HONOLULU — Coloring set and hair rinsed and patted to a cooperative dampness, 77-year-old Lois Sismar takes a seat in one of four old but well-maintained barber chairs, her yet-smooth face turned toward the pale, late-afternoon light coming through the shopfront window.

Stylist Stella Chan fastens a barber cape around Sismar’s neck and adjusts the height of her chair with two quick steps on the lever below.

The front door opens with a jingle and another regular, Nagy Mans, 58, steps in. Chan’s husband June rises from his seat against a lilac-colored lattice divider and, with an exchange of familiar nods, directs the Mans to another chair for an unscheduled but perfectly routine trim.

In a few days, Varsity Barber will close after 30 years at the Varsity Center on University Avenue and Coyne Street, but there is nothing at the moment to suggest anything but the continued procession of long, like days.

The long white counters on either side of the room remain crowded with tall jars of blue Barbicide and cheap plastic baskets filled with combs and brushes and half-flattened tubes of styling gel. Above, posters of stylishly coifed, vaguely European models remain on the walls, sunblasted, ghostly blue and white. The room is not noticeably cool, but each breach of the glass door out front serves as a reminder of how the aging air conditioning system can still hold the encroaching early summer heat at bay.

The Chans set to work with efficient, unhurried comportment, their arms bent mantis-like close to their bodies — no unnecessary extension.

“We’ve always just tried to give our customers good service and make it reasonable,” said June Chan, 70. “We don’t push anything on them. We just give them whatever they want.”

The simple business credo served the Chans well and kept their spinning barber chairs reliably filled for some 30 years, right up until May 27 when they swept the floors, shut off the electric “open” sign and locked the front door for the last time.

It was an unremarkable ending for one of the area’s longest-standing establishments, one that the Chan’s had little time to ponder.

Varsity Barber and its immediate neighbors are making way for Kamehameha School’s Kapaakea redevelopment of the two-block area bordered by University Avenue, and South Beretania and Coyne Streets. The redevelopment is part of the grander Waianuenue modernization project, which KS said will include “refreshed structures with a mixture of local, national, entrepreneurial and established retailers to fit the neighborhood’s lifestyle” as well as “improved pedestrian-centric connectivity.”

The project comprises Varsity Center, the East-West Building, 2535 Coyne Street and the surrounding parking lots. Future work will involve a renovation of the Varsity office building and redevelopment of the Puck’s Alley blocks.

The Chans said Varsity Circle tenants were informed of the plans last year but didn’t think much of it at the time. They’d been hearing such talk for years. Then, four months ago, they were notified that they had until June to vacate. Some plan to relocate. The Chans weighed the cost of starting over somewhere else against 5-year-old Olivia and 3-year-old Ian in Los Angeles, who’d love to spend more time with grandma and grandpa. The decision was easy enough. Retirement it was.

Still, the Chans said they’ll miss their coterie of regulars. They feel bad leaving behind those who loyally stuck with them through good times and bad. It was loyalty, after all, that allowed June and Stella Chan to survive in those uncertain early days after they took over the old Salon VIP space and rechristened it Varsity Barber.

The Chans met and married in their native Guangzhou, China, and followed June Chan’s mother and brother to Hawaii in the mid-80s. June Chan had been a mechanic specializing in cotton mill machinery in China but knew he’d need to find a different line of work in the United States.

“I was thinking that my English is not that good, so I should pick something where I don’t have to use English that much,” June Chan said, chuckling. “Something easy.”

Before leaving Guangzhou, June Chan started working at a beauty shop to gain experience as a barber. Once in Hawaii, he spent nine years learning the hair trade and honing his scissor and shaver skills at Thom’s Barber Shop in Ala Moana Center. Once their two children were old enough, Stella also started cutting hair.

Sismar, a long-time office manager for the concessionaire Centerplate, was one of several clients who followed the Chans from Thom’s to Varsity Barber.

“I like it because I don’t need an appointment. I get a very good haircut and it’s reasonable,” she said. “Sometimes people ask me where I get my hair done and they’re surprised it’s at a barber and not a salon. I don’t know where I’m going to go now,” she said.

That’s been a familiar refrain from regulars in the month since the Chan’s announced the closure. For residents of the area, the loss of Varsity Barber is a disorienting as it is sad. In a district of continuous turnover, the modest barber has been a constant. When the Chans started, the area stalwarts were Varsity Theater, Bubbies Ice Cream, Rainbow Books and Records, three banks and the university pub-crawl triangle of Moose McGillycuddy’s, Mama Mia’s pizza parlor and Anna Banana’s. All are long departed or long rebranded now.

“We have generations of customers,” Chan said. “We have customers who started coming when they were students at the university and now they bring their children. There’s a lot of loyalty. Some of our customers are just like old friends.”

The Chans’ retirement was unplanned but hard-earned. Prior to the pandemic, the couple worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week, with only Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Easter off. They’ve since cut it to nine hours a day, six days a week. It’s unclear how they will take to the decadence of a full retirement, but they’re more than willing to find out.

“We’ve worked so hard for a long time,” Chan said. “It’s time to enjoy life.”

Michael Tsai covers local and state politics for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at michael.tsai@charter.com.