There aren’t many old-time barbershops left like Alpine Barbers, located at 1215 Alpine Ave. in North Boulder’s Ideal shopping center. When it closes on Oct. 25 after losing its lease, Boulder will have one fewer place where someone can just walk in without an appointment and walk out with a simple, clean, traditional cut.
From the old-fashioned barber pole out front to the fading floor tiles inside that carry the same barber pole motif, Alpine Barbers hasn’t really changed anything, except its name a few times as ownership evolved, since it first opened in 1958 as Ruble’s Barber Shop.
Throughout the decades, it remained the familiar place where generations of North Boulder boys got their first haircuts, and where their older brothers, fathers and even grandfathers counted on for a good, no-fuss cut. It exudes a basic no-frills, just-get-the-job-done atmosphere.
“Our shop is old-fashioned, funky, friendly, and gives consistent, quality haircuts. That’s what guys like,” said current owner Richard Kaiser. “And that’s what’s being lost.”
Boulder native Charlie DeVischer took over the shop, then Ruble’s, in the early 1990s and changed the shop’s name first to Charlie’s Barber Shop and later to Alpine Barbers. In 2002, he brought in Kaiser as co-owner.
DeVischer sold Kaiser full ownership in 2019, just months before Covid struck — a business catastrophe that Kaiser admits the shop is still combating. (DeVischer died Aug. 4 this year at age 79.)
Kaiser learned that he lost his lease this past July after the shopping center management signed it over to the new Alive and Well integrated health and wellness store next door. Alive and Well replaced the bankrupt Medly Pharmacy last spring, which had previously bought the longtime Pharmaca store there.
Michael Swail, CEO of Austin-based Alive and Well, said the 3,500-square-foot Pharmaca/Medly space was smaller than his other stores in Austin and Dallas, which have the room to offer personalized wellness services beyond pharmacy and retail products. Acquiring more space was critical to his business plan.
Steve LeBlang, part owner of the Ideal center’s owner, North Broadway Corp., said Swail was “adamant about having more space, so in order to secure the lease for the larger space, I had to let them have” the Alpine Barbers space. A 10-year lease was signed in April.
By adding the barbershop’s approximately 700 square feet, Swail will have room for the additional health treatments that he believes will make Alive and Well stand out in Boulder’s high-end wellness market.
LeBlang agreed, remarking that personal wellness services are “some of the fastest growing businesses in the country right now. There is a huge market for it. It’s kind of a destination business, so it will bring new people to the shopping center.”
Alive and Well plans to use the Alpine Barbers space for a sauna, cold plunge, red light therapy, vibroacoustic frequency therapy, ozone insufflation and nutraceutical IV therapy, Swail said. The store hopes to start providing the new services next summer.
“The Boulder community itself is a special place, where we think people will appreciate our approach to holistic health care,” Swail said. He believes some of Alive and Well’s services will be new for Boulder.
For his part, Kaiser has mixed feelings. He feels “blindsided” and “resentful” that he didn’t learn of management’s plans until it was time to renew his lease in mid-summer, several months after the change was made.
Management is “the big fish,” he said. “It’s our people that will be the most affected, and there are hundreds of men in the community who are losing their barber.”
One of them is local architect Adrian Sopher, who’s been a customer for more than 30 years. “You go to the barber in your neighborhood. That’s how it works. It’s been the same place, forever, an institution in our neighborhood’s history. It will be one more of those things that just aren’t anymore.”
Kaiser is 80 but still stands ramrod straight and vigorous, sporting an immaculately trimmed beard and handlebar mustache. He would have preferred another lease or to sell Alpine Barbers to someone else who would carry on the tradition.
As the days pass, however, he is becoming more philosophical. He sees the benefit to the Ideal Center overall in having high-end wellness services. And he notes that the barbering business is changing, making it difficult to find and keep traditional barbers. His two associate barbers, Bob Beckman and Jenny Chi, are looking for other jobs.
”This could have been handled more gracefully, but I know it will bring in new customers,” Kaiser said. “It will be good for the Ideal Center overall. I’m a little resentful, but that’s not dominant, and I wish them well.”
Kaiser acknowledged that LeBlang took him to other areas to find a new business location, and even offered to help pay for the move, but he didn’t feel other spots were right for the business, or were too far away for regular customers to follow.
So having given up that idea, retirement is beginning to sound more appealing, even if he feels it is “forced retirement.” He lives below Gold Hill, where he’s planning time with grandkids, hiking and caring for the finches in his home aviary.
Mathias Thurmer, who’s been a customer for about 20 years, is another who will miss the shop. For him, he said, Alpine Barbers expresses the “essence” of what a barbershop should be. “I used to go the first Tuesday of every month — and I will go one more time.”
Shabby, shabby, shabby. I’ve been patronizing the drugstore, but I think I’ll stop.
I can’t speak to these other treatments mentioned (ozone insufflation?) but a visit with Rich and a good haircut was always a step towards wellness for me.
I Just Googled “Ozone Insufflation”. uhhh, no thanks.
Boulder has sold out completely. Alive and Well is nothing compared to Pharmaca. It is sterile , uninviting and expensive. I never walk in there. Boulder keeps losing any sense of the community it once was.
Agreed. I loved Pharmaca, and was a fairly regular patron. Other than the fact that Alive and Well’s owners — or corporate management — rehired many of the original and loyal staff of Pharmaca, I’m not very magnetized to the new place. I may feel some loyalty to those staff members, but the CEO’s attitude is extremely unneighborly, and I wonder whether there’s really a market for those high-end “wellness services” here. Neighbors around the Ideal Center and central North Boulder (of which I’m one), care about our institutions and how local business owners are treated; this behavior doesn’t match our values, and seems antithetical to “holistic wellness.”
Agreed, Betty! I liked Pharmaca quite a lot. It was a truly integrated pharmacy, body care shop, with much more, plus a very convenient post office. The only thing about Alive and Well that feels similar is the staff. Boulder just keeps becoming more and more generic (high end generic, but still soulless).
Things that are real and make an actual difference in well-being: haircuts and multi-generational gathering spaces. Things that are phony and have zero scientific evidence for effectiveness: red light therapy, vibroacoustic frequency therapy, ozone insufflation and nutraceutical IV therapy. This is beyond sad. RIP Boulder.
👍👍👍
It is so sad that a long time Boulder institution is being replaced by an out of town business peddling straight up quackery. For all the really intelligent folks in Boulder, it is hard to understand why so many folks fall for these charlatans.
All the best to Richard. Yes, 40+ years of memories. Always good conversation and a great cut.
Hate to see them go, friends for over 30 years, and the best haircuts of my 70+ years of going to the local barbers in all the places I’ve lived.
I first went to this barber shop when in 1964, during a summer visit, with its barberpole tiles that are still on the floor. And for the last 30 years it’s been my neighborhood go to place for a cut and a beard trim.
The shop’s closing because of the allegedly useful “wellness” services of this out-of-state company is terrible. My barber Bob told me he might have to sell his home. I will avoid patronizing “Alive and Well.” The personal and community loss is not worth what they are peddling.
Nice work, LeBlang. Kick out a decades long tenant and community constant and replace them with mostly nonsense but highly profitable “wellness” treatments. As much as I’m glad to have a pharmacy back, I’ll never go there due to your tone deaf move.
Well, this is sad to lose such an institution. Richard’s comments are gracious, especially given that he was blindsided by the whole deal, which had taken place much earlier. I am not one to lament the passing of the Boulder that existed when I arrived in 1972. But I do lament the flagrant disregard for an institution like Alpine Barbers, both by the owners of the shopping center and the company that made it a condition that they would take over Richard’s space for their tenancy. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth for large companies owning “Wellness Services,” who disregard the wellness of the tenant that have displaced.
Shabby is right! In my view, it’s not ethical to force out a long time business. That’s what the landlord did to Vic’s coffee across the street, even though Vic’s was a thriving neighborhood gathering place.
More and more businesses focused on the influx of the New Boulderites (especially noticed over the past 4 years) at the expense of those who have made the town special. Very sad….
So much of what makes Boulder unique and differentiated from the faceless slurbs which surround it has been ebbing away over the recent decades. I still lament the loss of Eads newsstand which was another victim of the digital onslaught and rising rents. Thanks to the proprietor of the Alpine for their good service over the years.
Boulder has lost its personality! 😩
Your article is quite accurate and fair, I just wanted to say ‘thanks’ to all of our customers over the years . Our hidden secret is ‘ look good , feel better’. Probably a 100 year slogan , take care, Rich
Rich, please tell me where Bob is. He has been my only barber for a couple decades.
Thanks Frank
Richard, thanks for doing your part to keep Alpine Barbers a neighborhood institution. My kid got his hair cut there a couple times when he was young, after we moved to Newlands in ’94. It’s just sad to see the soul of Boulder chipped away at again and again. Your words, published in the paper, were generous and friendly, unlike the treatment you received from by the property owners and Alive & Well owners. Best to you in this next phase of your life.
So sad and disappointed! I’ve been a monthly customer since 2002, following Richard from his prior barbershop. After I moved to Longmont in 2004, I made the drive in every month specifically for Richard’s haircut and beard trim. Boulder has lost a big piece of the Boulder I remembered. Enjoy your retirement Richard… wish it had been under better circumstances.
They did the same thing to Vic’s and to Marie’s restaurant a few years back. One more nail in the coffin of the older and charming businesses that Boulder is sorely missing. Rich would have gladly signed another lease, but neglected to include a first right of refusal in his previous lease. The owners took advantage of him, regardless of their statements to the contrary.
Rich had cut my hair for to many years to count. I was gone for the summer and when I went to get mop under control he was gone. A sad day. We swapped so many stories over the years. Good luck my friend.
Got my hair cut there since I was a little boy. Just went today and it was papered up, had no idea. So sad. The New Boulder continues to yuppie out the old community Boulder we all love, an old Boulder that evolves and is always new and caring and special. I hope Bob, always my barber there, finds a good new place to set up shop–I don’t know what I’ll do without him!