Meet the Woman Who Has Been Cutting Hair for Half a Century in San Francisco
By Julie Zigoris
It was a federal holiday—Juneteenth—but Sidney Macklin, who just celebrated her 80th birthday, wasn’t taking the day off. She was on her feet wielding a bright yellow hair dryer at the Attention to Details salon in San Francisco’s Fillmore district. She’ll be there from morning to night.
“This whole street used to be Black-owned businesses,” she said, gesturing across the sidewalk in front of the salon. Macklin worked in a salon two doors down for over three decades. Today, it’s a printing store.
Macklin credits rest, food and exercise as the keys to her longevity—she doesn’t drink or smoke—but it’s likely also her attitude. Even when life is laced with tragedy, Macklin focuses on the positive. She lost a child at just nine weeks old, but she has many adopted “children” in her community in addition to her still-living biological one; she witnessed the destruction of the Fillmore where she used to live, but when asked about the ravages of Urban Renewal, she demurred: “That happened all over San Francisco,” she said.
Macklin hails from another era—she still calls Cesar Chavez Street “Army Street” and recalls meeting Cab Calloway—but she is also hip, shimmying on the dance floor to Salt-n-Pepa and Poison in a sequin dress at her 80th birthday party in Oakland.
“I was wearing cowboy hats before Beyoncé,” she said.
Macklin can straddle dualities so easily in part because she is so full of love—everyone loves Ms. Sidney, and she loves everyone. Such a frequency of “I love yous” on anyone else’s lips would seem artificial, but with Macklin, it’s as if every time she’s saying it for the very first time: That’s the amount of feeling behind it.
Part of her equanimity and ability for connection likely stems from the lessons she’s ingested from her favorite book: the philosophical novel Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. She’s read it so many times that her ex-husband gave her the nickname Sidney (Macklin’s legal name is Betty).
The love she puts out into the world often comes back to her: in the form of heart-healthy granola shipped to her from Minnesota by her friends or a birthday card from a client that has a $100 bill in it, $1 for every year she’s been alive, plus $20 “for not burning her.” Shortly after she opens the card, a friend stops by the salon with a fresh orchid and a song.
In her many years in San Francisco, Macklin has seen Ella Fitzgerald perform at the Fairmont’s Venetian Room and remembers Willie Mays hanging out at The Hideaway in the Fillmore. She once told James Brown his tuxedo was too small, she said.
“Everything in my life is a story,” she said, and it’s true.
Macklin studied at the Hilltop Beauty School on Mission Street in Daly City, and she can count her teachers among the greats in the styling world, like Jose LaCrosby, who was nominated in 1975 by George Moscone to fill a vacancy on the state cosmetology board.
“He created his own product line, including hair bonding glue,” she said. “They’re still trying to figure out the ingredients.” She remembers LaCrosby passing out colored cigarettes to his clients and serving them wine to help them relax. While LaCrosby favored alcohol to soothe his customers, Macklin prefers food.
“Nothing is worse to work on than a hungry woman,” she said. “I give them just enough to get that hunger up off you so you’re not whiny,” she said.
Macklin was born in South Hill, VA, and graduated from North High School in Columbus, OH, where her father wanted her to attend an integrated school. She first traveled to California at age 19 with her boyfriend. She didn’t care for Los Angeles, but she fell in love with San Francisco. She found work at the tavern Jack’s, on Sutter and Fillmore.
“That’s where all the action was,” she said. Booming in its “Harlem of the West” days, the Fillmore was crammed with jazz clubs, bars and restaurants. Macklin remembers hanging out at the Booker T. Washington Hotel, paying 50 cents to hear music at The Hideaway and seeing Sun Ra perform at the legendary Minnie’s Can-Do Club.
“The doors would be open and people would dance outside,” she said.
Macklin also worked at Nate Thurmond’s BBQ restaurant for nearly five years, where she said she was the favorite waitress of the NBA center Kareem-Abdul Jabbar when he came in. After Macklin trained as a stylist at age 30, she worked all over the city renting spaces from different salons, as well as starting her own.
She couldn’t have done it without the help of her family. When she opened her salon, her ex-husband—along with his new wife—lent her $20,000 to get started. “I’ve never seen a family like ours,” she said. “We work at it,” she continued. “It didn’t just happen.”
The deep love that runs through Macklin includes an adoration for the city she’s called home for six decades. She’s lived near Lincoln Park in her own apartment for 32 years, a place she says “is the greatest neighborhood in the world,” where her neighbors regularly carry her groceries up the stairs for her.
“To all the people who have kept me living—thank you,” she said at her birthday gathering, a celebration filled with 200 guests at a bar in Oakland that she kept calling her “million dollar party.”
“My aunt has been a superwoman in my life,” said Macklin’s niece during a toast. “The most important thing she taught me was no matter where I’m at, I’m just where I’m supposed to be.”
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