If you are a male who has lived in Verona any time in the last half century, the chances are better than even that your hair has been cut at least once in the tiny barbershop that operates on a tiny sliver of ground at the base of Claremont Avenue. And if it was cut more than once there, or maybe your whole life, it was very likely cut by just one man: Dino Ditizii.
Ditizii is now beginning his 50th year as the barber at Verona Barber Shop. He got a job there almost immediately after arriving in New Jersey from the region of Foggia, Italy, and bought the place from the Tucci family in the early 1970s. When Ditizii began cutting hair in Verona, adult haircuts where $1 and kids cost 75 cents. But that added up quickly in an era when Verona families included six or more kids. Ditizii has increased he price gradually over the years, but at $10, it remains one of the last bargains in town.
Cent’anni, Dino.
And it’s in walking distance for much of the town!
Wonderful News! Congratulations to Dino on 50 yrs! I grew up next door to him at 476 Bloomfield Ave.
It’s a lonely moment on this street at night sitting outside this empty dead shop now abandoned and yet so full of life for so long. It’s a point of personal sadness I didn’t get a chance to wish him well amd thank him for showing me in human terms what the world my own father always spoke of from his past in the Depression with his father who’d immigrated from Greece and raised a family with hard work, dignity and simplicity.