A new barbershop has been opened on the northside of the city by Donncha O\u2019Connell, who spent 26 years working alongside the \u2018Baldy Barber\u2019, Mick Moriarty.<\/p>\n
Mr Moriarty\u2019s iconic barbershop in Blackpool closed late last year, as he retired after 59 years in the trade.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Connell, who is originally from Fairhill, has opened his own store in Gurranabraher called Buzz Cutz. A grand opening was held at the weekend, and Mr Moriarty attended and cut the ribbon.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Connell told The Echo that he began his barbering career in 1989 in Cork city, before he began working alongside the baldy barber.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t see myself working in any shop other than Mick\u2019s, so my new place was set up with the hope of getting the same sort of vibe, sort of a Men\u2019s Shed vibe. Since opening, 90% of Mick\u2019s customers have followed me.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his 26 years working in the Blackpool barbershop, Mr O\u2019Connell went viral internationally, including on Fox News in the US, for cutting the hair of Evan O\u2019Dwyer, a young boy who is non-verbal, in his mother\u2019s car.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had 12 or 13 kids with additional needs in since I\u2019ve opened. The way I see it, it\u2019s just 20 minutes out of my day, for parents it\u2019s 24\/7, and I see the struggle it is for them.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cParents panic when they see their child obviously in distress, and then the child feeds off that. I try to keep it as calm as possible, and I really enjoy the kids as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Connell added: \u201cMick taught me about patience, and I think that\u2019s where my skills with the kids comes from. He also taught me how to treat people as people. Mick treats everybody the same; he\u2019s very honest, and that leads to a lot of conversations in the shop and great banter.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also thanked his wife Claire for handling the bookings, and his daughter Shauna for her help with social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new barbershop has been opened on the northside of the city by Donncha O\u2019Connell, who spent 26…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,79,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-390749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cork-news","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}