The streets of Coventry are always bustling.

The sidewalks are filled with window shoppers browsing unique businesses: Focused Tattoos, displaying fierce design options in their window; Mac’s Backs, a used book store with alternative titles and Big Fun, a retro toy store.

Next to the tattoo parlor sits a quaint little barbershop where many Clevelanders, including local celebrities such as rapper G-Eazt go to get their hair cut.

Eddy’s Barbershop on 1719 Coventry Rd is run by Chuck Falk, who specializes on both modern and traditional haircuts for men.

The barbershop provides both moderately priced haircuts and forty-five minute shaves for scheduled appointments. Stylists provide tips on which haircut would best suit their customers’ face, as well as maintenance of hair texture, thickness and length.

Upon walking into the barbershop, I was enveloped in the smell of leather, after shave and hair tonics, as well as the musty tang of the wooden panels on the back walls.

The decor harkens back to the 50s or 60s. Old movie posters plaster the walls, and an antlered head looms over the back of the shop.

My appointment was with Bobby, an African American barber who was a bit newer to the shop than the other esteemed barbers. However, from the moment I sat down, Bobby was already listening intently to my style preferences and peeves. After hearing all this, he made some recommendations about which style would best suit my face shape and dove into work.

I asked him about the difficulty of cutting Asian hair, as I know the textures and stubbornness of the fibers of Asian men’s hair would make most Western barbers confused.

He said that although there were not that many Asian men who came through the shop, he had studied the fibers long enough to learn how to maintain it.

Each cut was made with utmost attention to detail. I watched Bobby shear and texture, measure and snip with careful precision. After shaping up my hair, Bobby finished up the cut with a straight razor etch up on the back of my neck.

I asked him why Eddy’s preferred to use the open blade method instead of safety or electric razors, which most contemporary barbers choose due to the delicacy of shaving with a straight razor.

He explained that by shaving with an open blade, he can cover more area and collect all of the hair with one fell swoop, adding that shaving with the straight razor takes months of practice to execute smoothly. The straight razor did feel a little odd; after all, it is a knife on your neck, but the shave was smooth and left no irritation.

As I walked out of the shop with a little less weight on my head. I surveyed the busy streets of Coventry again, bustling with life and still filled with the hustling window-shoppers who had doubled in number since I arrived hours ago.

The streets of Coventry are always bustling, and so is Eddy’s business.