Riverdale hair salon unites community with inclusive and warm environment
RIVERDALE, N.Y. — Eco Salon in Riverdale is a place where many types of person frequently go for routine beautification, yet this shop with a seemingly mundane purpose has become so much more to the clients, the staff and the community.
“I like to think that we are a point of reference,” said owner Andre Guarascio, describing how he considers his salon the centerpiece of the community.
You walk into the caramel colored salon to find constant activity. People walking the entire lengths of the space back and forth with tinfoil turbans encapsulating their painted scalps, wisps of hair falling to the ground and being swept up within moments of making contact with the hard wood floors, and the roar of the hair dryer.
“I think we create an environment of wanting people to say, ‘You know what, that was a great experience I had,’ and it’s not just about the haircut, or the color, or the waxing,” he said.
Whether he is conversing with clients, or styling someone, you can often find him in the center of the action, often sporting a colorful Hawaiian shirt and a smile. Today, he is wearing a bright pink dress shirt with hair clips clamped along the last three buttons, his imperishable enthusiasm present as always.
Mr. Guarascio was born in Calabria, Italy, and he and his family moved to the America in 1948, when he was a child. He moved when he was eight, when he was 10, again when he was 12 and once more when he was 15. He went to beauty school in 1964, then got married at 22. He found a sanctuary at this salon, something he never had as a child.
“I think when you love what you do and you feel like your anchored — and I never had that as a kid because we moved so much — it took me a lot of years to be comfortable in my own skin, and I attribute that to the community, the welcome I got, and also the people I work with here.”
Mr. Guarascio’s life has been an ongoing accumulation of skills, pursuing a wide and seemingly random spectrum of business opportunities, beginning with owning Pizzerias, hot dog stands, doughnut shops, and real estate. Though he is always starting businesses in different fields, most recently in affordable housing, his focus remains on his salon and how to improve it.
“In business you have to constantly reinvent yourself,” he said. “And I think that’s true with anything. If you don’t stay on top of your game, you turn around one day and your craft has blown by you, or you turn around and you don’t fit in anywhere.”
Mr. Guarascio and his partner have put on five hair styling shows in his career, the most recent in 2001 which was a timeline of a century of fashion through music and dance. Currently, Eco Salon is venturing into new technologies in beautification including providing services for people who wear wigs, as well as eyebrow tattooing. He wants to be able to cater to everybody’s needs, which he learned from working in Riverdale.
Mr. Guarascio’s career began as an apprentice of the renowned hair stylist Vidal Sassoon. He traveled with him and his wife during the ’70’s, moving 10 times within his employment with them. It was when he partnered with his brother to buy this salon in 1981, however that he really came to his own. He had to learn to be a “full hairdresser” which included how to use different tools, style different types of hair, and interact with different kinds of people.
Throughout his 35 years at the salon, he finds that the thing most important thing he’s learned is humility. He describes his employees and customers as the most amazing in the world. People who he has watched grow up and have children, employees who opened their own businesses. The unique sense of community is what makes him love where he works, a community he thinks is nonexistent in places he was employed in the past, which he thought were superficial and impersonal. Riverdale is family to him.
“When I came here I was like, ‘Wow, this is the longest I’ve been in one place,’ and it’s pretty cool, its amazing. And I’d never thought I’d say that.”
