Astor Place Hairstylists is a lot like other locally-owned, old-school barber shops in New York City, and yet not. The upright piano in the corner with "Barber Shop Idol" painted on the wall is one clue that things are a little different here these days.
Another is the long walls of modernist paintings—Marilyn Monroe, the rapper Notorious B.I.G., the Empire State Building during a pink-orange sunset—all painted by the barber shop's longtime manager, Michael Saviello, or Big Mike, who's been at Astor Hair for nearly 40 years.
"I only started painting four years ago."
His artistic pursuit began with lunch break painting sessions in a back room of the shop. Curious customers began peeking in to see what Big Mike was up to.
"They'd say, 'Man, that's great, I didn't know you painted!' I'd say, 'I didn't know, either!'"
The word got around, indeed. Nicolas Heller, better known as @NewYorkNico on Instagram, is a longtime Astor Place regular who directed a 12-minute documentary short called Big Mike Takes Lunch. It affectionately profiles Saviello as he manages the bustling shop while squirreling away scant free time to paint in the back. A slew of media interviews followed, as well as shows in Chelsea galleries and sales of his paintings.
But Saviello and Astor Place aren't strangers to the limelight. Opened in 1946, the shop is something of a New York City institution, with well-known clients including actors Adam Sandler, Vin Diesel, and Donald Glover, artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, and rappers like LL Cool J, Mos Def, and Run DMC.
All of that came to a jarring halt in March 2020 when the pandemic shuttered the shop. Suddenly, Saviello was home with his wife and adult daughter, both busy on Zoom calls, leaving him a bit too much time to think.
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"What am I gonna do, I'm 60 years old. My job skills are managing people, and everybody's closed—they don't need no managers."
So Saviello got to work painting. He turned to Instagram, making videos of his artistic process, and worked with a gallery in Bayonne, New Jersey, to organize a Zoom show of his work. To his surprise, he was selling paintings even as Astor Place sat empty and dark.
By mid-June, Saviello and his barbers were back in the shop, though in fewer numbers, and business was slow. Then, three weeks before Thanksgiving 2020, came a devastating announcement from the family that had owned Astor Place for generations.
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"The owners told us they were going to close forever. They kept telling us, 'We're closing, we're not doing it anymore. Go find somewhere else.'"
With 60 or 70 barbers, most of them there for 30-plus years, everyone was shaken. But Saviello drew courage from the leap of faith he'd taken with his art during the pandemic.
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"I started making a bunch of phone calls. I knew a couple people that were really always interested [in buying Astor Place]. Never in a million years could you have bought Astor Place, except for what happened [with the pandemic]. It was an opportunity."
With an investment group comprised of Astor barbers and clients, Saviello and his group bought the shop. And they wasted no time making it their own.
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"They never did any social media. Nothing. We got our social media going, painted a mural, started podcasts. The back room I made a stage, people wanted to come sing karaoke. Before, they wouldn't let me put any of my art outside. Now I got all my stuff outside, people are going crazy, it's like a gallery."
Saviello has advice for fellow creatives and business owners alike.
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"When I first started doing art, everybody had advice. Everybody criticized you. In the end, no matter what, you gotta do what you have in your head. If you have a vision, just go through with it. Take a little advice, but don't lose the vision. When I started doing that, people started recognizing my work. 'That [painting's] a Saviello.' That makes me feel good, you know? Don't doubt yourself."
"We're coming out of the tunnel and into the brightness again. We see the people coming in, we see the city coming back."