Downtown LA Barber Shop Open Until Midnight on Spring Street: Bolt Barbers

Bolt Barbers, at 460 S Spring St on the corner of Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles, keeps its chairs running until midnight on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. A Classic Gentlemen's Shear, Fade or Scissors Cut costs $50 and comes with a straight razor neck shave, a hot towel and a massage. For anyone typing barber shop near me from an office tower or loft in the Historic Core after work, few shops are still taking clients at 11pm.

Bolt was born in DTLA in 2009, according to the shop's own site, and the man behind it is Matt Berman, who goes by Mohawk Matt. A press release on Matter of Trust describes him as the founder and chief barber who traded a corporate marketing job for clippers and a razor. The first location he opened was the same corner storefront at 460 South Spring Street that still cuts hair today.

The shop sells itself with the tagline For Social Beasts and states plainly that it is a barbershop, not a salon or a spa. That attitude earned it a long run in the Los Angeles Downtown News readers' poll, with Best Barbershop DTLA awards listed on its site for every year from 2011 through 2015. The website art leans on a neon sign and a three monkeys mascot instead of spa photography.

Bolt also has a civic streak. In 2010, during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the shop organized a drive to collect hair clippings from Los Angeles barbershops and salons and ship them to the nonprofit Matter of Trust, which used donated hair to help soak up the spilled oil. Customers who got shorn received a lapel sticker reading Shorn To Help Clean Up The Slick.

Appointments run through Booksy, linked directly from the Bolt website, and you can choose a specific barber and time slot there. Yelp lists the shop as welcoming walk-ins, so stepping in off Spring Street works when a chair is free. With close to 750 Yelp reviews piled up since 2009, though, evenings and Saturdays fill quickly, so book a day or two ahead if you need a fixed time before a dinner or a meeting.

The quietest windows tend to be the edges of the day. Doors open at 8am Monday through Saturday, an hour before most offices on Spring and Main start, and the late shifts on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday stretch to midnight. Sunday runs a shorter 9am to 8pm, and Monday, Wednesday and Saturday close at 10pm, which still beats almost every other cutter in the Historic Core by several hours.

Discounts are spelled out on the menu instead of handled at the barber's discretion. Active duty military, law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs and seniors 65 and over get 10% off. Students get 20% off, and the shop runs USC Trojan Tuesdays at the same 20% rate, so a Trojan with a student ID pays $40 instead of $50 for the classic cut on a Tuesday.

The core order is the Classic Gentlemen's Shear, Fade or Scissors Cut at $50, and the price already folds in the neck shave with a straight razor, a hot towel and a short massage. If you also want your beard handled, the Combo of a haircut plus Beard Line Up or Trim is $75. A plain Buzz Cut is $30, and kids under 12 sit for the Little Dudes cut at $35.

Shaving is where Bolt shows its old school bones. The Classic 4-Towel Straight Razor Shave costs $45, and Bald by Choice, a full head shave, is also $45. A standalone Beard Trim is $30, and the Beard Trim plus Classic 4-Towel Straight Razor Shave also comes in at $45, which makes it the better deal if your cheeks and your beard line both need attention.

Honest call: skip the $20 Line Me Up if your last cut was more than three weeks ago. The edges will look sharp for a few days, but the $50 cut gets you the full haircut plus the razor neck shave and hot towel for $30 more. Add-ons are small, with nose and ear waxing at $15 and a mint shampoo and conditioner with scalp treatment for $5.

Yelp reviewers keep coming back to the details that set Bolt apart from the fade shops on Broadway. One praises the PBR on tap and the conversation, and another calls their barber, Johnny Angel, simply the best. A third mentions a barber with more than 30 years of experience, and another says other downtown barbers have charged twice as much for a worse haircut. The roster is billed as master barbers only, so there are no apprentices practicing fades on paying clients.

The menu is not only for men. Women can book a Haircut and Style for $60, or a Haircut with Shampoo, Style and Blow Dry for $90, which is useful for a short crop that needs clipper work most salons are less comfortable with. Color is also on offer, from a semi-permanent Grey Blending Color Wash at $45 to Two Process Bleach and Tone starting at $250.

The ratings are not spotless. Bolt sits at 4.0 stars on Yelp, lower than some of the newer appointment-only studios downtown, and a few reviewers describe their barber as merely nice enough. The fix is the same one regulars use: read the Booksy reviews for individual barbers, pick one name you trust, and book that person again instead of taking whoever is free at the door.

Before or after the cut, cross the intersection to The Last Bookstore, the two-level used book and record shop on Spring Street at Fifth, where the upstairs labyrinth has a tunnel built from stacked books. It is the easiest way to kill twenty minutes if your barber is running behind, and you can be back in the chair in under two minutes on foot.

For food, walk three blocks north to Grand Central Market on Broadway, the food hall that has run since 1917 between Third and Fourth Streets, with a back entrance facing Hill Street and Angels Flight. Pershing Square, the park between Fifth, Sixth, Hill and Olive, sits two blocks west and is the landmark to aim for if you arrive by Metro.

Bolt Barbers is at 460 S Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90013, on the corner of Fifth Street. Hours are Sunday 9am to 8pm, Monday and Wednesday 8am to 10pm, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 8am to midnight, and Saturday 8am to 10pm. Bookings go through the Booksy link on the official site, and walk-ins are taken when a chair opens up.

By train, Pershing Square station on the B and D lines is two blocks west with an entrance at Fifth and Hill, and Historic Broadway station on the A and E lines is a short walk north. Drivers should use Joe's Auto Parks a block south on Spring Street and ask the Dude Greeter inside the shop for a validation sticker, which costs $5 for 60 minutes.

Plan B if every Bolt chair is booked: walk about fifteen minutes south to Mr. Brothers Cut Club on West Ninth Street, the first overseas shop from the Japanese barber brand, set in a 1923 building with mid-century barber chairs. It suits a precise scissor cut more than a hot towel shave, and the Karpo APP can map the walk from Spring Street.