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The Beardsgaards

The Beardsgaards are a pair of mom-and-pop barber nerds with a shared obsession with perfection. We built this old school barbershop to feel like home to everyone who enters beneath the Elvish script above our door. If we and the Gaardian army can give you a better handle on your grooming routine, all the better.

The Faces of Beardsgaard • Alfheim

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Beardsgaard may be a barbershop in Batavia, here in the mortal plane, but it is also the fantasy world. In that world is an apothecary, River Peak Apothecary, that makes magic potions scented by the seasons, their scents evoking the places you will find all over the Realm.

This is Alfheim, from our 9 Realms of candles collection, smelling of the land of the Day Elves, where a pair of herbalist Dawn Elf siblings learn a timeless lesson on why you should never go with an Unseelie to a second location in the Faewild.

Taking this photo shoot to Chicago on a lovely Sunday meant that there were swarms of people everywhere to be edited out of shots. Despite the crowding, the immediate sibling-like connection between our models carried the day and we had a hoot of a day illustrating our most Elvish-smelling candle.

Dive into the magic of Alfheim with us.

COSTUMING: Local theater costumer All Dressed Up Costumes, Grimfrost, and pieces from the Beardsgaards’ personal closet.
LOCATION: ALFRED CALDWELL LILY POOL, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
MODELS: Tanya & Randy

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New Hours & Prices This Summer

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NEW HOURS

Life has been a lot more manageable since we went from a shop working in shifts for 70 hours a week to our regular person work week on service industry hours. In our effort to fine tune our operations to our clients’ needs, we have decided to shift our later days to earlier in the week. Because duh, us, people have things to do on Friday nights, which means we need more after work appointments earlier in the week.

Beginning Tuesday, June 7th, our hours will shift just a bit to be as follows:

NEW PRICES

Beardsgaard has grown so much over the years, from always having a new barber in training, to the present day where every single barber is long experienced and superb at their craft, while living the “never stop learning” life. With a pandemic in between those early years and today, and our new normal of folks not being able to get in for six weeks despite being near fully staffed, our only remaining option is to raise our prices.

And so we present our new price list beginning Tuesday, July 19th 2022. Any appointments booked before June 6th will not be affected.

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The Faces of Beardsgaard • Niflheim

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Beardsgaard may be a barbershop in Batavia, here in the mortal plane, but it is also the fantasy world. In that world is an apothecary, River Peak Apothecary, that makes magic potions scented by the seasons, their scents evoking the places you will find all over the Realm.

This is Niflheim, from our 9 Realms of candles collection, smelling of the land of the Water Elementals, where a Mist Spirit undertakes an epic journey to become the champion of Niflheim, on a very inopportune year.

We got up well before dawn this day to take one of the former barbers of Beardsgaard to an adorable little waterfall in a local forest preserve and create one of our most difficult fantasy settings for our freshest smelling candle.

Dive into the magic of Niflheim with us.

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Mask Update: They’re Back

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It’s been nice seeing all of your faces again, but per CDC recommendations, we must once again require masks to enter Beardsgaard, regardless of vaccination status.

As a shop that serves clients of all ages, including immunocompromised clients and those too young to be vaccinated, protecting all who enter our doors is our top priority. Our mask policy will remain firm until guidance changes again.

Face services are still on, but masks must remain on until we get to that part of your service and your barber instructs you to remove your mask. If you forgot one, don’t fret, we are stocked for life.

Let’s all help prevent another shutdown and keep small businesses open!

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Captain Fawcett Parfum News

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We have some tip top news! A series of events has unfolded that has put us in the position to be a direct importer of all of the Captain Fawcett products we carry, now including fragrance.

That means we are able to skip a bunch of middleman costs, and the price of all the Captain Fawcett fragrances are now…lower? Yes indeed, lower! Huzzah!

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Beards. Are. Back. ALL RIGHT!

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January 20th, 2021 is proving to be a flippin’ AWESOME day. And only part of it is because beards are back.

There hasn’t been a ton of clarity on what’s allowed in our industry for the various Phases and Tiers, but we shot our grabby grabby tentacles out to all the official people we could think of until we got a definitive answer (and that answer was YES!). Then we polled the barbers to make sure they were comfy with briefly bared faces (while they take extravagant personal protection measures), and boom, the books are open.

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New Year, New Hours

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We made it through 2020! And while 2021 does not look to be shaping up to be less intense, we’re all old hats at this by now.

After 6 years in business, we have learned to stay nimble through all the growth and trials, and the pandemic has tested every skill set we have. The most valuable of those has proved to be the ability to keep one eye on the macro (how the business works as a whole, and one on the micro (the day to day operations).

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A Very Apocalyptic Beardsgaard Holiday Gift Guide

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What to gift the bearded wildman in your life this holiday season when that wildman will presumably be staying inside an awful lot again in the next few months?

How about a curated gift pack, starting with a barber-formulated, Batavia-made all natural beard oil, and filled with other well-crafted treasures to make the long night ahead a little brighter?

Here at Beardsgaard, it is holiday tradition for us to build “character profiles,” if you will, with gift guide collections to help you find magical gifts to delight the bearded characters in your life.

Maybe it’s the abundance of Netflix this year, but if you have ever casually wondered how your crew would fare in your favorite dystopian genre flick, then this quiz is the PERFECT way to find the bearded section of that crew the perfect gift this holiday season.

Note: While we cut all sorts of folks around these parts, this year’s boxes are built around beards (gift packs for all, and a whole different quiz, can be found at our sibling shop, River Peak Apothecary). That does not mean, however, you should not take this quiz for the non-bearded children of any gender in your life, we have a character and gift pack just for them too.
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Apocalyptic Beardsgaard Gift Guide: The Wanderer

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He stalks the fjord-like waterworld of what was once the Great Lakes, fishing the shallows, foraging for the new spring greens, and always in search of high ground with no lights…other people are the greatest threat.

Or that might be him in another timeline. For the next few months he’ll more likely be stalking the trails of the local sparsely populated forest preserves and state parks, looking, despite all odds, for a trail he hasn’t been down before.

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