worked-in with a brush, and then a straight razor( which still makes some people nervous) while you sit there with your eyes closed, doing absolutely nothing for 15 or 20 minutes. Nobody has time for it anymore, which might be why it feels even more luxurious when you get one. Kenny“ Popa Chops” Engstrom at Berkshire Barbers told me that a hot towel and a straight razor shave is“ like a warm shower and a twohour nap had a baby.”
Old regulars, new customers
Going shop to shop, I expected the nostalgia, the barber poles, the leather chairs, the framed photos of guys— famous and not-so-famous— from a long time ago. What I didn’ t expect was how many youngsters were sitting in those chairs, getting“ hard parts” and skin-tight fades or the precision of a good taper, going out of their way to find a barber who learned razor work the old-fashioned way but knows how to craft a contemporary look.
There’ s a difference in price, too. A traditional cut in most of these shops runs somewhere in the $ 20 to $ 30 range, no membership required, no upselling on products you don’ t need. Compare that to what a chain salon or a“ grooming lounge” charges for a similar fade, and the traditional shop starts looking less like a throwback and more like a smart move. You’ re paying for a barber who’ s done 10,000 fades, not a stylist working off a corporate hair-style menu.
From top, Barber“ Popa Chops” from Berkshire Cuts in Pittsfield; barber Duane G. and client Massim Nirschel at Jake’ s Barbershop in Great Barrington.
A few of the barbers Alec“ The Razor” Foisy works out of Castoldi’ s on Tyler Street in Pittsfield, the oldest continuously operating barbershop in the county, with a cash register from 1942 still in operation on the counter and chairs that may have been there for 100 years. Alec got into barbering the way a lot of the best ones do— by accident. He was a teenager getting his hair cut one summer, when the barber put on a splash of classic Pinaud aftershave; Alec liked the smell of it so much he decided that was the job for him. His father told him he needed work for the rest of the year, so off he went to barber school in Worcester. Twenty years later, he’ s renting a chair from Joe Castoldi and doing every cut with a razor; no scissors, not once, the whole time he worked on me. He’ s the kind of barber that gives this shop its multigenerational reputation: older clientele come in for the history; young guys come because Alec can do a fade like nobody else.
84 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Fall 2026