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Today's Featured Biography

 
Anthony Varano

The following article appeared in the Daily Item by Amanda Keister.

A Cut Above The Rest
Sunbury barber has been in the business for 50 years.

SUNBURY-Tony Varano has been trimming, buzzing and styling the coifs of men in Sunbury for 50 years.
His career began when he was in junior high school when his after school job in a Market Street barber shop as a shoe shine boy grew into a dream.
I would watch these barbers work and got the idea that I was going to get a set of tools and start cutting hair and that's how I started," he said. "It just facinated me that these guys were busy cutting hair making money and I just sort of liked working with people."
Mr. Varano, 66, began his apprenticeship at 16 in a Market Street barber shop. In 1959 at 18 he moved across the street to Toby's Tip Top Barber Shop, which he soon came to own.
"I got over here and I just never left," he said. "I spent the rest of my life here."
In 1959, a man could get a haircut here for one dollar. At that time, men came to Tony for shaves, shampoos, hair tonics and scalp massages.
"I had customers who would come in here two to three times a week, they just loved to get a hot towel on their face and they liked being fussed over, but that's no longer done," he said. "We are strictly a barber shop now.
Just as hair styles have changed. so have the prices at Tony's, now known as The Main Event. Prices for a haircut have gone up about $11, still a bargain.
"Years ago we used to raise our prices a quarter and oh did we get a reaction," Mr. Varano said . "People thought we were taking advantage of them. Nowadays people don't care. A quarter was a lot of money back then.
Like many barbers, Mr. Varano says he has heard the life stories of many of his customers.
"You have to like people to be in a job like this, you do," he said. "People sort of confide in you. You get to be a good listener to be able to cut hair and it's enjoyable."
But it's easy to be a listener in this shop-there is no television, a feature Mr. Varano has always resisted.
"No, no TV," he said with a laugh. "People kid me about TV and I tell them no way. I said we don't need a TV. We're your entertainment."
In the 1950's, Sunbury boasted more than a dozen barber shops. Only five remain.
Mr. Varano says ne makes a point of taking in barbers fresh out of school, in a kind of homeage to his own roots.
"Because somebody gave me a break in a barber shop...so I feel that I owe it to a barber, to all the years of success I've had," he said.
Mr. Varano is semi-retirednow. He has no immediate plans to retire, and works a couple of days a week in a room that is separate from the other chairs in the shop.
"I started at the bottom at the bottom shining shoes and I worked my way up," he said with a smile. "I pursued my dream and I did it."

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