A family barbershop rooted in Edgewood

It did not start the way you might imagine.

The first time I pulled into Edgewood, it felt like I had driven to the edge of the world. A Walmart. An empty road. A left turn into a building that looked like it had been waiting a long time for someone to show up.

The suite was tiny. Two barber chairs, a refrigerator that had no business being there, and a green couch that made everyone uncomfortable. That was it. That was the whole thing.

I was not supposed to stay. I was only working here a couple days a week, splitting my time between this shop and another one in Albuquerque. It was temporary. That was the plan anyway.

Then COVID happened, and plans stopped meaning much.

When we were finally allowed to open it was under rules that nobody liked. Six feet apart. Masks. Capacity limits. People were not mad at us, they were just mad, and we happened to be where they showed up. It was a lot. Eventually the person who started it all decided this was not the life he wanted and moved on to something else. I understood. But that left me holding the keys to a barbershop in a town I had not planned on staying in, with a clientele that kept coming back anyway.

So I stayed.

For a long time it was just me, back to back, no lunch break, figuring it out alone. I was busy from the start, busier than I expected, and Edgewood turned out to have a lot more going on than that first drive made it seem. I started to see what this place could be.

The right people started showing up. First a friend who believed in the potential out here. Then Jamie, who had been doing hair for years but stepped away to work a desk job, and was ready to come back to something that actually felt like living. The two of us clicked in the way that people do when they have the same work ethic and no patience for excuses. Then Jazmyn walked in one day looking for a job and fit like she had always been here.

The three of us crammed into that little suite and built something from nothing.

We were so busy we did not have time to eat a real lunch. We would take a couple bites of food standing in a closet covered by a shower curtain, broom in hand, in between clients. We did not care. We were building something and we all knew it.

We then brought on Jamie's niece, Alianna, as our receptionist to help us. She answered phones, kept the shop clean, and kept the day running smooth since the workload was back to back. When it came time to change the name of the shop and make it officially ours, the four of us sat down and came up with three options. Then we let the customers vote, because this shop had always belonged to them as much as it belonged to us.

We did not know then what we know now. We did not know that her name would outlast her, or that every time someone walks through that door they are walking into something she helped create. We each had our own pick. The customers had the final say. And the name they chose was hers. Because of that, a part of Alianna shows up to work with us every single day.

Alianna is not with us anymore. But her name is on the door every single day, and that means everything to us.

Shortly after, a bigger suite opened up in the same building. A little lady named Ginny had run a yarn and fiber shop out of it. Lots of spunk, great energy, huge space. We took it over and got to work.

That was a couple of years ago. Today Desert Edge Barbershop has four barbers, a real waiting room, a game room, merchandise, vending machines, a break room, a sink to wash hair, and a playlist Jamie built that always gets compliments. A lot of 70s and 80s, a good mix of everything, the kind of music that makes people stay a little longer than they planned.

We service men, women, and kids. We consider ourselves a family barbershop and we try to treat people like family. We remember your name. We remember your haircut. We keep our prices affordable because we want everyone to be able to come in, not just some people. We will offer you water or coffee. We will probably make you laugh. It is not fancy, but it is real, and we think that counts for more.

You can book online, call us, or just walk in and we will do our best to fit you in.

Jamie and I are business partners now. We joke that we are life partners at this point. We were barely even friends when this started, more like acquaintances who respected each other's work. But the more time we spent in that tiny suite, the more we realized we were cut from the same cloth. Neither one of us had an easy road getting here. Neither one of us had much handed to us or many people to fall back on. We both just knew how to hustle, because honestly that was never optional for either of us. Fate or whatever you want to call it put us in the same building at the same time, and something about that just worked. Two people who only knew how to rely on themselves, figuring out how to rely on each other. We took a risk becoming business partners. Nothing about this was handed to us. We just refused to let it fail.

And somewhere along the way, Edgewood stopped feeling like the edge of the world and started feeling like home.

We know now that this community relies on us, and we do not take that lightly. People trust us with more than their haircut. They trust us with their time, their comfort, and sometimes just a place to land for a little while. That is something we think about every single day. We will always show up, we will always put in the work, and we will always make sure that when you leave this shop you feel like it was worth the trip.

That is the culture we have built here. That is Desert Edge. We are glad you found us.

-Desert Edge Barbershop