North Texas residents return to reopened hair salons, accept new protective measures
Eileen O’Reilly, 61, sat outside of her hair salon on Saturday morning with a cloth mask over her mouth and strips of aluminum foil in her hair, reading a paperback book.
It was going to take at least 45 minutes for the brownish-red coloring and highlights to set in, she said. Luckily, there were no crowds at Panther City Salon on Saturday morning to interrupt her.
O’Reilly, who moved from Los Angeles to Fort Worth at the end of December, had yet to find a new hair stylist when officials shuttered non-essential businesses in March. Since she typically likes to get a hair cut every four weeks, she said she made an appointment at Panther City Salon on West Magnolia Avenue as soon as Gov. Greg Abbott announced hair and tanning salons could re-open on Friday at limited capacity.
She arrived a little before 10 a.m. on Saturday and texted her hair stylist to let her in. There were only two stylists working in the mostly empty space, she said. She was instructed to rub in some hand sanitizer and keep her face mask on.
Even with these new circumstances, she said, it was nice to return to a little bit of normalcy and focus on feeling attractive.
“For me, getting my hair done — it makes my day. It’s going to make my weekend,” O’Reilly said. “I know I’m going to look so much better and look back to normal, and I’m thrilled.”
She is one of countless North Texas residents who showed up to Fort Worth hair salons on Saturday for their first appointments in months as businesses introduced new policies aimed at decreasing contact and crowds.
Hair, nail, tanning and cosmetology salons were allowed to reopen Friday, per Gov. Abbott’s executive order, as long as they limited one stylist to one customer and ensured 6 feet of space between stations. The order instructs businesses to use an appointment system to minimize in-store waiting and encourages employees and customers to wear masks.
People who spoke with the Star-Telegram on Saturday said it was worth putting up with the new measures in order to once again sit down for a haircut, and to feel safe doing so.
At Novak Hair Studios in downtown Fort Worth, customers in masks dropped in throughout the morning, only coming inside once they got a text from their stylist. Jackson Keefe, a 17-year-old junior at Richland High School, said an employee used a no-touch forehead thermometer to take his temperature and asked if he was having any symptoms consistent with COVID-19.
Once inside, he said there was no designated area for people to wait, and customers were ushered to rooms with their stylist’s name on then. Everyone wore masks, he said, and there was at least 6 feet of space between all the stylists.
Keefe had gone about eight months without a hair cut, letting his locks grow down to his shoulders, and felt he was overdue for one. But he was still nervous about returning to a salon in the middle of a pandemic, he said, and believed the new measures were necessary.
“It was kind of alarming to come out and see people on the streets (without) masks. It’s not like something magical happened and it’s gone away or anything,” he said. “But it was nice to get my hair cut.”
Lauree Swanberg, 62, of Granbury, sat outside of Novak on Saturday waiting for her stylist to text her to come inside. She said she misses her regular appointments to put color and highlights in her hair, joking it’s traumatic for a woman to all of a sudden “see the real color popping through.” She also misses catching up with her hair stylist, who has become a friend.
The threat of COVID-19 is serious, she said, and she understands she might be in a higher risk group of people. But she said she’s “not going to live in fear.”
She felt inspired on Saturday that returning to normal will be possible.
“It makes me fee like life can go on,” Swanberg said. “The things that we have enjoyed doing in the past — we’re gonna be able to do them again.”
This story was originally published May 9, 2020 at 6:47 PM.
