Ashtrays next to the waiting bench, and there's a stack of Reader's Digests and Heralds to be read while waiting for your hair cut.
This is Bob Shaw Barbers, a piece of old-style Auckland retail run by a brother-and-sister team in Customs St East.
But now, after selling thousands ofpackets of cigarettes and cutting thousands of heads of hair, Irving and Noelene Shaw are calling it a day.
After 71 years, the shop's doors will close for the last time on Friday, allowing Noelene and Irving to enjoy their retirement after running the business since the 1950s.
With the lease coming up for renewal and the building owner likely to ask for more rent, Noelene, aged 69, and Irving, 60, think it is a perfect time to take a rest, after nearly 50 years of early starts and long hours.
They are a team, with Irving cutting the hair and Noelene selling the drinks, crisps, stamps and tobacco.
Their father, Bob Shaw, set up the shop at the height of the Great Depression.
He started each day with just £5 in the till and when he had sold $5 worth of stock went up the road to buy another £5 worth from the warehouse.
Customs St was all warehouses when Noelene and Irving started working.
There was a car yard across the road and thousands worked at the nearby railway marshalling yards.
The bustling warehouses are gone, replaced with the empty shells of the long-stalled Britomart development.
"The area has really gone downhill," says Noelene.
"It's more of a red-light area now."
After spending nearly half a century selling tobacco, Noelene is still sceptical about the dangers.
"I don't think cigarettes are a problem. They haven't really proved anything, have they?"
Their only problem now is telling regular customers, some of whom have had their hair cut in Bob Shaw's for the past 30 years, that they will have to go somewhere else.
Barber shops are still popular out in the suburbs and in the shopping malls, says Irving, but are becoming more difficult to run downtown.
