A display of shiny, colorful Maxims and Sports Illustrateds sits in the corner window of The University Barbershop on Dryden Rd. I pass by the window every day on my way home from campus and have often found myself wondering who selects and organizes the magazines. I found the answer and much more when I interviewed the owner of the barbershop, Rick Pace.

Pace, the owner and sole employee of the shop, has quite a legacy in the barbershop business. Pace’s grandfather began working as a Collegetown barber around 1940, and his father began in the late ’60s. Pace said that when his father and grandfather were in business, the entire 400 block of College Ave. was filled with barbershops to meet the high demand for haircuts. The reason the demand was higher was that when Cornell was founded, Andrew Dickson White mandated that all male students participate in military training. In addition to drilling and marching, men needed their hair cut every two to three weeks to maintain the military-required short buzz cut. The Collegetown barbershop business was busy until the 1960s brought a pair of detrimental changes: administrative changes removed mandatory military training, and the Beatles British invasion significantly increased the popularity of long hair. Barbers’ business faltered, and almost all of the barbershops populating the 400 block had to close up shop for good.

Pace’s first job in Collegetown was before the Beatles era. He began his work in Collegetown shining shoes in his father and grandfather’s College Ave. barbershop. Pace had no intention of remaining and opted to join the navy instead. He enlisted in 1973; in 1976, Pace left the army with the hope of becoming a carpenter. Unfortunately, Pace said that during that period, the Jimmy Carter era, high mortgage rates put a damper on new construction, and it was very hard to find carpentry work. Pace found himself with nothing to do and chose to pass the time by taking advantage of the opportunities offered through the GI Bill and enrolling in barber school in Syracuse.

Pace graduated from barber school around 1977 and soon after got his first barber job. He began working in a Collegetown barbershop. The shop was owned by one of the few barbers that had survived the failure of the 400 block and was cutting hair for the “few people who still got haircuts,” but was located in the brown house located next to what today is Collegetown Liquors. Pace spent a couple of years at the shop before he started the first of three barbershops he would eventually run. Pace stayed with his first shop for several years before selling, when he finally got a chance to try his hand at carpentry. His first shop still stands today and is run under the name Mikey David’s.

Pace worked as a carpenter for several years while the housing business was busy. When the housing market began to slump again and Pace had gotten his fill of carpentry, he opted to return to barbering. He began anew and opened another shop. This time his shop was in Ithaca’s west end, on the old Taughannock Boulevard. Pace ran that shop until he got the opportunity to move back up to Collegetown. The owner of the shop where Pace had his first job was looking to retire and knew that Pace had been hoping to return to Collegetown. Pace welcomed the chance to move back up the hill and decided to sell his Taughannock shop. Pace’s second shop, the one on Taughannock, is still in business as well, now under the name Gary’s Barbershop. Consequently, Pace became the owner of the shop now location on Dryden Ave., and he has remained there for the last 12 years.

Pace says he enjoys the University Barbershop because of his diverse clientele. At least 95 percent of his customers are students, all of whom come in with their own interesting stories to share. He said he “cuts people’s hair from all over the world” and hears firsthand about the problems taking place in other countries that “don’t coordinate too well with [the stories] you read in the paper.” For example, last year, during a flare-up of the conflict in Israel, Pace had a student sitting in his barber’s chair who was from Lebanon and another waiting who was from Israel. He says the “students keep it interesting” for him and are part of the reason he is happy to have spent time on and off over the last 46 years working in Collegetown.

Unfortunately, the story about the magazines in the window is fairly blasé in comparison to those about Rick Pace’s barbershop. Pace says he has little to do with the magazines selection: they are just sent to him in the mail, and he doesn’t even pay for them.

Pace joked, “They know what [magazines] to mail the barbershop.”