Veteran barber boasts, 'We still give them a good haircut'

The decor inside John Lucente's Barber Shop is simple. Utilitarian.

Three traditional barber chairs sit in front of mirrored work stations on one side of the small room; the other has a row of seats for waiting customers. Randomly sized photographs of various hairstyles adorn the walls.

But the regulars don't come to Lucente's, at 425 N. Lake St. in Mundelein, for the ambiance. They come for haircuts.

And some have been coming for a long, long time.

Take retired salesman Richard Hink, a 76-year-old Gurnee resident who's been getting his trims at Lucente's for more than 15 years.

Owner Dominic Lucente - son of the original John - cuts Hink's hair now. It wasn't always that way.

"His father actually got me hooked," Hink recalled while getting a cut recently.

An Italian immigrant, John Lucente founded the barber shop in 1956 at a nearby bowling alley. It moved to its current location in the mid-1980s.

The elder Lucente retired in 2002, leaving Dominic in charge.

"He cut hair for 63 years," Dominic said proudly. "That's an old-time barber."

Lucente's offers an old, hard-to-fund barber shop tradition: a hot shave with a straight razor. The practice grew out of fashion because of AIDS fears, and it's time consuming, but Lucente and the two other barbers who man the shop keep their blades sharp.

"People want it," said Lucente, 56, of Mundelein.

The business hasn't changed much through the decades, Lucente said. His customers mostly are male, and of all ages.

All of the shop's customers are walk-ins; appointments aren't necessary. Lucente estimates 85 percent of the people who visit the shop are regulars.

He definitely enjoys the time he spends with his clients.

"You clown around with the people," he said. "There are times you have to be serious, but you can have fun."

Lucente thinks it's the personalities in the shop that keep people coming back.

"And we still give them a good haircut," he said.

Older customers still ask about the elder Lucente, who's approaching 90 and likely still would be cutting hair if not for the macular degeneration that forced him to retire.

"I worked with my dad all those years," Dominic Lucente said. "How many people work with their dad for 32 years?"