As Gabriel Flores stepped briskly through San Francisco’s Tenderloin on his way to the men’s hair salon he opened several years back, he was confronted with the grit, despair and spiritual turmoil of the city’s most challenged neighborhood. 

And yet the journey through the city’s mean streets seemed a metaphor for a life of challenges on a road toward a lifelong dream of cutting hair — practically a birth rite as a fourth generation barber growing. 

When Flores rolled the dice in early 2020 to open his first hair salon on Mason Street near Market Street in the gritty flanks of San Francisco’s Union Square he had no idea what was to come. With the interior of his small shop still gutted as part of an expansive remodel, he watched as life as normal was upended by the pandemic.

“Not even a year into the pandemic my clients were letting me know they were leaving the city,” said Flores, whose client roster dropped from 150 to around 20. “So that was really nerve-racking.” 

Cut to current times; Flores' shop is sleek and spotless, his clients are slowly trickling back -- the neighborhood outside his door is worse than ever, with all the symptoms of the city’s drug and homelessness crisis. Still, every day Flores cuts the same path through the tents and squalor to his shop, named FCO Barbershop after his father Francisco. 

“This is my dream,” Flores said. “So, gotta make it happen.”

Flores' hair-cutting dreams began in a small town in Mexico in the region of Michoacán. Three generations of hair cutters sat on the branches of his mother’s family tree. His father’s side did the farming. His dad urged him to take up the scissors and join the family haircutting legacy. But before falling in line, Flores had an inkling his road would bob and weave to the U.S. 

“What I wanted to do with my life,” Flores said, “it wasn’t going to be in a town like that.” 

He was 21 years old when he landed in Chicago before heading to San Francisco looking to find a job that would help him learn English. A job in a hardware store seemed like an ideal place to soak up the language, and he ended-up staying for 16 years. 

When his father died back home in Mexico, it set off a bout of depression and soul-searching. Now, decades after his father had urged his son to follow in the family business, Flores quit the hardware store and enrolled in barber school. 

“So I basically traded a heat gun for a hair dryer,” Flores laughed, thinking back on that period a decade back. 

With the opening of his own barber shop, Flores now finds his dreams have butted up against San Francisco’s reality. Oftentimes he arrives at his storefront to find a mélange of tents parked at the front door. On a recent day, he leaned into the entryway of a tent in front of his shop, firmly imploring its residents to move down the sidewalk a bit. 

“I’m from Mexico and I never see this there,” he said, overwhelmed with frustration. 

Stepping into Flores’ shop is like stepping into another reality from the one outside. The room is tranquil, fussily arranged like a high end spa. The barber chairs are sleek, and the cabinets hold rolled up white towels. It’s the very experience he imagined as he converted the generic room into a barber oasis. 

“It could be crazy outside,” he said, “but in here, it’s perfect and relaxing.” 

If one were to trace the filaments of Flores’ lifeline; from Mexico to a strange country where he didn’t speak the language; to leaving a comfortable job to follow a dream, to opening a business in a challenged neighborhood, it’s clear Flores is something of a risk junky — which he doesn’t deny. 

“I believe life is about taking risks,” he said. “If you never take risks, you’re never going to succeed on anything.” 

His latest gamble may pay off — several weeks back Ikea opened a brand new store just across Market Street in what many hope will be a turning point in the area’s financial blood-letting, which has resulted in numerous businesses fleeing. Flores is also filled with hope. 

“At this point, I don't have a choice but being optimistic,” Flores said. “I’m not going to give up a dream I’ve had all my life.”