TAILOR, BARBER PAISANOS FROM LITTLE ITALY.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Giovanni Caputo starts the sentence, Luigi Della Ripa finishes it. That's the way it's been for almost 40 years now with these two friends working next door to each other on Sylvan Street in Van Nuys.

Little Italy in the heart of the Valley where paisanos - friends from the old country - meet. Giovanni's Barber Shop and Luigi's Tailoring.

You can get a haircut and your pants pressed in 15 minutes. The laughs are free.

When I showed up Friday, Giovanni was just finishing up with 80-year-old Bruno Picanza, who hasn't let another barber touch his hair in more than 20 years. It would be like cheating on your wife, Bruno says.

A trim, fit man, he was on his way to a soccer game. I asked if his grandson was playing. Bruno shot me the look.

``Whadda you mean? I'm playing,'' he said, pulling the wallet out of his back pocket to show me his driver's license, just in case I thought he was lying about his age. He wasn't.

``I'm leaving for Italy next week. Maybe in a few months when I get back, you can do a story on me. You got a card?''

Luigi walked in from next door, and finished Giovanni's sentence on what year it was he bought the barber shop from Manny Montano.

``1981,'' Luigi said.

``Yeah, 1981,'' Giovanni agreed.

Luigi's been translating Giovanni's words from Italian to English ever since Giovanni took over third chair in Manny's Barbershop in the early '70s - finally buying Manny out and turning the place into Giovanni's Barbershop.

``Giovanni didn't speak much English, so I translated for him,'' Luigi says. ``We became friends. I was born in Naples, Giovanni in a little town called Potenza.''

Luigi's tailor shop used to be Carbone's Men's Wear until he bought out Sil Carbone, who translated for Luigi when he didn't know English too well.

Sil saw the handwriting on the wall in the early '70s, and it wasn't good.

``Malls were opening,'' Luigi says with disdain. ``Killed a lot of little retail shops.''

The malls and burglars almost killed his.

``I got broken into so many times. They always took the leather stuff. One day the cops said, 'Luigi, why don't you just stop selling leather? That way they can't steal it from you anymore.'

``I told them, why don't you just catch the guys so they don't steal from me anymore. They never caught nobody.''

Luigi finally stopped selling leather, and started pressing more pants and hemming more dresses. It worked. He hasn't been burglarized since.

``I guess thieves don't want somebody else's pants,'' Luigi says. When they look out the front windows of their stores - in the shadow of the Van Nuys Municipal Center - they see a different Valley these days. Some good, more bad.

The halcyon years of the 1970s, when Manny and the boys in the barber shop would stand at the window with binoculars looking at all the miniskirts walking by, are long gone.

So are most of the old stores along Van Nuys Boulevard, replaced with pawn shops, they say.

But Luigi and Giovanni, both 69, are still here - still open for business in Little Italy on Sylvan Street.

``I think we'll probably go ... '' Giovanni starts.

``Another 10 years,'' Luigi finishes.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Luigi Della Ripi, left, owner of Luigi's Tailoring, and Giovanni Caputo, owner of Giovanni's Barbershop on Sylvan Street in Van Nuys, have watched the neighborhood change in their years in business.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer