Carlos Mercado still remembers the day he became “Charly Hustle,” the nickname that inspired the name of his business, The Hustle Barber Shop. Decades ago, his older brother Gerry walked into the barbershop where Mercado was an employee and saw six or seven clients waiting for him. “I got your new name,” Gerry told Mercado.
“My older brother, unknowingly, was proud of the work I had been putting in quietly in the street and cutting hair,” said Mercado.
Starting the hustle early
Mercado and his four siblings migrated to Queens from Puerto Rico with their mother when they were little. Money was tight, so Mercado would brainstorm ways to make his own. He collected cans in the neighborhood. And from around age 9 to 14, he packed bags for quarters and spare dollars at the CTown on Liberty Avenue.
Making $40 on a Saturday meant a pre-teen Mercado could buy his own G.I. Joes and baseball cards. But in high school, shame crept in. “It was looked at as something that the poor kids did — and I was a poor kid, but I didn’t want people to know,” Mercado said.
It was around then that the idea of becoming a barber came to him. His brother was just starting to make rap music, and Mercado figured he could be the crew’s barber someday if they went on the road. He also planned to go away for college, where barbering could make him some money on the side.
“But life took its own course, and [barbering] became my career,” Mercado said. “It wasn’t the plan. It was just a way to make money and to survive and not have to ask my mom for anything, and rely on my own.”
Barbering across the diasporas
At 17, Mercado finally got the nerve to buy a pair of clippers. Mercado’s guinea pig was his friend Geo: “I thank him for that, because I jacked him up for two hours of his life, and then I ended up giving him a baldy,” Mercado said.
The hair snafu didn’t stop him. He also tried his hand with handball and football buddies. At school, on the block, and in what was then Smokey Park, Mercado promoted his services, offering free haircuts for the first year of his career.
“It didn’t matter to me — I just wanted to practice,” Mercado said. South Richmond Hill, which bordered Jamaica, was just the melting pot Mercado needed to know how to cut all kinds of hair.
Even more importantly, it cemented the ethos of his future barbershop: embracing the kind of diversity he had grown up with in the ’80s and ‘90s. Mercado recalls Jamaican, Guyanese, Trinidadian, Irish, and Spanish-speaking kids hanging out and picking up each other’s languages, accents, and flavors.
“That’s what’s always been the premise of my shop … we cut everybody,” Mercado said.
The fade that changed everything
Between his odd jobs and computer design classes at LaGuardia Community College, it was four years before Mercado started working in a barbershop. He recalls his first “finessed” haircut, when his boss at the time complimented him on his fade. That client, Hector Sanchez (a name he’ll never forget), then brought “the whole neighborhood” to get their hair cut.
“That moment with Hector Sanchez changed my barbering life,” Mercado said. “It was like, ‘oh, I can really be good at this.’”
The Hustle Barber Shop
Mercado continued gaining experience until he took the plunge by opening up a shop in 2005. He left his workplace without much notice when the right location popped up.
“If I had to do it again, … I would have changed my exit,” Mercado said. “I should have communicated more, but I had been at a point of no return.” He was checked out, and wanted to strike out on his own.
Mercado had privately named his business and designed its logo back in 1999, the day Gerry gave him his nickname. “As soon as he named me that, I changed my whole thought process,” Mercado said. He wanted to create something not only marketable but with a name that lasted, like McDonald’s for barber shops.
On the business website, The Hustle Barber Shop’s tagline is “No Hustle, No Profit.” A few barbers who reflected the hustle mindset joined Mercado when he first opened and have been with him ever since.
The hustle has also developed quite literally. When the pandemic hit about a month after Mercado chose a sober lifestyle, he turned to running and eventually started a running club headquartered at the barber shop. Run Hustle Run meets weekly. Strangers now promote the shop based on their connection to the club.
Clients have told Mercado they’ve gotten a job or a date after a new haircut at The Hustle Barber Shop. It’s not just about the style, Mercado said.
“It’s therapeutic for us as men, as people, to know that you can go somewhere and let off some steam and chat it up, or just not say anything and just come out feeling good,” he said.
Navigating clients’ moods has honed Mercado’s ability to read people — a skill that would prove useful if he franchises the business, a longtime dream. But he’s taking it one hustle at a time.
“Can I ever stop cutting hair? I don’t know,” Mercado said. “I love making people better … We can change a person’s life just by giving them a haircut.”
135-22 Hillside Ave., Richmond Hill, NY 11418
Open everyday except Tuesdays, 9 a.m.- 7 p.m.
Sundays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Follow on Instagram at @thehustlebarbershop
