Hair Unlimited has seen and cut it all for 35 years

For 35 years, Hair Unlimited, 1000 N. Martin Luther King Blvd., has been a center of the community.

From opening the first business on that part of the street, to handing out Thanksgiving dinners, to working to get the street renamed in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s not just a job for owner Mack Smith. It’s a way of life.

Smith and his two uncles opened the barber shop Jan. 7, 1981, which Smith remembers as a day of great pride and some loss.

“I’d just bought a brand-new Buick off of the showroom floor,” Smith said. “It was white on white.”

Because there was nothing else open in the area yet, an employee borrowed Smith’s car to get some food.

“Somebody came in and said, ‘Man, there’s a bad wreck right there at the light,’ and I looked out and there was my car all smashed up. That guy ran off from the scene and went off to get something to drink.”

Smith laughs now about lending out his new car; he seems to remember most of his struggles with a laugh these days.

Smith moved to Las Vegas from Texas to work with his uncle Booker Burney in 1961. But when he applied for his barber’s license, he learned of a rule requiring that he’d need seven months of residency to get one.

“The guy at the office asked me my address and I turned to my uncle and asked him,” Smith said. “He said, ‘You don’t know your address?’ And I told him I’d just got here the night before, and he tore that paperwork up. I ended up working at the airport for a couple of years.”

By 1963, he was working with Burney at a shop on Jackson Avenue. Around 1970, he and his uncles set up a new shop inside the Moulin Rouge long after it had been a casino and nightclub. When the three put up their own building on what was then Highland Avenue, they were pioneers in that part of the neighborhood.

“When we opened, you could go rabbit hunting out here in the desert,” Smith said. “There wasn’t hardly anything on this road and it ended on top of the hill at Cheyenne Avenue.”

Smith and his uncles continued to expand, adding on to the building and adding tenants to create Martin Luther King Plaza.

Burney cut hair for some time before his nephew arrived. He came to town in 1956 when the population was 57,000 and blacks were still barred from the casinos on the Strip. He remembers cutting Muhammad Ali’s hair at the Jackson Avenue barber shop. At their own place, the current location, it was another boxer who made Hair Unlimited famous.

“When he started boxing, he said he was going to put us on the map,” Smith said, pointing to a signed and framed picture of Mike Tyson on his office wall. “I started traveling with him and doing stuff with him before he became any kind of champ. Later on, when he was in China or England or some place like that, they’d show pictures of the shop and he’d say this is where he hangs out at.”

Other celebrities who have stopped in to get their hair cut or to just hang out include Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton.

“Nat King Cole was the first celebrity whose hair I cut,” Burney said. “We’ve had a lot of them here. We’ve seen Gladys Knight, Don King, Lennox Lewis, we’ve had politicians and comedians, but mostly just regular folks from the neighborhood.

Burney retired at the end of 1999 and moved to Mesquite to be closer to his favorite hunting and fishing spots. He and Burney used to hunt there with boxer Sonny Liston, who wasn’t a great hunter, Smith and Burney said.

“He’d shoot at everything,” Smith said. “I’d say, ‘Man, that rabbit is half a mile away. You can’t hit it.’ One time he took a brand-new Cadillac across a muddy field because he’d seen my uncle do it with his four-wheel drive. He said that, for as much as he’d paid for that thing, it ought to go anywhere.”

Burney moved to North Las Vegas a few years back to be closer to hospitals. He and Smith co-own Martin Luther King Plaza, but they’re considering selling the building. Smith isn’t thinking about closing the business.

“I’m not retiring,” Smith said. “I guess I’d go downhill if I wasn’t doing it. It keeps me going.”

To reach East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor email ataylor@viewnews.com or call 702-380-4532.