Taz Hair Company

Rino Balzano has been a hair stylist since he was 14. Granted, those early haircuts, performed with clippers borrowed from a friend’s father, had less to do with style and more to do with an entrepreneurial spirit. When Rino and his pals were given money by their parents to get their hair cut, Rino let them pocket that money by doing it himself.

However, the budding barber was not solely motivated by financial considerations. Hair cutting always fascinated Rino, observing carefully as his own head was being shorn, until he became the de facto barber among his family and friends."I started off as a fanatic about my own hair. I started to do my friends’ hair, then my dad's hair, then the hair for the actors in my high school plays," he explains.

A couple of decades later, and he’s still the man to see for hair in Toronto's west end. Now a co-owner of Taz Hair Co., Rino is most often found at the Kingsway location, although he makes frequent appearances at the Yorkville salon as well.