Shave and a haircut. And tattoo sleeves and vintage suits and faded checkerboard floors.
You get all of that at Lucky’s Barbershop and Shave Parlor, one of seemingly few remaining vestiges of old-school barbering, where customers walk in without appointments and leave looking fresh thanks to time-tested, simple techniques. Back in 2008, Josh Craggy decided to blend his personal style with his appreciation for the barbering tradition, and the finished product is a shop with a chill vibe featuring tattooed barbers with slicked-back hair rocking vests and ties – and loyal customers streaming through the door to get a service that’s awfully hard to find these days.
“We pay homage to generations past,” Craggy said. “I hear a lot of people come in here and say it’s their first time in a barber shop, and I say, ‘Wow, really?’ But it’s cool to be a part of that first experience. I built a shop as in the mind of a barber and a customer, that anyone can feel comfortable in. We’re just happy people want to spend time here.”
They certainly do. The shop features a long wooden bench along the back wall where customers wait for an available chair – after signing in on the board inside the door – and it’s rare for the bench to remain vacant longer than a few minutes. Craggy and his team of barbers – long-time friend Ken Mango, Bobby Fratus Jr. and Ian Bergeron – man their stations five days a week and welcome a parade of faces into well-worn barber chairs that have been in operation since the 1920s.
There’s a distinctive swagger at Lucky’s, a vintage feel that is very much part of the shop’s identity. Aside from smartphones pecked at by waiting customers, it could easily be four or five decades ago inside. There are no domed hair-dryers or color stations or swank leather couches. Just four barber chairs, four mirrors, and four pairs of scissors.
“Minus the electricity, a lot of the techniques haven’t changed,” Craggy said. “It’s almost this thing in time that hasn’t changed.”
So barbers in suits and ties? It was never a question.
Make no mistake, though. That style is no fabrication – Craggy was taking your grandpa’s style long before Macklemore.
“I’ve always dressed like this, even 15, 20 years ago. I was the kid at the Salvation Army who bought all the old suits,” Craggy said. “It’s cool to see it come full circle, to have classic men’s haircuts and grooming in general come back ten-fold.”
The full-service shop is open to anyone, but men do make up the majority of the clientele. Part of that is certainly the focus on men’s grooming that includes beard trims and old-school shaves with a straight razor, a signature offering at Lucky’s that isn’t available in as many places as it once was.
“The average guy doesn’t spend 45 minutes at home shaving his face,” Craggy said. “We prep the face, take care of it … it’s one of the last true things a man can do to get pampered and still have it be a manly thing.”
Craggy’s journey to becoming a successful barber and business owner required a leap of faith after watching some late-night TV. The Concord native grew up cutting the hair of his friends and family but never considered attending barber school because there weren’t any in New Hampshire, until a late-night ad caught his attention.
“I saw a commercial about a place in Manchester that used to be an aesthetics place but was now accepting enrollment for barber school, and I threw caution to the wind,” Craggy said. “I left the only job I’ve ever had with benefits and said, I’m going to give it a whirl.”
His first job was working with a pair of barbers in their 70s –“classic grumpy old men,” Craggy said – who loved to zing customers with one-liners and regale them with long stories. Both of them eventually retired, and after eight years of working in someone else’s shop, Craggy decided to branch out and start his own venture.
The experience of working with veteran barbers left quite an impression on Craggy, who felt a responsibility to keep a fading trade alive.
“I was like that next generation, and I felt like those guys passed a lot of their knowledge on to me, not just cutting hair but dealing with people,” Craggy said. “They had a different vibe and feel. I didn’t want to lose that.”
Craggy is a Concordian through and through – we dare you to find another resident with the State House tattooed on his neck – and his local upbringing and experience in another shop in town helped bring customers to Lucky’s right away. He “hit the ground running,” he said, and continues to see dozens of familiar faces on a daily basis.
That’s no small feat given that Lucky’s doesn’t fit many of the molds of a modern-day groomer. But that’s no accident. Craggy set out to create the kind of place you come to as much for the soul as you do for the style. A hurried pace need not apply.
“Our whole thing really is the detail. It’s the small things,” Craggy said. “The clock doesn’t really exist. Nowadays everything is assembly line. When people are in our chair, we give them the utmost care and respect. We try to move away from ‘people just don’t have time anymore’ to slow down and take things in. If you can take one hour out of your life once a month to slow down and have a good conversation, it carries on outside the shop.”
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