Roots show at this salon

Shortly before 5 a.m. on a recent Saturday, Josie Reynaga welcomes three generations of the Castaneda family into her Pueblos Unidos hair salon in Compton, where half a dozen stylists await the groggy clients with curling irons and cans of Aqua Net at the ready.

A dozen mothers and daughters, sisters, cousins and in-laws file in to get their hair done for Irene Castaneda’s quinceanera, her elaborate 15th birthday party. And Reynaga knows most of them by name.

Among the first to be seated in a glow of fluorescent light is 85-year-old matriarch Maria Domitila Lopez, whose stockings sag under the weight of early morning. Her thinning locks present a hairdresser’s challenge. Martina Castaneda, 44, sits next to her mother dispatching advice and flipping through magazines for inspiration. As the smell of sweet bread wafts in from the panaderia nearby and ranchera music drowns out the noise of blow dryers, the sleepy teenage star of the show is prodded into a stylist’s chair.

Over the next three hours, hair is teased and curled, pinned into buns and sprayed into ringlets. Reynaga herself studs the youngest ones’ tresses with plastic jewels that twinkle like pink and purple stars. Most of the women admire themselves in the mirror through an aerosol haze. But one cousin pulls apart her new hairdo, muttering, “I look like my mom.”

Finally, a tiara is set atop Irene Castaneda’s coif and her braces-filled grin beams unfettered joy.

“A quinceanera is very big, very sacred,” Reynaga said. “The most important thing is that the 15-year-old girl leaves here happy and feeling like a princess.”

This one does.

But for Reynaga, the day is just beginning. As the party crowd departs, the staff throws open the doors to the rest of the customers.

Pueblos Unidos has been a fixture in the Latino community of Compton for nearly a quarter of a century, a kind of town square where men and women take their children for haircuts on Saturday mornings and run into their neighbors. For wedding, baptism or quinceanera groups willing to make a down payment, Reynaga will open before dawn. By 8 a.m., the phone is ringing with requests for same-day appointments, although Reynaga notes that many clients show up late.

A flat top or fade cut, the most popular styles for boys and young men, costs just $7, and the shop is trouble-free in a city that has known its share of trouble on the street.

Just in case anyone is thinking of bringing their problems inside, a sign in Spanish warns patrons that “if you have come in a bad mood . . . or thinking we don’t know what we’re doing, or with bad intentions, or jealousy, go away and come back another day when you feel better.”

Despite this -- or perhaps because of it -- as many as 100 clients come through on an average Saturday. Reynaga works reception and greets her customers as if she were a small-town mayor in Mexico.

“I say, ‘How are you? Why haven’t you been in? Where’s your mother? How’s the baby?’ ” she explained.

Much of the traffic is walk-in, and many of the first customers on this Saturday morning are men trying to get ahead of the women who want time-consuming color treatments, perms and extensions. As in a bus station waiting room, there are rows of benches for patrons biding their time, and frequently they are full. Children don’t appear to mind the wait, fascinated by the chatter of adults who seem to have forgotten children are present, and the distractions of quarter-fed horse rides, table hockey and gum ball machines. You never know, there might be a piece of bread from the bakery for good behavior, or cherries from the fruit vendor passing through.

“You don’t see any crying,” said Cesar Garibaldi, 35, who came in for a cut with his 11-year-old son.

Reynaga, 49, is a single mother with six sons, ages 10 to 32. She learned hairdressing from an aunt in Sinaloa, Mexico, before coming north to California as a girl. She had her first child in 1976, when she was 18, hoping that an American-born baby would help her get legal residency, which it did. She has been working ever since, raising a family, running a business and helping her Catholic church.

Reynaga has the bearing of a confident woman. She wears her bleach-blond hair long and her jeans tight. Her eyebrows are tattooed. Once she sees her youngest into his teens, she said, she plans to run for Compton City Council.

In the meantime, she’s an operator, perfecting her political skills. She displays posters advertising a horse show and fundraiser she’s throwing for her church, which will use the money for a Mexican Independence Day celebration at which Reynaga will promote her salon.

Like many Compton residents, Reynaga is frustrated that nearly all the news about her city is negative. Sure there is violence, but she notes that two of her sons have become police officers and not one has joined a gang. No one ever talks about the good things happening in Compton, such as the beautification campaigns or the people who ride horses and raise cows in the city. And why don’t people talk about the nice neighborhoods, where the lawns reach down to the sidewalk without protective fences?

In fact, many Pueblos Unidos clients have moved away from Compton to escape the violence, although they keep coming back for the haircuts. Jose Hernandez, 42, is one of those. An oil refinery inspector and Sunday school teacher, Hernandez wears a faded gang tattoo on his right earlobe, the mark of his Compton past. He lives in Long Beach now and arrived at the shop shortly after 8 a.m., coffee and Bible study book in hand. “You gotta get here early or it gets real packed,” he said as he waited for stylist Gema Aldama to finish with the last of the quinceanera crowd. “She’s been cutting my hair for six or seven years. Not only mine, but my sons’ and my grandson’s.”

Hernandez wears his hair longer than many of the men there in baggy shirts, long shorts and bling. Most men ask for a fade, in which one electric razor blade is used for a close shave on the back of the head and another for blending into a slightly longer top. No line, just a fade.

As far as police and gangsters are concerned, however, the closer the shave, the more likely the young man belongs to a gang.

“I tell the fathers and the boys too, don’t cut it the way they want. Leave it a little longer,” Reynaga said. “If you cut it more often, it’s better for me, you can come every week. But I don’t want your kid to have problems with gang members or the police.”

The advice falls largely on deaf ears as style trumps safety and the youngest ones want only to copy their older relatives. Nine-year-old Salvador Avila arrived with a scrap of pink paper on which he had copied instructions from his brother: “Low Fade. 3 [blade] on top 2 on the bottom.”

“It’s cool,” Avila said.

For many patrons, a haircut at Pueblos Unidos is a family tradition. Jose Madrid, 21, said he had recently been granted custody of his 5-year-old twins, Jose and Juan, and brought them in for fades with 1 1/2 and half blades. Two identical cuts on identical round heads, not unlike their father’s.

“I’ve been coming since I was little. My parents brought me here, and I come every week. That’s my brother over there,” said Madrid, another oil refinery worker.

Plumber Carlos Barrera, 26, also said his mother brought him to the shop when he was young, and now he brings his son, Carlos Jr. “I hardly get to spend any time with him because my job is 24-7. He tells me when he wants a haircut and I always bring him in,” Barrera said as he hugged the boy. “When we’re done, we’ll go get some breakfast.”

Reynaga beams at the customers she has seen from childhood to parenthood. “Look at that one,” she says with a nod to construction worker Miguel Ochoa, 27, and his 3-year-old daughter, Rianna. “He was a little boy when he first came in. They would start cutting his hair in one chair and he’d finish in another.”

“Yeah, I was kind of hyper,” Ochoa said as his daughter slid across a bench on her stomach.

“I call this my second family,” Reynaga said.

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marjorie.miller@latimes.com