By ALYSON KRUEGERDEC. 10, 2014
David Terry is 50 years old,
H.I.V. positive and homeless. He spends his nights at Bailey House, a nonprofit
in Harlem that provides housing for people living with H.I.V., and his days
wandering the streets. “I get very depressed because it’s like I’m on the
treadmill going 80 miles an hour with the brakes on,” he said.
But for one hour the other
Sunday, life slowed down to a happy pace. Sitting on a park bench on the corner
of East Houston and Chrystie Streets, Mr. Terry was getting a haircut from Mark
Bustos, a professional stylist with a celebrity clientele.
“Can you believe this is
happening?” Mr. Terry said, a white bib wrapped around his neck, cigarette in
hand and Stevie Wonder’s “Conversation Peace” playing in the background. An
hour later, he looked in the mirror, and saw that his messy mop was now a
stylish flattop. “Yeah, baby, I’ve still got it,” he said, striking a victory
pose. “I’m the king of the world.”
Every Sunday, Mark Bustos, 30,
a hairstylist at Three Squares Studios, an elite salon in Chelsea that charges
$150 to clients like Norah Jones, Marc Jacobs and Phillip Lim, hits the
sidewalk and provides free cuts to the homeless.
Mr. Bustos often wanders around
Union Square, the Lower East Side and Midtown, where he has gotten to know some
of the homeless by name. “See that guy over there,” he said, walking down the
Bowery. “That’s Cowboy Ritchie,” whose wife, Mr. Bustos added, “wants him to
shave his beard off because it looks too good and the other women flirt with
him.”
Other times, Mr. Bustos meets
his unsuspecting new clients through friends and paying clients, who tell him
about people in their neighborhoods. He does up to 10 haircuts a day.
He started offering haircuts to
the homeless two years ago. The idea, he says, is to simply give back. “Whether
I’m giving one at work or on the street, I think we can all relate to the
haircut and how it makes us feel,” Mr. Bustos said. “We all know what it feels
like to get a good haircut.”
In some way, Mr. Bustos, who
lives in Jersey City, has always been generous about hairstyling, which he
taught himself at a young age. When he was 14, Mr. Bustos set up a chair in his
parents’ garage in Nutley, N.J., and cut friends’ hair for free, so they could
pocket the barbershop money they got from their parents.
A 2012 trip to the Philippines
to visit family made him realize he could do more. He was struck by the number
of impoverished children and decided to rent a barbershop as his way of
helping. “It made me feel so good,” Mr. Bustos said. “It was right to bring it
home to New York.” Since then, he has spent most Sundays in New York, styling
the hair of the homeless.
Mary E. Brosnahan, the
president and chief executive of Coalition for the Homeless, a nonprofit
advocacy group, said that a haircut is often more than a haircut. It can remind
the homeless of who they once were, and offer a rosier version of their
current, shattered selves. “It helps shift the gear out of survival mode,” Ms.
Brosnahan said, letting them envision a better life.
Joi Gordon, the chief executive
officer of Dress for Success, which provides professional clothes to homeless
job seekers, has similar stories of transformation. “For most women, this is
the first time that they’ve ever put on a suit in their lives,” she said. “That
blazer really serves as a life jacket.”
Mr. Bustos tells a similar
story of a homeless man who once looked in the mirror after a haircut, saw his
fresh look and said: “Do you know anyone who is hiring. I’m ready to go get a
job.” Mr. Bustos hasn’t seen him on the street since, something he considers a
good sign.
His haircuts are always
conducted on the street. If a park bench is not available, Mr. Bustos will find
a milk crate or turn over a shopping cart. Rain or freezing temperatures do not
deter him. (Since many homeless do not have regular access to washrooms, Mr.
Bustos wears gloves, carefully disposes of hair clippings and disinfects his
tools between every cut, just as he does with his equipment at work.)
“I do it on the streets, on the
sidewalks, in the parks,” he said, “so people who walk by can find some
inspiration in what I do.”
That is the same reason that
Devin Masga, a street photographer, accompanies him and posts before-and-after
photos to Mr. Bustos’s Instagram feed with the hashtag #BeAwesomeToSomebody.
Mr. Bustos has more than 215,000 Instagram followers, some of whom donate
supplies and gift cards, or ask how they can get help. “People ask me if I can
come out with you or join your team,” he said. “My answer is just go and do
it.”
“Just because they live on the
street looking a little scruffy with their hair long doesn’t mean they can’t
clean up and look great,” he added.
