Band of Barber Brothers

The three Perkins brothers had worked to put all the pieces into place to open their own barber shop in Pinole. They would call it "The Brothers." Suddenly, two days before signing a lease for the space, Rajamu "Buddy" Perkins, the youngest brother, died in an accident. At first, the trio's dream seemed to die with him.

Running the shop without Buddy didn't seem right. Yet family, faith and Buddy's memory finally carried the day. The shop opened July 2, 2010, which would have been Buddy's 28th birthday. Buddy became the inspiration to carry on, and "Buddy's Barber Shop" replaced "The Brothers."

""It was hard, but this was my little brother's dream and it's really been like therapy for us," Azizi Perkins, 35 said. "It was really his thing," to decide to open a family shop.

Buddy, Azizi and Antuan Perkins learned the barber's trade in their hometown of Oakland. Buddy taught at a barber college there, and each of the brothers cut hair at Foothill Square in Oakland until the shop closed on short notice. After years of working for others, they decided to set up on their own — together. Buddy chose the site in the strip mall near the Red Onion restaurant on Pinole Valley Road, in part because the Perkins family had moved to Pinole about 13 years earlier.

Family patriarch Jimmy Perkins bought the materials and arranged for contractors, who are family friends, to install the hardwood floors. The Perkins sisters, Masika and Dalila, painted the walls. Buddy picked out the equipment for work stations. Jimmy is a supervisor for Durham Transportation. His wife, Jocelyn, is an insurance claims adjuster.

"We kind of use the shop to help pull together," Jimmy Perkins. "It's therapy for the family."

Before and since the shop opened, it has had a large extended family of its own. The barber college where Buddy taught donated items. Johnny Yee, owner of the nearby Red Onion, regularly refers his customers to Buddy's. Three Pinole Valley high graduates, all licensed barbers, work at Buddy's.

"They're good people," Yee said. "We helped them out by referring customers to them and and they've done the same for us."

Azizi Perkins is teaching his sons, who are 6 and 11, to cut hair. Although he described them as A students, he said he has an obligation to pass along his knowledge and skill so the kids always will have something to fall back on.

Meanwhile, the Perkinses plan to set up a scholarship fund in Buddy's name to help young people get started as barbers.

"It's a good profession," said Azizi Perkins."We're more or less like counselors. When somebody sits in the chair, you never know what they're going through that day."

Particularly in that respect, it's a career well-suited for Buddy, who was widely known among Bay Area barbers because he taught barber college for about six years, said his dad.

"To me, he was my son," said Jimmy Perkins. "To others he was their best friend. At the (memorial) services there were over a thousand people there, and everybody was saying he was their best friend. He would take homeless people and put them in hotels for the night. He always had time to listen."