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Sunday May 22, 2005
Story by THERESA WALKER Photos by MINDAY SCHAUER
They've been doing 'dos for 40 years now inside the school at 102 N. Glassell St. in downtown Orange.
The name has changed several times over the years, but beauty never goes out of business. And a career in helping people get the most out of their looks - with cuts, perms, waxes, facials and manicures - never goes out of style.
These days, the school that started out as Circle Beauty College is known as COBA Academy, run by A.E. "Samm" Williams.
Williams has never put a curling iron to anyone's head but her own. She's a businesswoman who leaves the teaching to veteran staff members like Ms. J, who's been around for at least one of the school's five decades.
At any given time, 70 to 100 students are busy learning their trade, two-thirds of them women. They're a colorful bunch in a colorful place, from their hair to their tattoos to their backgrounds.
One student enrolled before going off to serve an 8-month jail sentence. The school sent him style magazines, and with the use of an adapted razor - no blades behind bars - he practiced cutting hair. It helped him stay focused and pass the time. He went back to COBA when he got out and is about to graduate.
The building, too, has stories to tell. It has served as an opera house, a bank, a Masonic temple. Students refer to the basement as "the dungeon" and don't like to go down there alone, what with their belief that ghosts of perms past, the Bank of Italy and "The Barber of Seville" still linger in its dusty gloom.
Graduation day, and Shannon Maytorena and Laurie Savard are the center of photographic attention at COBA Academy on North Glassell Street in Orange, surrounded by family and friends. The day is often an emotional one for the students, most of them women, who've completed 1,600 hours of instruction. 
Not everybody is happy about this!
Ester Martin has been a customer for 15 years. Students “always give me a good cut,” she says of her weekly $7.50 appointments. 
Student Gary Stubbs washes his head – not the head attached to his body, but a mannequin head used for practice. Students are each issued a head, which they often personalize with touches such as the Frida Kahlo-esque monobrow on Stubbs' head. His practice head, that is. 
Student Leslie Nguyen, 38, belts out a rendition of “Unchained Melody” over the school intercom. His voice brings the instructor to tears. Nguyen says he'd like to appear on “American Idol” but is too old for the show's requirements. 
The unusual is usual most days at the beauty school. One day, Charlie Chaplin impersonator Ruben Gerard wandered in and made himself comfortable under a hair dryer. Gerard was promoting an antique sale on the block. 
