Forty Below remains the barbershop of choice for many basketball players from Duke and UNC and has been ground zero for the hype leading up to tonight's game.
It’s a place where everyone knows your name. Where life, laughs and a fair amount of sports trash-talk are one in the same, and the same four faces greet customers behind their chairs six days a week—especially this week. The place is Forty Below, a hometown barbershop and favorite hang-out for Durham locals, students and athletes alike.
Forty Below, operating since 1995, remains the barbershop of choice for many basketball players from Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been ground zero for the hype leading up to tonight’s big game. Located between the campuses of the historic rivals, Forty Below operates as a no-fly zone of sorts, where intense game banter simmers down and players relax as they get cleaned up before their games.
“Whenever there is a game everybody and their mothers comes through,” owner Robert Massey said. “At the barbershop you can get anything you want, and some wild advice too.”
Massey, an ex-NFL cornerback, opened the barbershop as a place where “there’s satellite and sports on 24 hours and you can get any problem or question you want answered,” he said. Forty Below takes its name from Massey’s jersey number and has seen the likes of many high school-turned-college-turned-professional athletes get their hair cut—and continue to do so, even after they leave Durham and Chapel Hill behind.
“Sean Dockery, Jerry Stackhouse, they all come around here,” Massey said. “Everyone here’s opinionated about everything and they tell it like it is. But the players, they know it’s all in good fun.”
With Duke and UNC players coming in on a weekly basis, especially right before their games, they leave team rivalries and passions outside—well, sort of.
“It’s just like when we were in high school when we’re here,” Tar Heels senior shooting guard Melvin Scott said as he got a shave and cut Tuesday. “They’re just regular guys, but when we get on the court it’s different.”
A customer since his freshman year, Scott comes to Forty Below on a weekly basis “to get your lines straight because the cameras are going to be on you. The barbershop is relaxing, but at the same time it motivates me. They remind me how big a game is—not that you need it.”
Although the barbers will cut anyone’s hair, an obvious preference exists among them for the notorious rival teams. The majority favor Carolina, but barber Teddy McKoy stands as the token—and faithful—Duke fan.
“It’s just a great place,” junior Duke point guard Sean Dockery said Tuesday. “I know there’s going to be a little bit of trash talking when I go in there, but it’s also a great place to get away from basketball. I went Saturday and I’m going tomorrow to try to look a little cute by getting my hair cut.”
Even when Duke and UNC players are there at the same time, Forty Below remains a cut above the most bitter rivalry in college sports.
“There’s nothing like a mutual hatred or anything. It’s social and good fun in the barbershop,” Duke junior forward Shelden Williams said. “When we’re on the court it’s on the court, but when we’re off the court it’s off.”
Still, when you come right down to it, nothing is out of bounds at Forty Below.
“They’ve got lots of things to say, but I let them do all their talking and I tell them to tune in that night where we’ll see what the results are,” senior Duke guard Daniel Ewing said. “The last couple of years the Duke players have had the better end of that talk in the barbershop.”
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