Most businessmen prefer dealing with customers face to face. Walt Young spent six decades talking to the back of his clients’ heads.

That ends today when Young, 81, retires from The Upper Cut, the barbershop he has run at 1912 E. Colfax Ave. since 1969.

The block is losing more than a man skilled with clippers and scissors. Young took people under his wing.

There was the guy who swept his sidewalk in exchange for haircuts. And a man named Bobby who had spent 1,700 days in county detox and was reunited with his long-lost daughter thanks to Young.

Politicians who sat in his chair got a half-hour primer on their constituents’ concerns; the hair tonic was tossed in free.

Beyond that, Young’s customers have lost what amounts to their second living room.

“Barbershops occupy a unique place in society,” Young said on a recent afternoon. “People come in and interact with each other, talk, exchange ideas. It’s an intimate space.

“For me, it’s been mind-expanding to absorb so much from people one on one over 60 years.”

Young has no interest in a farewell party. The longtime Colfax figure, an accomplished artist, traveler, raconteur and amateur historian, is simply walking away.

“I’m flying under the radar,” he said. “I don’t want a party for the old guy. That happened to my cousin in Fort Collins, and a month later he was dead.”

Young has barbered since 1949, the year he earned his tonsorial license in his native Illinois. Save for a brief Army stint, he has operated a shop ever since. Even during his military hitch, he cut hair in the evening at the PX.

That’s a lot of noggins.

“People always ask me how many haircuts I’ve given, and I always tell them 1,200,006,” Young said with a laugh.

Accepting Colfax, warts and all

Young is a dapper man with bifocals and iron-gray hair. A recent afternoon found him waxing philosophical. It wasn’t just the falling rain; his erudition bubbles up in all weather.

For Young, the shop was a place to hear ideas, hash them out and absorb the sundry truths extracted.

“It beats a college education all to hell,” he said.

Young never cared about customers’ status. Unlike life, everyone who entered his shop waited their turn. He has befriended street people and society types alike. That reunion of the old rummy and his daughter? The man is long dead, but the daughter still drops in from California to check up on Young. When he tells the story — “I know it’s kind of soapy” — his eyes well up.

“He’s kind of a renaissance guy,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman of Aurora, who has visited Young almost monthly for 11 years. “You’d be stunned by his depth of knowledge. He loves to talk about issues.

“I’m going to miss him,” he said. “He was an institution.”

The Upper Cut is an unfancy place: red-leather barber chairs from the Emil J. Paider Co., three sinks, settees for waiting customers, a magazine rack. On the wall is a photo of the late Denver political activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, back when he was a top featherweight contender. Gonzales inscribed it for Young: “To the pope of Colfax Avenue.”

And for many, he is.

“His gift is that he has accepted Colfax for what it is and by doing that, he’s survived all these years,” said Phil Goodstein, a Denver historian who has known Young since the mid-1980s. “Other people don’t appreciate Colfax and come in and try to reinvent it. Then they’re gone. He’s the conscience of the neighborhood.”

Young, who lives two blocks from his shop, contributes regularly to monthly newsletter Life on Capitol Hill, holding forth on the neighborhood and its history.

The Upper Cut’s shop window looks out onto East Colfax. Young saw a lot, including some things he wishes he hadn’t.

“I saw two pedestrians killed by cars,” he said. “And one day I saw a drunk get run over by a bus. I mean, he was under the bus. Somehow he got out, stood up and walked away.”

Young’s friends can’t believe he’s leaving.

“I’ve known Walt for 47 years,” said Pete Contos, owner of Satire Lounge and Pete’s Kitchen a few doors away. “He’s a great guy. I feel lonesome seeing him go. He was Mr. Colfax.”

Truth to tell, Young isn’t keen on retirement. But a recent fall left him with double vision. “It got awkward to cut hair and wasn’t fun,” he said.

Dairy just wasn’t his destiny

He was just seven years from breaking his father’s longevity record for barbering, the bulk of it done at Chicago’s famed Palmer House hotel.

“Dad told me to be a milkman,” Young said. “Said I’d meet a lot of women.”

Young’s skills go beyond combs and clippers. The shop walls are lined with his art: oil paintings, pastels, portraits in pencil. They are the work of a first-rate talent, not just a pretty good amateur. Young has shown in area galleries but is unsure how many works he’ll churn out in his retirement.

“The muse comes and goes,” he said. “I can’t really say what I’m going to do.”

Divorced, with six grown children, Young doesn’t know how many regulars he’s had. But a few years ago, he successfully petitioned the city to reduce the parking-meter fees along his stretch of Colfax. He came up with nearly 400 signatures.

For the past six years, he has barbered with Kim Phuong Pham, who left Vietnam in 1981. She addresses him as “Uncle.”

Pham will stay on, with a new shopkeeper who has signed a lease. “I’ll miss him,” she said.

Young will miss the shop. He wants folks to know they can find him at 7 each morning at the Starbucks at 1600 E. 18th Ave. He’ll be happy to chat.

“The dialogues are important to me,” he said. “Wherever I go, I find a conversation with somebody.”

And finally, they will all be face to face.

William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com