SINGAPORE: Tucked away in a corner of a Woodlands HDB block lies a barbershop like no other.
For as little as S$20, owner Rengan Balakrishnan can cut and create unusual intricate designs on your hair. His establishment – with its flashing strobe lights, colourful wall murals and loud music – screams 1980s disco rather than gentlemen’s salon.
“I have always wanted a barber shop that doesn’t look like a barber shop. I want my clients to come inside my barbershop and feel that they are in a club or a discotheque,” said Mr Rengan.
But time appears to be running out for this unapologetically kitsch barbershop as part of Old Woodlands Town Centre – located just before the border checkpoint to Johor Baru – will have to make way for redevelopment this year.
The HDB blocks there were chosen to be redeveloped under the Selective En-bloc Redevelopment Scheme in 2012. The shops, located mostly on the ground floor of the four-storey blocks, will have to leave by July. Most of the tenants and residents there have already relocated.
The redevelopment of the old town centre includes the building of an extension of the Woodlands Checkpoint, which is currently among the world’s busiest land crossings.
For Mr Rengan, it’s a painful break with a boyhood which was spent in the estate, watching it change over the years.
The old town centre, opened in the 1980s, was once a popular pit stop for Malaysian visitors with its hawker centre, shops, its famous Shaw Brothers-owned cinema, and a bus interchange.
WATCH: A Woodlands boy recalls its heyday (1:48)
The crowds have been dwindling since the bus interchange was relocated in 1996. But for shop-owners like Mr Rengan, who have been given until end-June to move out, there is no other place they would rather be.
Said the 42-year-old barber: “When I was in primary school, I would go to this aunty’s stall for ice kacang maybe three times a week. It is still the same aunty who is selling ice kacang today.”
“This place is like our home. It is not just a shopping place or a normal hawker centre. For me, everybody is family here,” he added. .
The old town centre back in its bustling heyday.
Madam Low Kum Hei, who has been operating a tailor shop there for 26 years, dreads leaving the closely-knit community behind. Her customers, mostly female, cut across all ethnicities. Some have even become fast friends.
The 63-year-old said she receives about 30 orders every month and most are requests to alter their baju kurungs. “Some of my customers have been with us for 10 to 20 years. Some have grown from students to mothers with teenage children,” she said.
The old bus interchange.
Soon, she will be shuttering her shop for good, even though her customers have requested that she continue her business elsewhere.
“I am sad that they are demolishing this place. But I wouldn’t want to reopen a shop elsewhere because all my customers are here,” she said.
Catch That’s My Backyard – On The Red Dot on Fridays at 9.30pm on Mediacorp Channel 5.
