Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow: P’ville Salon Celebrates 25 Years
Raffaele “Ralph” Farraioli has been cutting hair for most of his life and for the last 25 years in Pleasantville.
In 1990, Farraoili came to the village, opening La Barberia on Wheeler Avenue. A lot has changed over the last quarter of a century.
During that time, kids who needed booster seats are graduating college while adults who visited him for haircuts when they were growing up in Yonkers are now bringing their own children to La Barberia.
Farraioli said it was always important that the shop be a place where families could come to get their hair cut without breaking the bank.
“I had no idea where to go…so I really prayed that evening and I felt like getting on the Sprain [Brook Parkway] and I got here,” he said of his decision to open a shop in Pleasantville.
“I’m a family man myself and I know what it can cost to bring kids to a hair salon, and then yourself, and then your wife, so our work is just as good as the high end stores,” Farraioli said. “I just couldn’t go there [with high prices]. I just didn’t feel like that’s the right thing to do,” he added.
Farraioli, 71, began cutting hair in the early 1960s, after winning $2,700 in a sweepstakes while working as a cashier in his father’s supermarket. After using some of the money to take a vacation in Florida, he returned to his apartment on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx, which happened to be located above a barber shop. Following a conversation with that shop owner, Farraioli used his remaining money to go to barber school.
After a few apprenticeships under some of the biggest names in hair at the time, including Vidal Sassoon, Farraioli got a hair cutting job at a Manhattan shop in 1969 at a time when men were wearing their hair long. It was his ability to style hair for men and women that inspired him to open the first unisex salon in Yonkers a year later.
“I was doing guys’ long hair and now the girls are coming in and they want the same haircut as their boyfriend, so I started doing girls and realized…I’m going to open up a unisex salon,” Farraioli said.
He remained in Yonkers before selling the business to his former employees and taking a break from the hair cutting business. But after getting bored, Farraoli started search for a location for a new shop. A sudden burst of inspiration found him driving north from his Yonkers home, and eventually he found himself in Pleasantville. Farraioli determined that it must be a nice neighborhood because there were no locked metal gates in front of the jewelry store.
Although his prices have remained relatively consistent, a lot has changed in the world of hairstyles since he started the business. He said hairstyles for men have become more complex while women are shying away from high-maintenance hairstyles and opting for easy-to-manage hairdos.
Although he will be turning 72 next month, Farraioli has no intentions of retiring anytime soon. He hopes to keep himself and his staff up to date on the latest styles from Europe and remain in business as long as possible.
And no matter what hairstyles are popular, if there’s one that poses a challenge he will learn how to do it.
“There’s not a haircut that walks around that I can’t do or my staff can’t do,” Farraioli said.
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