{"id":154765,"date":"2026-04-01T22:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/154765\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T22:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T22:27:07","slug":"avoca-barbershop-reopens-after-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/154765\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoca barbershop reopens after fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The barber chair is back open at Wally&#8217;s Barber Shop after a fire ripped through the building in Luzerne County back in January.<\/p>\n<p>AVOCA, Pa. \u2014 The sound of clippers is one that customers thought they may never hear again.<\/p>\n<p>For 23 years, Wally&#8217;s Barber Shop sat along McAlpine Street in Avoca, until it didn&#8217;t.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If people don&#8217;t come through the door, I don&#8217;t have no lights on, and for that I&#8217;m grateful,&#8221; said Wally Alapic, Wally&#8217;s Barbershop.<\/p>\n<p>A fire <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnep.com\/article\/news\/local\/luzerne-county\/five-escape-avoca-apartment-fire-pets-lost-investigation-underway-luzerne-county\/523-6b2509b0-47f3-4930-a4ee-12596c5c9ac4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">tore through the building back in January,<\/a> forcing people from the apartment upstairs and ripping through Wally&#8217;s barbershop below.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, I had 23 years of clutter, so the fire actually helped me purge that,&#8221; said Alapic.<\/p>\n<p>Now, two months later, Wally&#8217;s chair is back open. On the same exact date, the business first opened 23 years ago. &#8220;The landlord was willing to redo it for me, as quickly as he did. And you know, he put me in first, and he&#8217;s doing the rest of renovation little by little. And I&#8217;m grateful, and if I was out of business a little bit longer. I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>As Wally starts anew, he&#8217;s welcoming the old; customers waiting for more than just a trim. The same customers who sat in the same chair for decades are now filling that seat once again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you find something you like to do, you never work a day in your life. And this is like the only job I don&#8217;t mind going to work,&#8221; Alapic added.<\/p>\n<p>As the clippers are once again buzzing, it&#8217;s the sound that proves this barbershop is more than just walls.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The barber chair is back open at Wally&#8217;s Barber Shop after a fire ripped through the building in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-154765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}