Haircuts in the home
BY EVAN WILLIAMS ewilliams@floridaweekly.com
There are four two-story houses in a row on Woodford Avenue where it intersects with 2nd Street, between Fort Myers' downtown River District and Historic Dean Park. Three empty ones are in varying stages of renovations, drastically stripped of porches and paint, to get the structures up to new codes.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO EVAN WILLIAMS Debbie Smythe (seated) and her mother, Billie Brown at their Uptown Hair Designers in Fort Myers.

It looks like what was once a premier neighborhood.

But one house appears frozen in its heyday. The frame is cottage cute and painted olive, with eggshell trim on the windows and a shady Southern wrap-a-round porch partially obscured by rose bushes.

Porch clutter adds to the charm: tea-party tables, and antique miscellanea, such as two bygone era barbers chairs. A cat with a mellifluous meow is prone to bursting out of the bushes grandly, then rubbing sleepily against your leg. The trimmed green lawn and white picket fence add to this mirage of old time perfection.

A spinning barber's pole ends the illusion by giving away the identity: it's Uptown Hair Designers, the quaintest place south of Pensacola to get a haircut, style, or color - local or otherwise. The house was built in 1918, according to Debbie Smythe who does the styling, cutting and coloring.

Her mother, Billie Brown, takes care of the reservations. Brown saw a television commercial in 1965 advertising $10 down and $10 per month for a home in Cape Coral. After that, she and her husband were flown from their home in Iowa to the Cape for free as part of real-estate company Gulf American Corporation's promotion to develop that area. (Which it did, enormously).

The plane, filled with prospective Cape Coral residents, landed on a runway behind Big John's Shopping Center, which is still there. The runway was built over, sometime after the family moved to the Cape in 1965, when Smythe was 12.

"We used to call Cape Coral the biggest Florida land scam that worked," Brown said. "They had the weather on their side."

She enjoys the weather still, and likes being her daughter's "trusty mother side-kick," as long time customer Jann Nelson put it.

"Debbie is the artisan," Nelson said.

The three ladies were sitting in the highceilinged living room on elegant old couches last Saturday morning, the view dominated by an upright piano. (Smythe just started taking lessons and can play a few measures of Beethoven, but "don't expect a concert anytime soon".)

It could have been just your average weekend tea party, but Nelson was there to have Smythe cut her curly blonde locks.

That's the way it's been for twenty years, since Smythe went into business downtown. And it stayed that way when Nelson moved downtown near where she used to work, at the "old Mexican place" (now a law office) with famous manager "downtown Pam."

It stayed that way even when Smythe and Brown moved to three separate locations near downtown, then onto Woodford Avenue seven years ago. Since then they've kept haircut appointments on the bottom floor of the eight-room house and live in the smaller quarters behind it.

"When we first bought it, it was really in disarray," Smythe said. "…The first day I lived in this house it was such a warm feeling. I looked out the window in the morning and I could see the view, the (Caloosahatchee) River."

But it was hard getting past city zoning laws to open the business in a residential neighborhood. Smythe remembers it being voted on at a city council meeting, and all the councilmen and the mayor giving her thumbs up.

"She cried a little," Brown said.

Since then they've kept busy, but casual. They open for the day at 7 a.m. - or 10 a.m. - whenever appointments arrive, keeping Smythe working with an average of 10 clients per day. Bridal parties are fond of Uptown, she said; and she occasionally does hair and makeup for workers in the entertainment field, particularly commercials. People, like Nelson, sometimes hang out all day.

The place is comfortable enough that you might even feel like removing your shoes and taking a snooze on the couch - but that would be rude, so don't.

"I like to keep it on the low-key end," Smythe said. "You can come here in your jeans and t-shirt. You won't be judged, but you will walk out with the finest haircut around."

Now Nelson lives in Naples. But every time her hair gets too big, she still makes the hour-long drive, traversing construction and finally the tangle where First Street and Second Street both become one way, to get to Uptown.

"I trust her," Nelson said. "I've never been disappointed in her haircuts."