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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Again within the day, DeJuan Bonds was so good at slicing hair that his buddies at Ruskin Excessive would go to his home, sit in his barber chair — generally it was the bathroom within the household lavatory — and let him buzz their scalps with an inexpensive pair of clippers. They trusted that their buddy, a child like them, would ship them house lookin’ sharp.
Some 30 years later, Patrick Mahomes trusts him like that, too.
That religion runs deep. The Chiefs’ MVP quarterback flew Bonds to the Tremendous Bowl in Miami so Bonds might give him a contemporary minimize two days earlier than the sport — on the identical day of the week, on the precise hour, that Mahomes would get his hair minimize throughout the season at Bonds’ barbershop in Overland Park.
Bonds bought to observe the Chiefs win their first Tremendous Bowl in 50 years from the stands in Exhausting Rock Stadium. Whereas Kansas Metropolis followers have been freaking out about what was taking place on the sector, Bonds fearful about Mahomes’ hair, particularly what it will seem like when he took off his trademark headband and spoke to the world after the sport.
It issues as a result of that hairdo — with a precision fade and exploding crown of curls — has turn into as a lot a calling card for Bonds as it’s for Mahomes.
The longtime Kansas Metropolis-area barber is named the go-to man amongst among the largest names in native skilled sports activities. He is the person who took the meh-mohawk that Mahomes wore at Texas Tech and whipped it into form for the NFL highlight his rookie 12 months. He has groomed it ever since. The look is iconic, amongst two-legged and four-legged followers alike.
Throughout the nation, little boys and middle-aged males, black and white, curly haired dudes and ones with stick-straight hair, need that look, some going to uncommon lengths to get it. Grade-schoolers are letting their mothers curl their hair — one let his mother give him a chemical perm — to get that Mahomes ‘do.
That hair has starred in TV commercials — with Jake from State Farm and for Head & Shoulders with retired Pittsburgh Steelers security Troy Polamalu, additionally identified for his luscious locks. There are movies on YouTube exhibiting how one can do the fashion.
Within the Kansas Metropolis metro, floor zero for the development, even canine sport the minimize. Within the weeks earlier than the Tremendous Bowl, Jenna Ruby, who owns Glamour Grooming in Shawnee, began giving canine Mahomes haircuts — shaved on the perimeters, poofy on the highest, with a bandanna, after all.
She’s performed that to about 20 canine, principally poodles and goldendoodles with curly coats, and anticipated extra requests because the staff heads into this season’s playoffs. “I feel that is fairly the little development that is occurred,” mentioned Ruby, who has been grooming canine for 10 years and would like to get her paws on the quarterback’s personal canine.
However there’s extra occurring right here than hair. Overland Park barber Eric “Cutta” Ross felt it when a person walked into his appointment-only store sooner or later and requested if somebody might minimize his hair. He simply discovered he had most cancers and needed his head shaved earlier than chemotherapy.
“I need to do one thing loopy,” the person mentioned, and he particularly needed one thing with a Mahomes theme.
Ross was prepared. He is been giving clients of all ages the Mahomes look these days. So he buzzed the person’s hair right into a mohawk and sculpted Mahomes’ face and jersey quantity, 15, on the facet of his head. “He was an older Caucasian gentleman and you wouldn’t anticipate him to get that,” Ross mentioned. “It touched my coronary heart.”
It wasn’t that way back that Kansas Metropolis sports activities followers went gaga over one other stylized mohawk, the one worn by former Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer. Some individuals even name Mahomes’ hair a “Hos.”
Bonds, who not so surprisingly minimize Hosmer’s hair, too, nicknamed Mahomes’ hair “The Present-Me” haircut. He would not suppose the title has caught on but.
“I’ve touched each well-known Kansas Metropolis Chief and Royal within the final 25 years,” mentioned Bonds, who a number of years in the past had a formalized relationship with the Chiefs, slicing the hair of gamers and coaches in a room arrange like a barbershop at Arrowhead Stadium.
“I can go on and on and title (them), and I would neglect some, so I do not need to do this and upset somebody … so that you title it. If he was a big-time athlete in Kansas Metropolis, I bought the honors.”
Now gamers come to his store — Purple Label Luxurious Barber Store by Napps — tucked between a UPS retailer and Barley’s Kitchen and Faucet at 119th Road and Quivira Highway. It is commonplace for a Chiefs participant to be the final one out the door on a Friday night time earlier than a house sport.
The store is a dream man cave, soundtrack offered by Hip Hop BBQ on Pandora, customized championship murals painted on the again partitions — one for the Royals, one for the Chiefs.
Framed sports activities jerseys line the partitions, a corridor of fame of Bonds’ most well-known MLB and NFL shoppers. Lorenzo Cain. Alex Gordon. Danny Duffy. Salvador Perez. Mecole Hardman. Demcarcus Robinson. Travis Kelce.
And, after all, a No. 15 jersey, signed: “To DeJuan, Thanks for holding me the cleanest QB within the sport!”
Bonds retains his razors and trimmers splayed out at his station just like the instruments of a surgeon. His hand is simply as regular when he wields them. He prefers his “old-school” instruments, admitting that he hasn’t picked up the fancier, cordless cutters his youthful barbers use.
Bonds, who has three youngsters, went away to varsity after highschool, however it wasn’t for him, says his older brother, Derrick Bonds. The 2 used to chop one another’s hair once they have been youthful and Derrick continues to be his brother’s buyer.
“I bear in mind having that dialog,” Derrick mentioned. “He mentioned, ‘I am coming again, what am I doing to do? And I am like, ‘Man, go to barber faculty.’ And that is the place it began. He adopted his ardour and bought his barber license.”
Bonds shortly constructed up a clientele understanding of his aunt’s magnificence store in Olathe. The title of his first store was Napps, which stays a part of his enterprise brand. “You need to have an eye fixed for it. He is a perfectionist. Anal is what I … he is very, very anal on his haircuts,” mentioned Derrick.
Bonds will get to work at 6 a.m. and sometimes would not go away till after 8 p.m. He is generally his personal worst enemy, as a result of he’s identified to squeeze walk-ins into his packed schedule.
“He is blessed to have the expertise that he has. He thanks God day-after-day for the expertise,” Derrick mentioned. “It is a blessing and a curse, as a result of he is busy on a regular basis. He is needed, you understand. However, he loves it, although. He would not have it every other manner.”
Bonds appears uninterested in individuals asking why he wasn’t in that State Farm business exhibiting Mahomes getting his hair minimize. The quarterback’s youthful brother, Jackson, is in it, too.
The barber slicing Mahomes’ hair within the spot was an actor, Bonds can have you understand. And, insult to damage, “he wasn’t holding the clippers proper,” mentioned Bonds, who added that if he had been requested to be in that business, Mahomes would by no means pay for an additional haircut once more.
(Do not ask him how a lot Mahomes pays for his weekly cuts. Bonds will not inform.)
Bonds was on set, nevertheless, and styled Mahomes’ hair when he and Polamalu shot a Head & Shoulders business on the Genesis Well being KC Racquet Membership in Merriam.
Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce, additionally a consumer of Bonds’, introduced Mahomes and his barber collectively.
“When gamers come to city, moreover the place they need to stay, additionally they need to know the place they are going to get their hair minimize,” Bonds mentioned. “That is one of many issues they ask, like, ‘OK, let me take a survey and go searching and see whose head appears good and who’s doing it.’ So he requested Travis Kelce, and (Kelce mentioned) ‘I’m going see DeJuan at Purple Label.'”
Bonds refuses to cross judgment on whoever used to chop Mahomes’ hair in Texas. Let’s simply say, uh, the fade wasn’t nice.
The primary time Mahomes sat in Bonds’ chair, he gave Bonds carte blanche. “He mentioned, ‘I belief you,’ ” Bonds recalled, “and that is the place the connection started.
“It wasn’t in dangerous form, however I needed to work on it to attempt to get it to seem like the imaginative and prescient that I noticed. It is a canvas, and once I see a head, I already know what I would like it to seem like, so I truly needed to play with it for a very good month earlier than I bought it to look the way in which I needed it to.”
Bonds can normally minimize somebody’s hair in 20 minutes. Mahomes sits within the chair for not less than 40, 45 minutes, generally longer, relying on the dialog. Bonds tries to keep away from soccer discuss.
It is a difficult head of hair to chop — advantageous, with cowlicks. It invitations Sampson comparisons, given how Mahomes prefers to put on his curls longer throughout the season. “I have never minimize a lot off the highest these days,” Bonds mentioned. “He likes it lengthy. He simply desires to maintain it out of his eyes.”
Bonds has to needless to say Mahomes is a scrunch-and-go man. “He would not actually comb it, he simply messes with it,” he mentioned.
He found out how one can minimize Mahomes’ hair in order that “when he takes his helmet off, or he takes his headphones off, or no matter he does,” it appears good.
“My worry is not when he takes his helmet off, as a result of he all the time has a wrap on. My worry is when he does the interviews — does he comb his hair when he takes his wrap off,” Bonds mentioned.
And Bonds hasn’t diagrammed that post-game play for his younger consumer — but. “I all the time simply have my fingers crossed,” he mentioned.
On Christmas Eve, former College of Kansas basketball participant Travis Releford introduced his 9-year-old son, T.J., into Bonds’ store to get the boy’s Mahomes mohawk freshened for the vacations.
Bonds started slicing Releford’s hair when he performed basketball for Bishop Miege and continued as his barber after Releford joined the Jayhawks. Releford introduced a few of his KU teammates to Bonds, too.
“It is well-liked now as a result of (Mahomes) is the face of our soccer staff,” mentioned Releford, who lives in Kansas Metropolis. “You see it on lots of people, lots of youthful youngsters for certain, particularly youngsters my son’s age.
“I really feel like he is come right here and lifted town up, so far as spirit, so far as how we come collectively in relation to soccer. We went so lengthy with out successful. He provides us one thing to cheer for, particularly throughout a time like this.”
The mane attraction right here, clearly, is just not the hair, however the man.
“I feel the magic simply comes from him as an individual,” mentioned Timeka Proctor, a Northland mother whose 9-year-old son, Jaxson, went viral at Halloween two years in the past with a Mahomes haircut and jersey. Mahomes retweeted Jaxson’s uncle’s tweet in regards to the costume and gave Jaxson an autographed soccer that his mother will not let him play with for safekeeping’s sake.
Matt Phillips lately bought a Mahomes minimize on a dare from his spouse and their 9-year-old son, Hampton — a younger “Mahomie.”
“They figured a gray-headed Mahomes minimize could be hysterical,” mentioned Phillips, a 44-year-old development supervisor for a grocery retailer chain who lives in Boiling Springs, South Carolina.
However Phillips did not thoughts as a result of he understands why Mahomes means a lot to his son.
“To us and my son, Patrick looks like somebody who’s appreciative of all of the success he has had and appears to have a real soul,” Phillips mentioned.
“He comes throughout as approachable and likes to have enjoyable. I feel it is nice for younger individuals to look as much as somebody who’s real and appears to like what he does and town he does it in. Santa introduced my son a Mahomes T-shirt, sweatshirt and an official KC Chiefs soccer.”
On the shelf above the place Bonds cuts Mahomes’ hair sits a reproduction of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, just like those that Tremendous Bowl winners obtain. It is a visible reminder that the pinnacle of one among Kansas Metropolis’s most beloved celebrities lies in Bonds’ succesful arms.
The barber’s brother says all these celeb shoppers have not gone to Bonds’ head.
Effectively, perhaps this one has.
The clippers that Bonds used on Mahomes on the Tremendous Bowl?
They’re packed away in a field, bits of that MVP hair nonetheless in them.
(c)2021 The Kansas Metropolis Star (Kansas Metropolis, Mo.)
Distributed by Tribune Content material Company, LLC.
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