Business & Tech

Stoneham Barber Shop the Oldest in Town

For Josie Colucci, owner of Stoneham Barber Shop, the idea of becoming a barber came as a eureka moment.

“I woke up at 12 midnight one night while I was in the twelfth grade and I says, ‘what am I gonna do?’ because I’m not going into college. So I got the phonebook out and I saw an add for Mansfield Beauty Academy and I says, ‘I’m gonna be a hairdresser,’” Colucci said.

Colucci has wielded the shears and the razor for 26 years at 368 Main Street. She and her husband are both barbers and hairdressers by coincidence. I met my husband at 17 and started going out with him when I was 20, by that time I was already a barber and I was a hairdresser. He took a job in Reading and I opened this shop here in Stoneham in 1987.

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Born in Sicily and raised in the North End and East Boston, Colucci had been grooming and barbering her father from a young age. “He had a wicked operation and was cut on both sides of the neck down to collarbones and he couldn’t shave himself. So I became really good with a blade,” Colucci said. “Once everyone moved out, he just grew a beard.”

Colucci said that she always loved education, but going to college was never a realistic. “I was behind in school because of a bad illness that almost killed me and because I spoke Italian. I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t have the SAT scores. Cutting hair became the obvious next choice.” She taught CCD for 12 years and belly dances for charity in her spare time. “I keep myself pretty busy,” Colucci said. “Last week we raised plenty of money for the Stoneham Senior Center. You gotta do what you love.”

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