The view from the barber shop

The men seated on any day in Brookdale Barbers, a north Broad Street institution, like to talk.

Coffee and cake is on the table and photographs of the regulars, past and present, on the walls. Seated in chairs along two walls are the talkers, some speaking quietly to each other and some across the shop when they have the floor.

There are two barber chairs, but only the one closer to the window is used by Freddie Ardizzone, the owner. He is something of a maestro, asking questions, drawing people out and ribbing those he has known for years. There was an afternoon a few weeks ago that was a good time for this newspaper to ask these denizens a question: What did they think about the state of the union?

Not the presidential speech, but the America they read, hear and talk about.

“What I think is that Trump has too much power,” Ardizzone started. “He has the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, so who’s going to stop him? He doesn’t want to listen to the lower courts. Mr. Trump didn’t study civics. There are three branches of government.”

Bill Indek, a former Glen Ridge High School track coach, said it was a strange world we are living in.

“When I was growing up, things would happen like this,” he said. “Like DEI, it kind of spun out of control. A lot of things are in its orbit. After a while, it got to be too much.”

DEI stands for diversity, equality and inclusion. Proponents say as a policy, it encourages fair treatment for everyone. Opponents say it encourages the hiring of less qualified individuals.

“A ‘cousin’ of this DEI was when Biden said he was going to bring in a Black woman as vice-president,” Indek continued. “If you find someone who’s brilliant,
OK. But to go into it with this agenda? And that guy at Columbia University was handing out Hamas literature that encouraged violence.”

A Columbia graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested for allegedly leading activities aligned to Hamas, the military organization committed to armed resistance against Israel. He is currently incarcerated in Louisiana. He holds a Green Card and is legally a permanent resident in this country.

“There was something like this during the Vietnam War, but now it has an edge,” Indek said.

James Brady, sitting in the unused barber chair, said that while Ardizzone spoke civics, he would talk physics.

“I have faith in America,” he said. “For every action there’s an opposite reaction. At times, it seems desperate. It’s how things work. In the late 60s, most thought this was it, with Kent State and Watergate.”

Protesting the war, on May 4, 1970, four Kent State students were shot and killed and nine wounded by the Ohio National Guard.

“I guess the position of president gives the notion you’re invincible,” Ardizzone interjected. “And if you have a guy like Trump, with that personality, he really thinks it.”

“He has nine lives,” said Indek, “like a cat.”

Tony Duda came into the shop and sat down.

“Some people think Trump is an angel or a devil,” Duda said. “He’s doing too much too fast and alienating other countries.”

Duda did not like the choice of Robert Kennedy Jr., for health secretary or Elon Musk.

“He’s in charge of education and the Veterans Administration and changes everything, not to mention Social Security,” he said, referring to Musk. “And how does Kash Patel qualify to be director of the FBI? About the only one I like is the press secretary.”

Linda McMahon is the secretary of education. The secretary of veterans affairs is Douglas Collins. The press secretary is Karoline Leavitt.

Duda continued.

“But Trump put up the fence against the migrants,” he said. “And he’s promised to find the ones who came into the country before. That’s good. They’re causing trouble, sleeping in the streets.”

Duda said the best thing about Trump was his effort to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

“He seems to be a peacemaker although some people think the opposite because if he withdraws the ammo, Russia will go right through and take the whole country,” he said. “He wants to withdraw the weapons and Zelenskyy will be forced to make peace. He talked about that before the election.”

Volodymyr Zelenenskyy is the president of Ukraine.

And that is how it reasonably is on Main Street, Bloomfield.

  barber shop, bloomfield, talk