Fundraising saves the day for Street Thug Barbers
Cameron Sterling is quick to admit he made a mistake Saturday night when he hailed a cab from his Gastown barbershop and then hopped out, leaving his black backpack behind.
The backpack was stuffed with clippers, scissors and other shop tools but also gear used by volunteers with his Street Thug Barbers, who spend a few hours each Sunday at Oppenheimer Park in the Downtown Eastside giving free haircuts to people in need.
Losing the bag would make it difficult to keep up his perfect attendance since he and the Thugs launched on Aug. 1, 2015, and Sterling wouldn’t let that happen. After calling every cab company in town and failing to track down the bag, he reluctantly turned to the GoFundMe online fundraiser platform Monday to raise the $800 he needed to replace the gear.
The fund raised more than $1,000 in just a few days.
“It was neat watching the community come together,” Sterling said.
“I was getting private messages from all over North America — from barbers that follow me online and friends of mine — and they were offering to lend or give me equipment. It was pretty powerful and humbling.”
Sterling, 43, said he’s already replaced some of the gear so that on Sunday he and his fellow Street Thugs, Josh Malcolm and Farzad Salehi, will have no trouble doing their usual 20 free haircuts.
He’s grateful to be able to continue that work.
“The barber experience isn’t just a haircut,” Sterling said. “It’s connecting and communicating — a relationship. That’s why we choose to go back every week.”
Some days they’re joined by a dozen more volunteers including local barbering students and international pros from as far as Europe. A quick scroll through the Thugs’ Instagram shows the famous Frank Rimer of London, England making a guest appearance earlier this month.
“You see people that charge $2,000 a day to teach and they’re standing next to somebody that doesn’t even know how to do most haircuts yet, and they’re all out for the same reason,” Sterling said. “It’s pretty neat.”
Sterling, who has been in the hair industry for close to two decades, said he’s found no community to be as tight-knit as the Downtown Eastside. He lived on the streets of the impoverished neighbourhood in the ‘90s while battling heroin addiction and started Street Thug Barbers a week after leaving the Salvation Army’s Harbourlight detox following a relapse a few years ago.
He now observes the anniversary of his sobriety on the same day as he celebrates the Street Thugs.
“I could never see (myself ) stopping,” he said. “It’s just something I look forward to. Already I’m counting the days until Sunday.”