- February 19, 2026
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The silver-haired man facing toward the ceiling wears a blissful expression. A young guy carefully shaves his neck with a straight razor, intent on making the skin as smooth as baby cheeks. Ross Mangus is already well coiffed, the beneficiary of a free haircut, goatee trim and hot towel by a student barber. That would be his son, Luka, who’s about halfway through the eight-month barbering program at Manatee Technical College.
“Do you like it, Dad?” Luka asks Ross, who’s now sitting upright in the barber chair. “Yeah, I do,” Ross replies. “Be honest with me,” Luka probes. “Don’t say so just ‘cause the [reporter] is here.”
“I like it a lot,” the father replies, grinning at his son through the mirror. Ross Mangus, 54, has an enviable head of hair. His fresh cut sweeps upward at an angle, the ends slightly disheveled. Modern, but age appropriate.
“He was my first test dummy,” Luka, 19, says of his father. The son is tall, gregarious, quick with a smile. He wears his dark hair short, unstyled. Like so many of his classmates, Luka started barbering the heads of friends and family. “I really liked it, even though I wasn’t good at it,” he says. “I used to give my Dad regular old-man cuts.”
And like many of his classmates, Luka passed on the four-year college track. “I knew I needed to do something where I stand up, use my hands, talk to people,” Luka says, as Dad nods approvingly. Barbering provides all three. Cutting hair runs in the Mangus family, which migrated from Indiana to Bradenton three years ago. Luka’s mother and both of his sisters are hairdressers.
Fusion Barbershop hums with activity on this Wednesday afternoon in early January. The well-lit space is located in a capacious hallway at MTC’s main campus on State Road 70, a couple miles west of I-75. A small barber pole swirls red, white and blue atop the door.
Students and staff stop in for free haircuts — locals pay a fiver — ensuring that the MTC barbering students have no shortage of heads to work on. A gaggle of young guys, all wearing light-blue smocks, banter and laugh while the ever-present zzzz of clippers plays background to reggae on the sound system. Sprays of aftershave imbue the room with a faint perfumed aroma.
Lording over it all is Shane Lindergren, 52, the program’s instructor, who’s clad in a pristine white smock and jeans. His hair is cropped short, his white beard neatly shaped. He casts a benevolent presence as he mingles among his charges. It’s clear the students — 20 men, six women — like him. Lindergren is the reason Luka Mangus is studying to become a barber. “I was planning on going into the electrician program here,” he says. “But then I met Mr. Shane, and I liked what he said, and I liked how he was as a person.”
Lindergren, a Bradenton native and married father of two, says his fascination with barbering dates back to his early years. He showed some talent as an artist and earned a few credits at Ringling School of Art and Design. But he soon came to realize that “sculpture wasn’t going to pay the bills.” Lindergren left college and went to work at Home Depot, where he stayed 20 years, rising to the level of general manager. “I made a successful career out of that, and I enjoyed what I did, but I was falling out of love with retail,” he says. “Working nights, holidays, it got to be too much.”
Lindergren enrolled at MTC at age 40 and, determined to run his own small business, opened Locals Barber Shop in Bradenton before he finished the barbering program. By the time he passed the state exam and earned his license, he already had haircutters keeping five chairs busy.
Locals remains a thriving concern, but teaching at MTC has trimmed Lindergren’s visits to his shop way back. He rarely gives haircuts anymore. Teaching the craft has taken center stage. Lindergren smiles when he tells me that some of his students come in with the wrong impression of the program. They think it’s going to be easy, he says, that it will consist of honing the haircutting skills they’ve already begun to develop as amateurs. The instructor seems to enjoy disabusing them of the notion.
The 900-hour program includes plenty of classroom work, something that most incoming students had hoped to avoid. It calls for a state-required 225 hours dedicated to Florida Laws and Rules, 270 hours of Safety, Sanitation and Sterilization, 90 hours of Hair Structuring and Chemistry. (One can imagine a new barbering student’s reaction to the mere mention of “chemistry.”) There are quizzes and tests.
Most of his students are dismayed at first, Lindergren says, but they adjust. A few drop out. Luka Mangus sees it like this: “You’re learning things in the classroom that you actually need, not knowledge you’ll never use.”
The remainder of the syllabus is mostly hands-on stuff involving shears, clippers, shampoo, color and perming. And straight razors. Perhaps surprisingly, the barbershop shave has not gone the way of the Oldsmobile. “Our license covers everything a cosmetologist does, except we have to use a razor,” Lindergren says with a trace of pride.
The instructor also weaves in knowledge that’s not strictly part of the curriculum. “I teach them a lot of soft skills that employers would like,” Lindergren explains, including social and leadership savvy. The barber shop remains a vital community hub, and the person holding the clippers should know how to connect with the customer.
The program also delves into contemporary marketing techniques (a robust Instagram presence is a must) and other pathways to becoming a successful barber. That includes a business plan, which is required. And Lindergren helps students with job placement. Just prior to my visit, he had opened the door for Luka Mangus to land an entry-level position at Modern Gents in Lakewood Ranch, setting the young man up for a barbering gig once he’s licensed.
Lindergren stresses to his students that — contrary to popular belief — barbering need not consign them to a life of modest means. These days a haircut runs around $30, he says, so a barber who builds and maintains a clientele can make low six figures without owning a shop.
On this Wednesday afternoon, the MTC barbering students are not contemplating future income as much as sharpening their craft — and having fun doing it. Jose Camacho is cutting the hair of Caden Campbell, whose wavy red mop comes down into his eyes. Camacho meticulously carves out a hairless half-inch rim around one ear, part of a “low fade.” The fade is a common hairstyle for young men these days. A medium fade takes the hairless strip higher, a high fade higher still. What baby boomers used to mock as “white walls” are now the height of fashion.
Behind the Fusion shop, in a large room shared with cosmetology students — nearly all of them women — Carlos Fuentes, 19, works on a head with an eerily blank countenance. That’s because it’s a mannequin, a key starter tool that allows students to refine skills without fear of mistakes. Like most of his peers, Fuentes started by giving haircuts to friends and family — and figured he was pretty good at it. But he quickly discovered that such was not the case. “Yeah, I’m learning to be professional here, to not just have it as a hobby,” he says. “It’s being committed, not just being OK with however [the haircut] turns out.”
Fuentes never considered pursuing a four-year degree. “I already knew I wanted to do something with hair,” he says. “Going to college would be a waste of time and money.”
Not for nothing, most of Lindergren’s students are debt-free and will join the workforce within a year.
And then there’s the matter of job security. While many professionals, especially those in tech, worry about the looming impact of AI, the topic never comes up as I circulate among these barbers-to-be. The day a robot can give a haircut and kibitz with the customer should be a long way off.
I’m so envious of Ross Mangum’s look of serenity in the barber chair that I ask Luka if he’ll give me a quick beard trim. He gladly agrees. It’s the most I can request, seeing as I don’t have hair to cut. But the school day is winding down and I reconsider. “Don’t worry about the trim, Luka,” I tell him. “I know it’s getting late.”
“Thanks,” he replies. “But come back. Really, come back in.”
As class begins to break up, I’m heartened by this tableau: a group of young men buzzing with enthusiasm and joy while refining a craft that some of us — especially those who use “stylists” — may regard as antiquated, even pedestrian.
Don’t tell these dudes that. Don’t even try. They’ll scoff, turn a deaf ear — and besides, they have many sharp instruments nearby.
For more information, visit ManateeTech.edu.
