Once every three weeks, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich rides a tiny elevator to the sixth floor of an unremarkable building on one of the city’s most chic blocks. There he sits in the same fake leather chair, one of four chairs at Mr. Barber on Oak, as a Soviet immigrant named Peter Vodovoz spends 20 minutes tending to what is one of the most famous haircuts in the world.
“He has always been a super guy to me,” says Vodovoz. “Yes, he has a lot of hair, but cutting it is easy.”
He has been cutting that hair for more than a decade, beginning when Blagojevich was a populist Democratic congressman with ambitions for national office and a hairdo that was of modest interest.
“It was a curiosity, the fact that he had an aide carrying the ‘football,’ a briefcase containing his hairbrush, just as the president has an aide toting the nuclear code,” says Rick Pearson, the Tribune’s chief political writer who has closely observed Blagojevich for two decades. “I always thought of his hair as an odd affectation rather than some sort of phenomenon.”
The hair became the object of loud and widespread ridicule in the wake of Blagojevich’s Dec. 9 arrest, Jan. 29 impeachment and April 2 indictment on 16 counts of racketeering, fraud and extortion.
The hair humor started to take on a derogatory and nasty tone as the story gained national attention, fed in large part by Blagojevich’s seemingly insatiable desire to appear on every television program short of “Cops.”
The hair was famously mussed by co-host Joy Behar on “The View.” David Letterman let loose with “I hope that thing on his head doesn’t bite me.” Conan O’Brien added, “According to a new survey that just came out, the most admired profession is doctor. Doctor is the most admired profession. Yeah. The least admired profession? Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s barber.”
Vodovoz has not closely followed the jabs. But he has heard and read enough.
“Some of that has been disturbing to me, and not any of it has been funny,” Vodovoz says. “This is a man who was elected by so many people [1.8 million in 2002, 1.6 million in 2006] that he deserves better until his situation is finished in the courts.”
As energetically as Blagojevich has courted media attention, Vodovoz has avoided it.
“There are many, many people who call and come in here looking for information about Rod,” he says. “What does he talk about? Does he have secret meetings here? I have been offered money to talk to these people. I have been offered money for pieces of Rod’s hair. I turn all of this down because I have respect for my customers.”
There is, of course, no such thing as barber-client privilege. For Vodovoz, it’s a matter of trust.
“My customers have a right to know I don’t talk about them behind their backs,” he says.
He has many famous, wealthy and influential customers. He does not envy them.
“I am the one who is living the American dream,” he says. “I work hard, ever since I come here, and I have my business and my family and my house in the suburbs where there are trees and peace. I know many of the troubles that some of my customers have, but that is nobody else’s business. What we talk about, we talk about here and no place else.”
That’s an admirable trait in an age in which people are willing, even eager, to share the particulars of their encounters with celebrities or newsmakers, no matter how trivial, tangential or insipid. Yes, I’ll never forget the time Drew Peterson talked to me at a local restaurant. What was the conversation? Well, he asked me to pass the ketchup.
Another reason for Vodovoz’s public silence: He feels no need to defend his handiwork.
“For me, it is a simple thing. A man walks in and asks to have his hair cut a certain way. Who am I to tell him different?” he says. “You do not walk into a bar and order a beer and have the bartender say, ‘No, no, you should have a Scotch.’ You tell me what kind of haircut you want, you get that kind of haircut.”
Vodovoz–who has a relatively simple hairstyle–is a personable and forthright person.
“I know the trouble that [Blagojevich] is going through, but we do not talk about it,” he says. “We talk about all sorts of other things. We talk about sports and the weather and our families.”
Blagojevich has long employed his family story (the rise from his immigrant parents’ blue-collar roots) as one of the foundations of his campaign pitches. But Vodovoz’s tale is even more compelling.
He was born in Mogilev-Podolsky, a city of 40,000 in Ukraine, a six-hour drive south of Kiev. The youngest of six boys, he lost his mother when he was 2, and he and his brothers were raised by their father, Yakov, a former boxer and Soviet army World War II veteran who worked long hours as a tailor.
“He is my God,” Vodovoz says. “He always tells me never lie, never cheat, be honest and kind. Work hard and raise a good family.”
A talented folk dancer, Peter Vodovoz graduated from the Kiev State Institute of Culture. But arts jobs were scarce and so, after serving two years in the Soviet army, he learned the barbering trade.
Vodovoz emigrated in 1989, joining tens of thousands of other Jews leaving the USSR as it began to unravel. He arrived in Chicago with $1 in his pocket, staying with an aunt and cousins, who had arranged for his visa. He attended Truman College and worked in a factory and for a valet parking service until his English was good enough to land him a job cutting hair and giving shaves at the Drake Hotel barbershop. In 2000, he opened Mr. Barber on Oak. The shop’s motto is “We Make You Handsome,” but it would be a mistake to let its tony address, 67 E. Oak St., fool you.
“I know the difference between a barbershop and a salon,” says comedian Tom Dreesen, a Mr. Barber customer who was introduced to the shop by his pal, actor Dennis Farina. “When I was growing up in Harvey, I used to go to Tony the barber. Haircuts were $6. Then a few years later he became Mr. Anthony and started charging $45.
“Peter’s place is a barbershop. I like the whole vibe there. He’s such a genuine guy and so patriotic. He really loves this country. I have a woman who cuts my hair in L.A., so sometimes when I’m in Chicago I don’t need a haircut. I still drop into the shop just to talk. There’s always someone interesting there.”
Vodovoz has built a long list of loyal clients, many of whom followed him the half-block west from the Drake, others who have come there on the recommendation of nearby hotels, some by word of mouth or, as I did six years ago, by accident. They include some big names from the worlds of sports, business and politics. There are only a few photos on the shop’s walls: former and current White Sox sluggers Bill Melton and Jim Thome, Cubs manager Lou Piniella and some hockey players, a sport Vodovoz is passionate about. There is no photo of former secretary of commerce and brother of the city’s mayor, Bill Daley. Nor is there one of Blagojevich.
“Athletes are used to having their pictures on the walls,” Vodovoz says. “Others, I think they should have their privacy, and so I keep some of their autographed photos in a file just for me.”
He shares his shop with another barber, the lively Helen Kashper, who came here from Ukraine about the time Vodovoz did. She followed him to Mr. Barber from the Drake and also has many notable customers (Farina among them) and the same tight-lipped style. Vodovoz calls her “the best business partner anyone could ever have.”
Most days at the shop you’ll also find affable shoeshine man Billy Hill.
Vodovoz works seven days a week, taking the train from Vernon Hills, where he lives with his wife of 14 years, Stella. She was a refugee from war-torn Azerbaijan, where she had worked as a hairstylist. After a year working in a slaughterhouse in Kentucky, she arrived in Chicago in 1990. The couple met at a birthday party for his friend and her brother, Vladimir.
“We come from different cultures, and when we first meet that is what we talk about,” Stella says. “But I asked him what it was he wanted in life. Was it money? To be famous? What was it? He is Jewish and I am Catholic, and family was the most important thing to him, and it was to me too.”
Married in 1994, they would eventually be joined in the Chicago area by their families, including Peter’s father, whom he visited every day until his death in 2004.
The couple, both 45, have a bright and personable 9-year-old daughter named Emily, whose morning and late-afternoon training sessions at a local pool attest to her ambition to be “a swimmer in the Olympics, especially when they are in Chicago. After that I would like to become a child psychologist.”
The wife and daughter don’t often visit Mr. Barber, and, Stella says, “He never brings work home with him. We all have dinner together every night and the focus is always on Emily.”
Since his family members have met only a few of his customers, they have missed hearing some praise.
“Peter has treated my whole family with incredible kindness,” says Jeff Colman, a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block who recently represented Guantanamo detainees. “I have been coming to him for nearly 20 years, and he has met my mother and my wife. He has been cutting my son Matt’s hair since he was 5. He is a man of principle and great sincerity.”
Colman and Vodovoz often talk politics, and, “over the years, Peter has become quite the political progressive,” the lawyer says with a smile.
“I do not believe Republican and Democrat, fighting all the time. We should all be united. There is some scary stuff in this world,” Vodovoz says. “If I have a political hero it is Mayor [Richard M.] Daley. I have never met him, but he is the best. What he has done for this city is amazing–everybody who visits from someplace else tells me how beautiful it is here. I would like to tell everybody.”
Because Vodovoz had refused all requests for interviews until now, his name has surfaced only once in the media.
It was during Blagojevich’s June 3 appearance on “Larry King Live” on CNN.
King said, “They tell me thousands of people want to know who cuts [your hair].”
Blagojevich responded, “I want to plug my barber. His name is Peter, Mr. Barber on Oak. He’s a great guy. He cuts Lou Piniella’s hair, and Mick Jagger actually went to his barbershop when he was here for a concert. I know people make fun of it. Whatever they say, it is what it is.”
The bond between barber and customer is an enduring one, the shop a shelter of sorts. You find someone who does right by your hair and knows when to keep his or her mouth shut, you stick with them for keeps, through marriages and hangovers, birthdays and bankruptcies, through all of life’s ups and downs.
Recently, Blagojevich, after paying for his $35 haircut with a personal check, inscribed a photo and gave it to Vodovoz.
It reads, “To the best barber an ex-governor could ever have.”
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rkogan@tribune.com
Peter Vodovoz will appear on “The Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan,” 7-7:30 a.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.
