“We all have a hair journey,” says Sheena Lister. “But the [salon] industry is still traditional — women have long hair, men have short. Yet there’s so much in between.”
The in-between is the sweet spot that Lister is betting on with The Barb Shop, her new barbershop in Bernal Heights. In particular, but not exclusively, she’s hoping to draw in women who want a short cut — a buzzcut, mullet, or faux hawk. “For years, my choices were to go to a salon and spend $200 on a short haircut every few weeks, or go to a barbershop and be the only woman in the chair,” she says. “Sometimes I’d even get turned away. There was nowhere that really felt like mine.”
So she decided to build one. Located on Cortland Avenue, just down the street from where she lives with her wife and two kids, the barber shop opened Sunday inside a former salon.
The place is clearly a barber shop, minus the bro vibes. The interior, co-designed by Lister and her friend Gracie O’Rourke from 444 Architects, is playful, with a retro riot of colors. “It was me and Gracie at 4 in the morning looking at tiles and being like, ‘How about this?’” Lister says.
One wall is lined with graphic cement tiles with pops of lemon-yellow; the floors are burgundy- and white-checked; the walls are paneled in wood. Lister hired local artists Michelle “Meng” Nguyen and Jeffrey Larrimore of Signs by Meng to handpaint the signage as well as a mural of Lister and her wife’s grandmothers — who, you can tell, were strong characters. One is painted wearing a tracksuit; the other, who died at 100, is shown defiantly smoking a cigarette.
In that iconoclast spirit, The Barb Shop is ready to defy expectations. While one side has four salon chairs, the other is a soda fountain. Espresso drinks and milkshakes are served from a curvaceous, pink-tiled counter. (And, should you be wary of hair trimmings floating into your shake, soft-serve ice cream cones are sold out of a window.)
The idea for this nostalgia-driven haircut-snack hybrid came from Lister wanting to connect the grownup side of the neighborhood with the kid side. “I wanted to build something that reflected the community here,” she said.
It seems to be working. Last week, during preparations to open for friends and family, Ro Gooch, a self-proclaimed “butch barber” who moved from Portland, Oregon, for this job, was cutting the shoulder-length hair of Jenna Lewis, who will be running the soda fountain. The result was a dramatic mullet — the before-and-after transformation filmed, of course, for Instagram. Running her hands through her new do, Lewis grinned, “I think I’m going to get in some trouble with this.” The good kind of trouble.
Meanwhile, locals with kids in tow poked their heads in every few minutes to express their excitement about the ice cream. It already felt like a neighborhood hangout.
Bailey Stone, another stylist, moved from Iowa for the job at The Barb Shop. In Des Moines, she had founded an initiative offering free gender-affirming haircuts for trans and nonbinary youth on Trans Visibility Day. “It was in response to the state taking away gender-affirming care,” Stone says. “We gave more than 100 free haircuts that first year. It was about creating a safe space for people to show up and feel seen.” A client introduced her to Lister, realizing both were working toward the same goal: cultivating services where a haircut can provide a form of identity.
Lister herself is not a stylist and never has been. Nor has she opened a brick-and-mortar business before. Her expertise is making brands; she previously founded a corporate sports company called Workforce Athletics. At Barb, she’s rapidly figuring out how the La Marzocco espresso machine works and how finicky a soft-serve ice cream machine can be. “I’m learning how much love gets into all these businesses. I have a lot of newfound respect,” she says.
Despite having no experience in the salon industry, she launched The Barb Shop in 2021 as a product line tailored for short hair — pomades, styling creams, and sea-salt sprays. Today, they’re sold online and in more than 200 U.S. salons and barbershops. “She sent me some Barb products, and I loved them,” Stone recalls. “Then she invited me to help at a women’s weekend called Cherry Grove on Fire Island, and it all just clicked. I had lived in San Francisco before, so when she said she wanted to open a shop, I said, ‘I’m in.’”
Of course, when you’re disrupting the norms of an industry, questions will be posed. Lister laughs about the three most common questions she gets asked about The Barb Shop: Is it only for women? Is it only for lesbians? Are men welcome? She wants to make it clear: The Barb Shop is for anyone who wants their hair cut from a “bob to a Barb” — the latter being the salon’s signature short style, which will start at $95 (tip included). And just because she herself is partnered with a woman, “It’s not only for lesbians!” The trims and the treats are for everyone.