Meet the guys causing a buzz at St. Paul's 7th Street Barbers

Time was, before pandemic, a Saturday morning visitor to 7th Street Barbers in St. Paul might have to wait a couple of hours to get a haircut.

They likely didn't care.

Chances were good that if you snagged an empty seat before noon, you'd score free donuts and a complimentary beer as you shot the breeze with barbers Pete Klein and Mark Kern and other customers about everything from muscle cars to the Danish television.

Haircuts now are by appointment only. But customers are once again showing up early and staying a little late for the banter that comes with the haircut. Eye On St. Paul visited Minnesota's oldest continuously operating barber shop to chat with Mark, Pete and Pete's son, Wyatt, to learn what makes this shop such a fun stop on haircut day. This interview was, ahem, edited for length.

Q: Pete, where are you from?

Pete: Montana. Then we moved to Roseville and I graduated from Roseville Area High School.

Q: How long have you owned this shop?

Pete: Twelve years.

Q: Mark, how long have you been at the shop?

Mark: Ten years. We've been partners four years now.

Q: COVID made a lot of changes, hasn't it?

Pete: We were a walk-in business. We had lines going out the door on Saturday mornings. Then we moved to appointments, which is more my speed now. On Saturdays, we'd open at 8 and go to noon. If people got here before noon, we usually stayed open longer to get them in. We had donuts and we had beer.

Q: It seems that you have a little more sanity to your own schedule now.

Pete: And when we started doing the appointments, I noticed we were seeing a whole lot of people who'd left.

Q: Because they knew they'd get in for a haircut?

Pete: Yeah.

Q: Wyatt joined you when?

Pete: A year ago November. We hadn't had any walk-in business for two years. Now we've been able to start that up again.

Q: You say this is the oldest continuous barber shop in Minnesota.

Pete: Since 1893.

Q: Barbers seem a little like bartenders. Why do people tell you things?

Pete: Because you have, like, a very personal experience. You can tell a priest everything because you're not afraid they'll tell [someone else]. But here? We've talked to some priests, and I said, "Hey, Father Joe, we're kind of the same." He said, "I'm pretty sure we're not." And I said, "No offense, Father, but some people will tell their barber what they won't tell their priest."

Q: Mark, where did you graduate?

Mark: Highland Park [High School] in 2006.

Q: Where do you live?

Mark: In Cottage Grove. I moved out to the 'burbs. I'd love to be in St. Paul, but taxes are too high for me [laughs].

Q: So, what's it like being a barber on W. 7th?

Mark: It's a lot of fun here. You see a little bit of everything. It's like a small town, where you know everybody.

Q: How many haircuts have you done?

Mark: Thousands. I've been here about 10 years now.

Q: How many cuts a day?

Mark: About 15 cuts a day. Five days a week.

[Just then, a customer waiting for his haircut chimes in.]

Customer: Mark, I just did the math. If you do 15 haircuts a day, in the time you've been here, you've done 39,000 haircuts.

Mark: Well, there you go. Thanks for doing the math.

Pete: I've cut about 200,000 heads of hair, which is almost the population of St. Paul. I was at a real high-volume shop for nine years at Schmidty's. Four guys constantly going.

Q: Serious question — is this shop haunted?

Pete: Yes.

Q: By whom?

Pete: Well, there's a gal with two kids. Then a guy by the name of Brown. He's behind you. [There's a framed newspaper story on the wall, telling how Farmer Brown's skull was crushed in an accident with a runaway horse in front of the shop.]

Q: What do the ghosts do?

Pete: Throw things. Lock doors. Walk around. You can hear them.

Q: Do you ever see them?

Pete: I never see them. One day I came in here, it smelled like fresh flowers. That was during the shutdown. No one was in here. It made no sense.

Q: Where do they hang out?

Pete: The basement. Wyatt won't go down there.

Wyatt: They don't like me.

Q: It seems that full-service barber shops are making a comeback. Why?

Pete: Bougie. Back in the '80s, people got away from it. Old barbers, they retired. Now people want that level of service again.

Q: Mark, what is it about cutting hair that you like?

Mark: Just talking to people. Hearing stories. Helping people who come in looking a little rough and leave feeling like a million dollars. I've done interview haircuts. Wedding haircuts. Graduation haircuts.

Pete: They're coming back to the traditional barber shop. The barber renaissance started about 2010. Now with Instagram and Facebook, guys are getting out there, showing off. Now, you have celebrity barbers.