Pines People- Paul McGregor

Paul McGregor 1935-2013

 

 

On a random drive with his wife Paul McGregor discovered the Pines in 1961. He brought his creativity and spirit making his mark in Pines history. After being a longshoreman, sandhog, truck driver, Paul came to St Marks Place in 1965. “ I could just feel this block” he said. “It was sensational. It was where people came for ideas.” His idea was to open Paul McGregors Haircutter at 15^th St. St. Marks Place, and within a few years he was about the hottest haircutter around.

   

He invented the famous shag haircut which he gave to actress Jane Fonda. She nearly fainted when she saw it. He invented the famous shag haircut which he gave to actress Jane Fonda.She nearly fainted when she saw it. Then adored it.

 

For Fonda, walking into the salon the day her shag was born was a lashing out. She was married to director Roger Vadim, who had directed her in the campy outer space orgy Barbarella, and was doing a swell job of sucking the very identity out of her through his hedonistic lifestyle. 

Jane Fonda recalls:

“I had just finished filming “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” in New York when I made my way to Vadim’s hair stylist in the village, Paul McGregor” she writes in her autobiography. “There I had my first deep hair epiphany. Hair had ruled me for many years. Perhaps I used to hide behind it. The men in my life liked it long and blond, and I had been blond for so long that I didn’t even know what my own color actually was. I simply said to Paul McGregor, ‘Do Something’ and he did. It was the haircut that became famous in “Klute”, the shag, and he dyed my hair darker, like it really was. I didn’t look as if I were trying to imitate Vadim’s other wives anymore [he had been married twice before, to blond bombshells Brigitte Bardot and Annette Vadim. I looked like me! I knew right away that I could do life differently with this hair. Vadim sensed immediately that my cutting my hair was the first volley in my move for independance, though he did little more than grumble about it.” Others came: Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Faye Dunaway. When Warren Beatty made the movie “Shampoo” about a hairdresser, many people said it was the story of Paul McGregor…

        

       

Seen here with Klute star Donald Sutherland.

 

 

A restless man, Mr. McGregor tired of hair and in the late 1970’s he converted his St. Marks Place shop (at one point, he had 10 shops around the country) into the world’s smallest roller-skating disco. That went fine for two years until a teen-ager broke his arm when he tried vaulting over some friends stretched out on the floor. His mother sued Mr. McGregor for $1 million. He had no insurance, but managed to settle for $12,000. Next, he turned the place into a bar called McGregor’s Garage, but there was too much fighting, so he converted it into Boybar, a gay bar. Gay men, he said, are less quarrelsome than heterosexual men. 

1965. The first McGregor home designed by Horace Gifford .

 

 

  Having six children the  McGregors   were a  big part of the  social scene in the  Pines regularly  mentioned in the    local paper.

   

This was their forever home.

Mr. McGregor took up wood sculpture. He worked on some walking sticks, and trained people in Indonesia to carve them. His thought: walking sticks are going to become very big. He made a lot of money but gave a lot away, including a 40-foot sailboat. 

He raised six children here. Paul found his forever home here. In later years you could find him playing one of his hand carved flutes at tea dance like the pied piper. He passed in 2013 leaving the sound of his flute forever playing on here in the Pines.

His family remains still connected to their home here in the Pines, as it will always be their forever home.

In 2011 doing research for this page I had the pleasure of meeting Paul. After shaking his hand he said ” I’m an Aries .” I replied “me too.” We connected immediately. The rest is history. A history that is yours, mine, and ours…  #ownyourhistory#