Siesta Key's 'mane man' closes shop

After Joe Thraen sweeps up locks of hair from the floors of Classic Shapes in Hair for the last time, Siesta Key will lose another “old curmudgeon” — as he refers to himself.

The 71-year-old salon owner can no longer afford rent at his salon’s South Siesta location and he says he is tired of listening to gripes about prices. But the community that has come to know the avid biker, occasional Santa Claus and deadpan jokester since he started at the salon in 1983 bids adieu to a warm and hardworking entrepreneur — hardly in line with his self-deprecating self summary.

Rising rents and dwindling customers are not the only reasons for retirement, which will happen after a noon haircut appointment June 9 before a block party celebrating Thraen spills into the streets near Crescent Market. Like anyone approaching the three-quarter century mark, Thraen’s health has overtaken his priorities, namely haircutting.

In 2009 Thraen went into the hospital with a sore knee. He left nearly two years later after trouncing pancreatic cancer and surviving a quadruple bypass. He’s now a few pounds lighter without his gallbladder or spleen and half of his pancreas.

He had a fondness for hamburgers; one reason he and his ex-wife used to visit the area, and a factor in his decision to move here in 1983, was a burger joint on Old Stickney Point Road — where a bridge used to connect Siesta Key with the mainland. “You can’t eat a burger outside in November in Iowa,” he says of his home state. He also frequented the Hob Nob Drive-In, which was a roadside root beer stand in the 1960s.

Burgers may have contributed to his coronary quandary, but he was never a drinker.

“The damned water here must have given me cancer,” he jokes.

Poking fun at solemn subjects makes his repeated statement, “I’ve always been a serious man,” sound painfully tongue-in-cheek. After a few minutes chatting with Thraen, who commands effortless deadpan delivery accented with unsuspected soft chuckles, he seems almost cartoonish.

Hairdressers Sandi and Kim, who Thraen says like only to be identified by their first names “like Madonna,” interject with “oh, please” or make a request for one of his stories while conducting their afternoon appointments. Both women have been working at Thraen’s salon on Midnight Pass Road since 1995 and 1999, respectively.

Ramblin’ man
There were several factors, some more frightening than others, which contributed to Thraen’s aspirations to become a salon owner. He nearly died when a tractor tipped onto him when he was young, precluding any thoughts of becoming a farmer.

And at his uncles’ LaVern and Ambrose Thraen’s barbershop in Carroll, Iowa, a young Thraen got a glimpse of the — surprisingly — alluring life of a barber. He recalls a shoe shiner who worked out of the shop, who had tips on racehorses.

“I always knew when (LaVern) was going down to the track because he’d have a big stogie in his mouth,” Thraen says.

Thraen would joke that he used the shoe shiner’s tips to play the horses while Ambrose Thraen flirted with a woman who did accounting for the salon. Quite an appealing sight for a kid who often told his father he would never settle down like “he was supposed to.”

Years later, when Thraen’s ex-wife wanted to start a salon, he decided to go to hair school and join her. As a man, it was accepted that he would probably become a barber. But Thraen’s upbringing on the family farm made him gifted at performing myriad tasks, something a salon owner must do, he says.

Thraen has watched the world of hair fashion radically evolve and made enough friends to shame the most popular Facebook celebrity. His salon is decorated with hundreds of pictures of clients, clients’ children and his own family.

Despite insisting he’s not a people person, Thraen falls somber when he mentions an aspect of being a barber he will not miss after retirement. Each season brings news of a regular customer’s passing.

“That’s something that really gets to you,” Thraen says.

But, whatever disappointment the season possibly brought, Thraen was ready to be jolly. With his white-gray beard he makes the ideal Santa Claus with a curly white wig and Saint Nick getup.

Monica and George Galfre at Silver City Sarasota, a retail jewelry store on Siesta Key, say they were taken by Thraen’s sense of humor. They recall a time when the couple was trying to quell their son’s bad behavior during the Christmas season.

“Joe must have heard his temper tantrum through the walls and came over and knocked on the window and gave him a stern look,” Monica Galfre recalls. Their son behaved well for the rest of the day; that’s how convincing his Santa is.

But his Santa duds will be boxed up for a while, though. When he shuts down the salon, Thraen and his common-law wife, Janis, plan to travel the country in the couple’s RV. They plan to hit up a Friday the 13th bike rally and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

A way with the ladies
Theresa, Margaret and Betsy Ross, sisters from New York who are in their 80s and 90s, have been devoted patrons at Thraen’s salon for more than a decade and claim to be the first passengers in “Tweety Bird.”

The aptly named motorcycle sits on three wheels with a body painted yellow placed over the vehicle’s mechanical innards, which Thraen built with legal parts. It took him nearly a decade to complete “Tweety Bird,” and he slapped two beaming eyes and a beak on the front of the vehicle to complete the cartoonish transformation.

The charming Thraen, in 2002, took Theresa and Margaret Ross to Turtle Beach in the avian automobile, taking pictures along the way.

“He made a scrap book with poems,” Theresa Ross recalls.

Although never a professional photographer, Thraen used his talents behind the lens to do “one of the nicest things.” When Betsy Ross was celebrating her 90th birthday, her sisters were unable to join her in upstate New York for the celebration. Thraen, despite his health problems at the time, took photographs of the two and sent large proofs to their family before the birthday party, “so it would be just like they were there.”

“Only Joe would think of doing something like that,” Theresa Ross says.

The Ross sisters were heartbroken when they found out about Thraen’s retirement through a letter from the salon.

“This is it, I know Joe’s going to retire,” Theresa Ross remembers telling Margaret after bringing in the mail.

The next time the women went to Classic Designs, they ribbed Thraen, telling him they would never speak to him again. But shrouded in the humor that was always present at the salon, the Rosses were devastated.

“He always had room (on the schedule) for the three of us,” she says. “It was like an assembly line.
“We would walk in and you couldn’t see him behind his desk,” Theresa Ross says; many of the knick-knacks he collected from clients over the last 30 years wound up piled at the salon entrance. But the one-time cement mixer would manage to make his presence known. “He would pop out and start talking in that Iowa accent of his,” she says. “You couldn’t understand a word he was saying.”

Before Thraen takes his final hair appointment and embarks on a road trip to visit family scattered across the U.S., he offered to give the Ross sisters a final ride in “Tweety Bird.”

“He has a wonderful sense of humor,” Theresa Ross says, remarking she is reticent about rounding up the Ross girls at their age for one last cruise. “That’s just like Joe. He’s a free-spirit and the kindest man we ever met.”

Political joker
Among the myriad eclectic photographs adorning Joe Thraen’s office is one of Barack Obama wearing goofy glasses. Another depicts former President George W. Bush waving with a smirk and above text that reads: “Miss me yet?”

Thraen isn’t shy about his political leaning; he claims he’s closing Classic Shapes in Hair “because of Obama.” And when Bush was elected president in 1999, he posted on the door of the salon an autographed photo of the former Texas governor and his wife — which prompted one devout Democrat to cancel her appointment.

But, chatting with most regulars reveals that Thraen is a light-hearted jokester regarding his political beliefs.

“Joe gives clients a hard time and they give it right back,” says hairdresser Sandi. When he found out a member of the Clinton family moved near regular Betsy Ross’ Chappaqua, N.Y., residence he often teased her about the new neighbors’ lawn.