Jak & Co

Perry Stein:

D.C. native Latosha Jackson-Martin wants the blunt sign she posted outside her father’s 50-year-old hair salon in Bloomingdale to remind residents that the neighborhood they see today isn’t the way it always was.

“Due to ‘gentrification’ and mixed emotions Jak and Company Hairdressers will be closing,” the sign reads.

Jackson-Martin’s father, William Jackson, opened Jak & Co. Hairdressers downtown 50 years ago, and moved it to now-trendy Bloomingdale in 1988. For much of its past quarter-century, the store has been surrounded by a laundromat, a uniform business and liquor stores with Plexiglass windows.

Now, it’s nestled between a pub with an extensive whiskey and scotch menu, a gourmet bakery and a Mexican restaurant that sells cucumber margaritas.

“I want people in the community to know, especially young people, that the community is filled with people who have and people who don’t have,” Jackson-Martin said. “I want people to know that we put up a fight to stay where we are, but we are in the ‘has not’ … I can’t afford to pay double the rent like the other folks.”