H Street Barbershop Adding Women’s Salon, Concerts

An H Street NE barbershop will soon be a women’s salon and multi-use arts space, too.

Christopher’s Grooming Lounge at 705 H St. NE is turning its second story into a full-service salon for women, and reviving its live music on Friday nights.

Owner Christopher Bradley said he wants to give women the same “lounged out” environment upstairs that men get on the ground floor, where customers wait for their haircuts and hot-towel shaves on two couches that overlook H Street.

“My job is to take away the feeling of the wait at the barbershop or salon and make you comfortable,” he said. “I want it to be a social thing where everyone is welcome.”

Bradley is planning to open the “women’s lounge” in January. The exposed brick space that’s full of leather couches now will have five stylists’ chairs, plus pedicure stations near the front window.

The lounge will restart the DJ sets and live jazz, soul and R&B performances it initially hosted after the business opened in fall 2012. Bradley — who formerly ran the U Street NW tattoo parlor DC Ink — opened a second barbershop at 1203 U St. NW in October.

Bradley, a 43-year-old Northeast resident who grew up in Southeast D.C., said he’s constantly improving the 1,800-square-foot space. He’s planning on setting up a shoeshine booth downstairs and holding more events in the spacious back patio, which has a gas fire pit and paintings hung on brick walls.

“Because the building is so big, it’s hard to ever be finished,” he said.

Bradley said he wants Christopher’s Grooming Lounge to serve as a kind of “community center” as H Street is transformed.

“It’s all moving faster than anyone thought,” he said.

A liquor license application could be on the horizon for the business.

“We might apply for a beer and wine license, if the clients call for it in the future,” he said.