Free Williamsburg

Rudy’s Barbershop officially opened its doors to Williamsburg last month, offering quality haircuts and a dedicated pop-up shop from leather goods manufacturer and retailer, Tanner Goods. The ten-chair barbershop is also home to a stunning wall mural by New York-based artist, Romon Yang.

Rudy’s Director of Store Design and native of Brooklyn, Marshall Ryan, had this to say about the beautiful building that now houses our shop, “There’s a strange grime on the façade that I want to believe is some byproduct of the millions of pounds of sugar that was refined daily by our late neighbor, the Domino Sugar Factory. Under all of that soot is an unusual 1890s Neogothic structure that stands out from the bulk of building types in the neighborhood. 33 Grand Street was originally Northside Bank, later a chemicals storage warehouse, followed by an assortment of tenants from the 70s to now. I’ve been told that one tenant, in the 90s, ran something kind of like a speakeasy, but for hard drugs and prostitution – that tenancy allegedly ended in a drug-induced rampage in which all the original 1800s casework was destroyed and left on the curb for collection. We’re going to throw some pretty cool parties… but maybe not that cool.” [Read more...]