could be seen in the six ornate chandeliers being hung on a small ceiling and the elaborate gilded trim along the edges.
“That’s all gold paint, 24 karat,” said Mr. Rubinoff, who owns the Reamirchain of shops in Manhattan and plans on opening the New York City Barber Museum by mid-June.
“I’m doing it to give respect to all the barbers in the world, and to show that barbering is an art,” said Mr. Rubinoff, who explained that the museum, at Columbus Avenue, between 73rd and 74th Streets, will double as a shop.
Visitors can get a haircut and peruse displays of antique and vintage barber equipment, from chairs and striped poles to towel steamers and straight razors.
In addition to the displays, the space will have sets of antique chairs and mirrors that will serve as functioning haircutting stations.
Mr. Rubinoff said he grew up in Fergana, a city in Uzbekistan, and spent his childhood in his father’s barber shop — “the first wash and cut shop in Uzbekistan.”
Mr. Rubinoff was 14 when his family moved to the United States and settled among the many other Uzbek immigrants in and around Forest Hills, Queens.
Mr. Rubinoff said he began cutting hair in his father’s shop in Astoria and dropped out of Forest Hills High School to work full time.
Mr. Rubinoff said his father, a barber, enjoyed acquiring antique barber equipment.
“When I was young, I’d ask him, ‘Why are you buying this garbage?’” he recalled. “He said, ‘One day, I want to open a museum’ — almost as a joke.”
Mr. Rubinoff said that after his father died in 2003, he changed his last name, Babadzhanov, to Rubinoff, which sounded more Western and more marketable. And he resolved to open a museum and began buying any antique items he came across.
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