Vision of success: Duncanville barbershop boasts diverse clientele

Duncanville, TX - Tony Brock started out cutting his own hair and his son’s hair. Everybody liked the job he did, so he spread out and started cutting hair around his neighborhood.   Now, he does it for a living at The Vision Barbershop in Duncanville, a business on Danieldale Road that he started 15 years ago.

“It’s just a neighborhood barbershop,” he said. “We do all races, all nationalities, males, females and children.”

Brock went to barber college while working for Decker Meat Co., but when Decker closed its Garland plant, he had to look for work elsewhere.

“Every day we drove by this place, and one day we saw it had a light on,” Brock said.

Brock bought the storefront business and redid it from top to bottom. The floor that used to be concrete now is covered with checkerboard tiles. One wall bears a framed copy of the famed photograph of Muhammad Ali glaring down at the fallen Sonny Liston in Lewiston, Maine, on May 25, 1965.

Another wall sports posters from Cedar Hill and Duncanville high school teams, as well as poems and pictures of different hairstyles.

Richard Tyeskie, a DeSoto resident who left his own haircutting business to join Brock, said things usually get busy at the shop when school lets out.

Sure enough, around 3:30 p.m. the doors open and a flood of children and their parents come in.

Chris White, a 27-year-old resident of Duncanville, has brought his 3-year-old son Zach in for a haircut.

White, sporting Ricky Williams-style dreadlocks, said he never gets a haircut.

“I can’t remember the last time I had it cut,” he said.

Everyone here is a fulltime employee, and Tyeskie and Reggie Sims are aspiring gospel musicians. They had a group once, Choice Men, that started out as an R&B outfit but switched to gospel.

Now they are working on solo careers. Sims recently performed at Mojo’s Bar and Grill in Austin, and Tyeskie has an upcoming performance scheduled at Victory Grill in Austin.

Austin radio station KAZI-FM 88.7 — a station that plays jazz, gospel, reggae, hip-hop and blues, is playing one of his songs, Tyeskie said.

“It’s going great,” said Sims, who used to work at Tyeskie’s shop but moved with him to The Vision. “Doors are opening.”

Mike Glaspie of Duncanville said he tries to come by the shop at least once a week to get his haircut. He knows Brock well.

“It’s a good old place to come,” he said. “It’s a good environment and a respectful place.”

Customers and employees often find themselves in conversations about a variety of topics, Brock said.

“It seems like every day it’s a different conversation,” Brock said. “We talk about life, religion, sports, politics — it gets loud in here.”

But it never gets heated, he said.

“It’s just fun,” he said. “People talk about their jobs, about relationships — it’s a good way to go about your job.”

D Black, a veteran barber who has worked at The Vision “a bit,” put it bluntly: “It’s a barbershop, you know? We talk about everything.”

THE VISION

Where: 1426 W. Danieldale Road, Duncanville

Hours: Monday noon to 7 p.m.; Tuesday through Friday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Closed Sundays. 

Source: Dallas Morning News