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Hair We Go – again

3 min read
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Steven Layton sits in his barber shop, Hair We Go, whih just re-opened in the Union Trust Building in Washington. He lost his business when the building collapsed at 15 N. Main in July

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Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter Hair We Go Barber Shop, owned and operated by Steven Layton, re-opened at 19 Beau Street after losing everyting in the building collapse, which is just catty-corner from the new location in the Union Trust building

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Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter Hair We Go Barber Shop, owned and operated by Steven Layton, re-opened at 19 Beau Street after losing everyting in the building collapse at 15 N. Main

Barber Steven Layton lost his whole business this summer when its former home on North Main Street partially collapsed.

But he kept his resolve to stay in the neighborhood.

“I was not going to leave Main Street,” Layton, 52, said as he sat in his tidy shop, now in the basement of the Washington Trust Building. “No matter what.”

Hair We Go Barber Shop reopened in the 6 S. Main St. building earlier this month. Layton – who runs the shop owned by his wife, Linda Moore – moved there after the three-story apartment building at 15 N. Main St. buckled July 12. The cave-in of the “Montgomery Building,” as the structure is known, trapped tenant Megan Angelone, 37, for more than nine hours before rescuers freed her from under a refrigerator and two floors.

“We couldn’t get anything out of there,” Layton said. “We lost everything.”

Negotiations between owner Mark Russo’s insurance company and city officials are ongoing, as are efforts to tear down what remains of the Montgomery structure.

Layton isn’t a party to the negotiations. He said the insurance payout on the claim his wife filed has been $12,000 so far, and the couple is still dealing with the insurer.

“We haven’t really come up with a total” for what the move cost him, he said. “We’re still spending money.”

Layton said he provided about $520 in free services during the shop’s grand opening Oct. 6.

“We want to cater to the community,” Layton said. “We want to give back to the community.”

R.J. Embaugh, 27, who works in the shop, said he’d found out he was going to be a father the day before the Montgomery collapse and said he “just tried to make ends meet” in the three months before the shop reopened.

“We’re just trying to get back what we lost,” Embaugh said.

Previous owner Russell Porter first opened Hair We Go in the first floor of the Montgomery in 2014. Layton, a Chicago native who learned to cut hair as a teenager and spent much of his life cutting hair door to door, said he began working there when he first settled in Washington. Layton and his wife took over the shop from Porter last year.

In the Montgomery Building, the shop was home to six barber chairs, a tanning bed and a nail station with a pedicure chair. Now, it has only two hair-cutting chairs used by Layton and Embaugh.

“Right there was a huge cut to my income,” Layton said. “Because I rent the chairs.”

Still, he and Embaugh were excited to be back in business.

“The atmospehere of the barbershop is what I like,” Embaugh said. “My whole family is in the barber business, so I like being a part of it.”

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