At a time when the color of his skin or the pronunciation of his last name could bar him from certain establishments in the city, Manuel Banaga Jr.'s Simi Valley Barber- shop opened its doors to anyone in need of a snip.

"When you're a barber, you see no difference in hair," said Banaga, 79, owner and operator of Simi's first barbershop, whose doors opened in 1958. "I'll never forget the time I was in the barbershop and a fellow came in and he said, 'Do you cut Mexican hair?' I couldn't understand that. Hair is hair to me."

The place where so many resi- dents came for their first trim, the tiny wooden building on Los An- geles Avenue on the edge of Simi's Old Colonia is one of the final last- ing landmarks of what was once the center of a burgeoning agricultural community.

"The city grew up around that area," said Councilmember Glen Becerra, whose father lived right down the block on the corner of Ashland Street and Fifth Avenue and had his hair cut by Banaga for many years. "When you look at the street names, First through Fifth Street, Royal to L.A. Avenue, that's the oldest part of the city itself."

THIS PLACE BELONGS TO SIMI-Well-known Simi Valley barber Manuel Banaga Jr. stands with family friend Armando Monson outside the Los Angeles Avenue barbershop he ran for more than 40 years. Monson purchased the property from Banaga last year and has decided to donate it to the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District. Above left, the barbershop as it looked in the early '80s. Though the barbershop finally went out of business in 2006, the building which holds its history is being preserved, thanks to the City Council, the Rancho Simi Recre- ation and Park district and local business owner Armando Monson, a fifth-generation Simi Valley resi- dent who purchased the lot the bar- bershop sits on from Banaga, a longtime family friend, in May.

In exchange for the city's allow- ing him to install a temporary build- ing on the property for his retail packaging and shipping business,

Local bikers rMonson, 32, has agreed to donate the historic barbershop building to the park district, which will relo- cate it from Los Angeles Avenue to Strathearn Historical Park.

"Everyone in the community got their hair cut there," Monson said. "That barbershop belongs to the city and residents of Simi Valley."

Monson's decision to donate the building is not coming without per- sonal sacrifice.

Instead of paying to get the bar- bershop building renovated and get his business up and running quickly-which Banaga personally gave him permission to do- Monson said he's now at a stand- still, unable to get his shop started for several months while the park district makes all the necessary preparations to get the building moved from its current location.

Still, he said, he never consid- ered any option that didn't include preserving the barbershop.

"I don't know what it means to all people, but I know it means a lot to me and it means a lot to the city of Simi Valley," said Monson, who grew up on Ashland Street, near where his father ran a popular general store.

"It deserves to be on display so that the people of Simi who are in- terested can go and observe it for themselves and go back and remi- nisce about the first time they walked in there. Or grandparents can take their grandchildren there and say, 'Look at this. This is where I got my first haircut.'"

The history of the building ac- tually began long before the barber- shop, Banaga said. Built around the turn of the century, the building was used as a popular general store un- til the 1940s, when it became a chiropractor's office, then a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall. Banaga, whose parents originally moved to Simi Valley in 1917 to farm, bought the property in 1953 at a cost of $7,000.

For the lifelong barber, who hung up his clippers earlier this year after more than 60 years in the hair- cutting business, it's difficult to en- vision his personal business as a historic landmark. The humble Korean War veteran who's lived nearly his entire life in Simi Valley is unfazed by the new plans for his shop.

"Simi is my home, and I've al- ways been happy here," said Banaga, who's been battling can- cer. "I don't need to sell my prop- erty and see it become a landmark to be happy in Simi."

As far as the role the barbershop played in combating discrimina- tion, Monson said it simply had to do with good business sense.

"If I had only cut the hair of people of Mexican descent, I would have gone out of business because at that time they only represented a small percentage of the population, maybe 5 percent," he said. "But the white people really came out and supported me."

Still, he recognizes that, in the early days, inside the barbershop doors was a world very different from the world outside.

"The people that came through the doors could be themselves," Banaga said, "and they knew that."