An old fashioned barber shop. A place to get a good haircut from a barber (not a "stylist"), read a magazine while you wait, get a shoe shine if you want, visit with some agreeable barbers and patrons about the news of the day, and all at prices that seem to have kept pace with reality rather than with inflation. If this sounds appealing to you, you owe it to yourself to find Times Barber Shop.
The name is a holdover from the days when this decades old establishment was located at various sites in the Rice Village (one of them on Times Blvd.) before rising rents drove them to their current location in a small strip center at the corner of Highway 59 (southbound service road) at Shepherd Drive. No matter where they've been located, through the years, literally generations of Houstonians have been expertly trimmed by Robert and his team of barbers, and I agree wholeheartedly with Adam L's review: this is a place you get exactly what you request; be specific about how you want your hair cut, and they'll do their level best (and their best is very very good) to give it to you. It's one of the reasons that virtually everyone you see there is "a regular" and has been for years. Prices have gone up to between $13 and $16, depending on what you have done, but that's a small price to pay to sit in an honest-to-Opie barber shop, its walls festooned with a pennant from every college that every patron over the years ever attended, and get a fast, efficient shave and a haircut.
And yes, a shave can be had, if you want to relive that luxury from long ago. Robert, the owner, even whips out the warm lather and an old-timey straight razor to put the perfect finish on a haircut--it's one of the reasons many who visit this establishment sign up on a pad of paper when they walk in to get on the list to be trimmed by Robert himself, even when other barber chairs are open. I've never had a bad haircut from any of the other barbers, so I take potluck. Walk in and anyone who may be idle will invite you to have a seat. If no one is, grab a magazine or the newspaper, have a seat yourself in the line of chairs for waiting patrons, and Robert will make sure you are accommodated in the order you arrived. No appointment necessary, nor even possible--this is a barber shop, not a "salon."
Yelp inexplicably has this place located in Gulfton, so you'll have problems using the Yelp map to locate them, and you can't check in once you get there until someone fixes this glitch. The address, 2401 Southwest Freeway, is correct, as is the other posted contact info. Use a more reliable mapping service than Yelp to navigate to your destination until they get this corrected.
Times Barber Shop is a Houston institution. The clientele is mostly men, but there are male and female barbers, and they cut women's and kids' hair too. If you've not yet dropped in for a trim, give it a try. If you do, chances are, you'll become "a regular" too.
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