Now closed, at 716 Dixwell. Credit: Thomas Breen photo Dexter Atlas Jones gave his last haircut Saturday at the barbershop he’s run on Dixwell Avenue for the past three decades. “This morning, waking up, I really didn’t know what to do,” Jones said on Monday as he reflected on the fir st week of his retirement. It’s been a “sentimental” experience closing up, he said, given how many lives he’s touched and how much hair he’s cut over the years. Through his work at Dexter’s Unisex Barbershop and, before that, at Willie C’s Unisex Barbershop, Jones estimated that he’s cut hair for four generations of Dixwell Avenue customers over the past five decades. Some of his Newhallville mentors and predecessors and colleagues in the barbershop business — “Mr. Eddie, Sam, Willie C, Freeman” — they all “died cutting hair,” Jones said. That is, “they were still active” in their barbershop work “when they passed away. I don’t want my legacy to be that.” So, after first opening his shop at 716 Dixwell Ave. on April 1, 1997, Jones has decided to retire — even as he continues to remain active in the community, including through an annual event he leads in Goffe Street Park called “Unity in the Community.” Jones, who is now 62 and lives in Hamden, said that he opened Dexter’s Unisex Barbershop after getting out of the Marine Corps and spending a decade-plus working at the barbershop run by his mentor, Willie C. “I’ve always been entrepreneurial,” Jones recalled on Monday. And so, while still working at Willie C’s, he opened a barbershop in Meriden called Dexter’s After Dark, where he would cut hair late into the night. He then decided to open up a shop closer to home, and hung his sign up at 716 Dixwell Ave — where he would remain for the next three decades. (Jones recalled that Willie C. was none too pleased when Jones opened his own barbershop nearby. He said his former mentor described Jones’ move as “disrespectful;” but, now that Jones had his own shop, his former boss said he should be “working where your name is.”) Longtime friends and customers told the Independent that Jones did right by the shop that bore his own name. “He pays attentions to customers,” said Arnold Johnson. “He spends his time cutting your air and gave exactly the cut you wanted.” He’d come in on his day off, Johnson said, if he knew that time worked best for a customer. “I don’t find as many barbers as good as Dexter.” Johnson, a retired state probation officer, said that businesses have come and gone on that stretch of Dixwell Avenue. “Dexter has been stable there. [He] never left.” (Asked on Monday about how that stretch of Dixwell Avenue has changed over the decades, Jones said, “once the welfare office around the corner” on Bassett Street closed down, “it just stopped the whole flow of traffic. I had to depend on my older customers,” and they stayed loyal and supported him.) Johnson said that he would get his hair cut at Dexter’s twice a month. Where will he go no that Dexter’s is closed? “I have no clue.” Another loyal longtime customer, Marcus Garris, said the same. “He put the work in,” Garris said about Jones. “Dex wasn’t just a barber to me. He was a friend. That goes a long way.” Garris said he would stop by the barbershop even when he wasn’t getting a haircut, just to “sit around and laugh and joke” and, more often than no, talk football. (Garris said Jones is a Giants fan, while he roots for the Commanders, formerly known as the Redskins. “That used to be a lot of back and forth,” he said.) Jones said he has decided to retire now in part because his son decided to work as a barber at another shop, in part because he’s one of his mom’s caregivers. “I’m not leaving” the area though, Jones said. He said he’ll be putting on the next “Unity in the Community” event at Goffe Street Park on Aug. 29. (He took over that series from Pastor Donald Morris.) What’s the first thing Jones did after closing up shop at 5 p.m. on Saturday? Jones said he went to LongHorn Steakhouse in North Haven. Jones said he doesn’t know what’s coming next to the storefront where he’s long worked at 716 Dixwell Ave. The building is owned by a man named Willie Ransome (who Jones featured in this recent Facebook video.) What he does know, though, is that — after more than three decades running his own barbershop — it’s time to move on to hang up the clippers. Looking inside716 Dixwell on Monday. Credit: Photos contributed by Dexter Atlas Jones The post Dexter’s Closes On Dixwell appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less