Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette "Little Sal" and "Big Sal" Bondi in their Brookline barbershop. "Little Sal" moved to California in 1973 and returned to Pittsburgh last year so he could work with his father.

By Bob Batz Jr.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburghers, they're like salmon.

They're born here, then they may swim, or life sweeps them, to distant and deeper waters. But a lot of them find their way back.

That's the story with Little Sal.

	Slideshow: Big Sal and Little Sal talk about their relationship during an afternoon at the barbershop. Editor's note: Click image to launch slideshow in pop-up window. Related article Men: Dye, trim or shave off that hair for a younger look

Salvatore Bondi, now 54, was "Little Sal" growing up in the city's Brookline neighborhood, because his father was "Big Sal" -- Salvatore Bondi of Sal's Barber Shop on Brookline Boulevard.

Big Sal opened the shop in his father-in-law's former fruit market in 1945. This after serving in the Army during World War II, when he was one of Gen. George S. Patton's drivers. Was until the Germans captured him and imprisoned him at Nuremberg for 4 1/2 months. Patton returned and got him out.

Sal came back home, got married, opened the shop, had a daughter and a son, and the whole extended family lived in an apartment upstairs. As a boy, Little Sal would come downstairs and sweep for his Dad. He never cut hair there, but as he got older, he gravitated into the trade.

Soon after he graduated from the barber college in 1973, he headed to Los Angeles, where he worked for nine years in someone else's salon and then opened his own, Capelli, in Westwood, near the UCLA campus.

He and his wife would visit on holidays, but he never thought about moving back until 2001, when he started renovating his Dad's building. When it was time last year to sign another five-year lease on his salon, he opted to sell it to women who worked there, and he headed home.

He wanted to work with his Dad.

His wife, Lynn, didn't mind. She's an Army brat who's lived everywhere, but she has Pittsburgh Italian roots in the Beltzhoover neighborhood.

The couple wanted to buy a house -- something they never could afford to do in L.A. -- in Brookline, but they decided on one in Dormont and moved in in May.

His Dad and Mom, as well as his sister and her son, still live above the barbershop. "They wanted my wife and I to live up there," he says with a laugh. "I said, 'No, no, no.'"

This past summer, with his father's blessing, he completely remodeled the shop, removing the drop ceiling to reveal the original tin, replacing the old barber chairs and sinks, adding furniture and framed art, including a collage of his L.A. colleagues.

He kept his father's Purple Heart and other medals, but he framed and hung them with old photos, including one shot at Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio, of "Big Sal" and "Little Sal."

The two Sals reopened in July.

Both say it's going great.

"I don't bother him and he don't bother me," is how Big Sal says it, but there's a smile in his shrug.

Little Sal says, "It's a dream come true."

Most mornings, Little Sal walks from home to open the shop around 9. He brings his Dad the newspaper and they read it together, talking about the sports pages and whatever -- "How'd you sleep?" "How'd you sleep?"

As customers come in, they take turns cutting, unless one of the older regulars wants to stick with the original Sal. He keeps a eye on his son's work, sometimes telling him with a wink or a whisper, For this guy, cut it shorter.

Big Sal, who's been cutting hair here for 61 years now, still is steady with the electric clippers and with remembering his customer's names and cuts. But he'll turn 85 in February, and so he considers himself semiretired, only working until 3 p.m. or so.

He still takes his lunch, as always, upstairs with his wife, Josephine. After he eats, Little Sal goes up and eats, too, and then returns to run the shop until about 6 p.m.

With the faux slate floor and the display case of tonsorial treasures, it looks more salon than barbershop, but Little Sal says it'll stay a men-only joint. With just two chairs, it's not going to make a fortune, but that, he says, isn't the point. "I was away for 30 years, and it's nice coming home to be with family," he says, sitting in one chair, looking over at his Dad sitting in the other.

To most people hurrying past on "the Boulevard," Sal's still looks like a barbershop, not much different from the other two still open along that stretch that used to hold a half-dozen.

Inside, it doesn't seem as if anything special ever happens, but sometimes something does.

In comes Guy DeMonaco, all the way from Highland Park. He eases into Big Sal's chair. They exchange pleasantries -- "How you feeling, all right?" "Good." -- as Sal covers him with a blue-and-white-striped cape and proceeds to give him a long, careful cut and shave, interrupting it just once to turn up one of the Sinatra songs that always play in the shop.

Guy says that since he worked at a West Liberty Avenue paint store that's not there anymore, he's been coming here, except for a brief time recently when his hair wasn't growing because of his chemotherapy.

As he stands up from the chair, Big Sal brushes him off and they clasp hands: "I'm glad to see you." "Glad to see you."

One younger guy who comes in doesn't even want a haircut. "I just came to say hello to Sal," says Frank Mauro, who heads straight to Big Sal and says, "You cut all our hair when we were kids."

At 49, he's five years younger than Little Sal and doesn't know him, but immediately sees the resemblance, and the three of them fall easily into reminiscing about the good ol' days on the Boulevard.

Frank, too, moved away and has lived lots of places, but he too has recently moved back, to Green Tree, just a few doors down from his Brookline best friend's daughter's house.

"I'm tellin' you, it's like the full circle of life," he says, and both Sals agree.

You can take a boy out of Brookline, but you can't -- well, take the outdoors store that used to be on the corner out of Frank. He knows that place is why he went on to be a lifelong hunter.

On his way out the door, Frank promises to return. "About another month, I'll be back to see if young Sal can do as well as Sal," he says, and they laugh.

It's Little Sal who says it.

"Welcome back."