Longtime Richmondites like Ed and Betty Hoyland are often at Julie Ghassemian’s salon, talking everything from politics to gas prices to the old days of a flatter Richmond.

“We used to call it Ditchmond,” said Ed, a retired engineer, who came to Richmond from England in 1973 with his wife.

Ghassemian, who came from Montreal in 1988, also remembers days with more ditches.

“My son used to grab frogs from them and put them in his pocket!” she said.

You might imagine these conversations, always over tea, taking place in a salon on some neighbourly high street. But G G Hair Salon is very, very hidden.

Ghassemian used to work in salons at busy Richmond locations – Woodward’s, Richmond Centre, Broadmoor Village on No. 3 Road, a medical building across from Richmond Hospital – but her current salon of over a decade is the opposite of convenience.

“There’s no way new customers can know where I am,” said Ghassemian.

Read the full story in Metro here.