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Again within the day, DeJuan Bonds was so good at slicing hair that his buddies at Ruskin Excessive would go to his home, sit down in his barber chair — generally it was the bathroom within the household lavatory — and let him buzz their scalps with an affordable pair of clippers. They trusted that their buddy, a child like them, would ship them dwelling 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 final yr so Bonds may give him a contemporary reduce two days earlier than the sport — on the identical day of the week, on the precise hour, that Mahomes would get his hair reduce in the course of the season at Bonds’ barbershop in Overland Park.
Bonds obtained to observe the Chiefs win their first Tremendous Bowl in 50 years from the stands in Laborious Rock Stadium. Whereas Kansas Metropolis followers had been freaking out about what was occurring on the sphere, Bonds apprehensive about Mahomes’ hair, particularly what it will appear 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 change 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 a number of the largest names in native skilled sports activities. He’s the person who took the meh-mohawk that Mahomes wore at Texas Tech and whipped it into form for the NFL highlight his rookie yr. 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 displaying the right way to do the fashion.
Within the Kansas Metropolis metro, floor zero for the development, even canines sport the reduce. Within the weeks earlier than the Tremendous Bowl, Jenna Ruby, who owns Glamour Grooming in Shawnee, began giving canines Mahomes haircuts — shaved on the edges, poofy on the highest, with a bandanna, in fact.
She’s carried out that to about 20 canines, largely poodles and goldendoodles with curly coats, and anticipated extra requests because the workforce heads into this season’s playoffs. “I believe that is fairly the little development that’s occurred,” stated Ruby, who has been grooming canines for 10 years and would like to get her paws on the quarterback’s personal canines.
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 in the future and requested if somebody may reduce his hair. He simply came upon he had most cancers and needed his head shaved earlier than chemotherapy.
“I need to do one thing loopy,” the person stated, and he particularly needed one thing with a Mahomes theme.
Ross was prepared. He’s been giving clients of all ages the Mahomes look currently. 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 count on him to get that,” Ross stated. “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 reduce Hosmer’s hair, too, nicknamed Mahomes’ hair “The Present-Me” haircut. He doesn’t suppose the identify has caught on but.
“I’ve touched each well-known Kansas Metropolis Chief and Royal within the final 25 years,” stated 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 identify (them), and I’d neglect some, so I don’t need to do this and upset somebody … so that you identify it. If he was a big-time athlete in Kansas Metropolis, I obtained 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 Avenue and Quivira Street. It’s commonplace for a Chiefs participant to be the final one out the door on a Friday evening earlier than a house recreation.
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 purchasers. Lorenzo Cain. Alex Gordon. Danny Duffy. Salvador Perez. Mecole Hardman. Demcarcus Robinson. Travis Kelce.
And, in fact, a No. 15 jersey, signed: “To DeJuan, Thanks for preserving me the cleanest QB within the recreation!”
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 school after highschool, but it surely wasn’t for him, says his older brother, Derrick Bonds. The 2 used to chop one another’s hair after they had been youthful and Derrick remains to be his brother’s buyer.
“I bear in mind having that dialog,” Derrick stated. “He stated, ‘I’m coming again, what am I doing to do? And I’m like, ‘Man, go to barber faculty.’ And that’s the place it began. He adopted his ardour and obtained his barber license.”
Bonds rapidly constructed up a clientele figuring out of his aunt’s magnificence store in Olathe. The identify of his first store was Napps, which stays a part of his enterprise brand. “You need to have a watch for it. He’s a perfectionist. Anal is what I … he’s very, very anal on his haircuts,” stated Derrick.
Bonds will get to work at 6 a.m. and infrequently doesn’t depart till after 8 p.m. He’s generally his personal worst enemy, as a result of he’s identified to squeeze walk-ins into his packed schedule.
“He’s blessed to have the expertise that he has. He thanks God day-after-day for the expertise,” Derrick stated. “It’s a blessing and a curse, as a result of he’s busy on a regular basis. He’s needed, you understand. However, he loves it, although. He wouldn’t have it some other approach.”
Bonds appears bored with individuals asking why he wasn’t in that State Farm industrial displaying Mahomes getting his hair reduce. The quarterback’s youthful brother, Jackson, is in it, too.
The barber slicing Mahomes’ hair within the spot was an actor, Bonds may have you understand. And, insult to damage, “he wasn’t holding the clippers proper,” stated Bonds, who added that if he had been requested to be in that industrial, Mahomes would by no means pay for one more haircut once more.
(Don’t ask him how a lot Mahomes pays for his weekly cuts. Bonds gained’t inform.)
Bonds was on set, nevertheless, and styled Mahomes’ hair when he and Polamalu shot a Head & Shoulders industrial on the Genesis Well being KC Racquet Membership in Merriam.
Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce, additionally a shopper of Bonds’, introduced Mahomes and his barber collectively.
“When gamers come to city, in addition to the place they need to dwell, in addition they need to know the place they’re going to get their hair reduce,” Bonds stated. “That’s one of many issues they ask, like, ‘OK, let me take a survey and go searching and see whose head seems to be good and who’s doing it.’ So he requested Travis Kelce, and (Kelce stated) ‘I’m going see DeJuan at Purple Label.’”
Bonds refuses to go 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 stated, ‘I belief you,’ “ Bonds recalled, “and that’s the place the connection started.
“It wasn’t in unhealthy form, however I needed to work on it to attempt to get it to appear like the imaginative and prescient that I noticed. It’s a canvas, and once I see a head, I already know what I need it to appear like, so I truly needed to play with it for an excellent month earlier than I obtained it to look the way in which I needed it to.”
Bonds can normally reduce somebody’s hair in 20 minutes. Mahomes sits within the chair for a minimum of 40, 45 minutes, generally longer, relying on the dialog. Bonds tries to keep away from soccer speak.
It’s a difficult head of hair to chop — superb, with cowlicks. It invitations Sampson comparisons, given how Mahomes prefers to put on his curls longer in the course of the season. “I haven’t reduce a lot off the highest currently,” Bonds stated. “He likes it lengthy. He simply needs to maintain it out of his eyes.”
Bonds has to needless to say Mahomes is a scrunch-and-go man. “He doesn’t actually comb it, he simply messes with it,” he stated.
He discovered the right way to reduce Mahomes’ hair in order that “when he takes his helmet off, or he takes his headphones off, or no matter he does,” it seems to be good.
“My concern isn’t when he takes his helmet off, as a result of he all the time has a wrap on. My concern is when he does the interviews — does he comb his hair when he takes his wrap off,” Bonds stated.
And Bonds hasn’t diagrammed that post-game play for his younger shopper — but. “I all the time simply have my fingers crossed,” he stated.
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’s fashionable now as a result of (Mahomes) is the face of our soccer workforce,” stated Releford, who lives in Kansas Metropolis. “You see it on lots of people, quite a lot of youthful youngsters for positive, particularly youngsters my son’s age.
“I really feel like he’s come right here and lifted the town up, so far as spirit, so far as how we come collectively in terms of soccer. We went so lengthy with out profitable. 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 believe the magic simply comes from him as an individual,” stated 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 gained’t let him play with for safekeeping’s sake.
Matt Phillips lately obtained a Mahomes reduce on a dare from his spouse and their 9-year-old son, Hampton — a younger “Mahomie.”
“They figured a gray-headed Mahomes reduce could be hysterical,” stated Phillips, a 44-year-old building supervisor for a grocery retailer chain who lives in Boiling Springs, South Carolina.
However Phillips didn’t 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 stated.
“He comes throughout as approachable and likes to have enjoyable. I believe it’s nice for younger individuals to look as much as somebody who’s real and appears to like what he does and the 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 duplicate of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, just like those that Tremendous Bowl winners obtain. It’s a visible reminder that the top of one among Kansas Metropolis’s most beloved celebrities lies in Bonds’ succesful arms.
The barber’s brother says all these celeb purchasers haven’t gone to Bonds’ head.
Properly, 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.
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