The Hairstylist

In the 1980s, Bill Angst, who was born in Guelph, was living in New York and doing haircutting and photography for advertising campaigns and editorials. By the end of the decade, he’d decided to return home and open his own hair salon in Toronto.

He settled on the stretch of Queen Street between Sherbourne and Parliament. The choice was partly a matter of personal preference and partly subliminal: Angst’s eponymous spot wasn’t some chic York­ville salon; it was a mecca for what Angst calls “creative kooks”—people willing to visit an out-of-the-way location for a killer haircut.

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Initially, Angst lived in a windowless room behind the salon. But, when the top-level unit became available in the mid-’90s, he snapped it up. The place was in rough shape: there was no flooring in the kitchen or bathroom, and there were holes in the walls. Angst sanded down the floors in the bedroom to the original pine, laid down plywood over the exposed joists in the kitchen and bathroom, and adorned the plaster in the living room with crown moulding and wainscoting. Then, a few years later, he and a friend painted faux finishes everywhere—herringbone on the floors, paisley and houndstooth on the walls. Now, Angst won’t even consider leaving. “My house is kooky and fun. Everywhere you turn, there’s something exciting to look at.”