Where do snakes and hair meet? In the classics, atop the head of Medusa. The regional flag of Sicily pays homage to the Gorgon, whose gaze turned ancient onlookers to stone, superimposed over a triskelion of three leaping legs that symbolize the island’s three prominent headlands.
It makes perfect sense for that symbol, known as the trinacria, to have been adopted as the logo of the Caci Barbershop & Reptilium in Highland. Proprietor Chenzo Caci is the son of immigrants from Sicily, and the brand-new business brings together his two obsessions: cutting hair and raising snakes and lizards.
Entering the shop on the west side of Route 9W a mile south of the Mid-Hudson Bridge ramp, the customer is greeted by a whole wall of glass terraria that serve as homes to Chenzo’s scaly menagerie. There are several types of red-tailed boas and an emerald tree boa. There are a pair of juvenile green tree pythons, one red and one yellow, that will eventually mature to a vivid shade of green. “The bright colors warn off predators,” he explains.
Also on display are two lizards, a quince monitor and a green tree monitor, and Chenzo plans to introduce several species of chameleons as well.
Six reptile enclosures still remain to be filled, by babies he’s raising at home until they’re big enough to feel comfortable on public view. Along another wall stands a 280-gallon saltwater tank that’s gradually being populated with tropical fish. The largest of the resident snakes is a handsomely patterned jaguar carpet python, hatched in 2010 – “the only animal I still have from when I used to be a breeder.”
A New Paltz native, Chenzo came by his enthusiasm for reptiles at the age of four or five, when he first spotted some baby iguanas at a county fair. “From that point on I was obsessed,” he says. But he couldn’t talk his mother into letting him have a terrarium at home until he was 17, when he built an eight-by-ten-foot room in his parents’ basement and began breeding snakes. He kept as many as 120 of them at one time, plus more than 400 rats to feed them. He sold the baby snakes at reptile expos and dreamed of attending veterinary school, but gave up that notion and headed down another professional path when he found out that full accreditation would take him 14 years.
As it happened, barbering was another early interest. “My brother Francesco, who’s six years older than me, started cutting his friends’ hair for fun,” he recalls. “I saw him doing it and wanted to be like my brother. I didn’t start taking it seriously until I was about 25.”
At 27, Chenzo started taking barber classes at Ulster Boces. He shadowed a friend who was working at Pugsly’s Sideshow Barbershop in Kingston and took lessons from the owner. “That literally changed my skill level. From that point on, I became a different barber.”
Another friend from his Boces class opened a business in Sharon, Connecticut called Smitty’s Barbershop and brought Chenzo on board. Commuting from New Paltz three days a week, he built up a clientele of some 500 customers, many of them affluent Manhattanites with weekend homes in the area. Actor Frank Langella was one of his regulars.
But in 2019, after his wife Krystle had two miscarriages and his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Chenzo determined that he needed to spend his time closer to home. He started looking for a place to start his own business. “I wanted to open a shop that featured reptiles in zoo-quality enclosures,” he says.
He eventually found the perfect location: a space up for lease right next door to the Wagon Wheel Deli, near the busy intersection with Chapel Hill Road, which many Clintondale-bound locals use as a shortcut to Route 44/55 that avoids driving through the Highland hamlet. The building at 3743 Route 9W used to house a long-established bakery known as The Bake Shop, and the interior needed plenty of deep-cleaning, painting and renovation, with the entire Caci family pitching in, before he could build the reptile displays. “It was gross. Everything was oily,” Chenzo says.
No trace of its former incarnation remains detectable now. For all the rustic, earthy vibe of the reptile enclosures, with their climbing logs and silk greenery and synthetic stone-wall coverings, the barbershop gleams with cleanliness. The color scheme is cool, with a black dropped ceiling, grey floor tiles, and walls painted grey and lilac or covered with new vinyl paneling that evokes barn siding. The waiting area is a cozy cluster of black armchairs tucked between the fish and reptile tanks, and reggae plays softly over the sound system.
It’s a place you’d want to take your kids if they need a tantalizing incentive to get their hair cut – or simply like the idea of seeing cool snakes and lizards. “I want this to be a totally family place, where you can get a traditional and modern mix of haircuts,” Chenzo says. “I’m not a one-trick pony. If someone brings me a picture, I can do pretty much any haircut.” For customers over 21, each ’do is finished with hot lather and a straight razor.
He has product for sale as well: pomade, sea-salt spray … and in time, tee-shirts, hoodies and hats with the trinacria logo or pictures of the resident beasties. He’s hoping that kids will follow the exploits of their favorite snake or lizard on the shop’s Instagram page (@cacibarbershopandreptilium) and form a lasting attachment to the business and its scaly mascots. “My goal is to establish the animals so that they’re handleable,” he says.
Prices at the Caci Barbershop & Reptilium range from $25 for a haircut or hot-towel shave to $45 for both. Haircuts for kids under age twelve cost $20. Only cash and Venmo are accepted for payment at present. To make an appointment, visit www.cacibarbershopandreptilium.resurva.com. For updates and pictures of sample haircuts, visit www.facebook.com/cacibarbershopandreptilium.
Join the family! 
