Salons

Toni & Guy

After a number of years training Teachers through TIGI and working in a few different salons in San Francisco, I was called on to come to New York to help open up and work at the flagship Salon and Academy there. I worked alongside the late, great Guy Mascolo and his son Zak Mascolo, Thomas Osborne and Kenny Gibson. It was an amazing time and an amazing team.

We taught Advanced Haircutting Courses and Creative Coloring and New Collection Releases to students from all over the world, every one comes to New York for class! We built clientele on our off days. It was a busy time but I loved it. Living and working in New York changes a person, you really learn what hard work is and how to be smart and successful. I learned so much.

In the end though, it wasn’t for me. I missed everything about California, the weather, the chill vibe, the Pacific Ocean. So I packed up my scissors and my experiences and headed home to open up my first Salon, my beloved “Grasshopper”.

Grasshopper

In 2002, freshly back in town from NYC, I opened what I consider to be my life’s work. Grasshopper Salon. At #28 South Park, a quaint little European style park hidden below the financial district in San Francisco. We started on a wing and a prayer at street level and then expanded to 5000 square feet and 17 stylists over the next four years. What a joy is was to be able to hire and train my own apprentices in my own home salon after all those years of traveling. I still travelled for TIGI a lot, all over the US and Europe, we started doing to Asia at that time too so it was much easier to go from the West Coast. It was amazing to bring all of that experience home to my own family at Grasshopper. 

I discovered that I was good at more than just teaching. I was also able to become a good boss and mentor. In the 17 years that I ran the Salon, my staff and I trained more than 50 hairdressers. We also hosted TIGI academy courses for hairdressers in the Bay Area so we had the whole Toni &Guy team coming through the Salon all year long. Many of my Apprentices became teachers, and some of them went on to open their own fabulous Salons.

In essence, I ran an Academy at Grasshopper, constantly hiring new talent and training them up. It was my job, my duty to send them out in the world to be successful. Had they all stayed with me I would’ve had to open ten more salons!

My Darling Grasshopper closed at the end of December 2018 after an incredible 17 years. The Tech Scene had taken over South Park and our fate was similar to that of many legendary SOMA gems: our rent was going to increase so dramatically at the start of 2019 that I chose to disband and fly free for a while. So after the busiest December on record I said goodbye to San Francisco and the Big G. My whole staff got fabulous new jobs and are killing it, I hit the road and travelled in SE Asia for 3 months and then landed in Maui where I hope to continue to teach anddo fabulous hair and help raise the bar in our industry.