Urban taverns, carry-outs, bars, like barbershops, and other such establishments, with their adjacent street corners and alleys, serve as important gathering places for people of the 'urban villages' and ghetto areas of the city (Suttles 1968). The barbershop can be regarded, like other social enclaves, as a counter public space. People of color, women, homosexuals, religious minorities, and immigrant groups have created coexisting counter publics in reaction to the exclusionary politics of the dominant public sphere and the State (Cohen 1999, Fraser 1992, Habermas 1998, Squires 2002). The barbershop allows the elite, middle class, unemployed, struggling college student and vagabond African American male with an affirmation of self worth, identity, and a refuge from the dominant society. The dominant society which contradicts his existence; the barbershop inversely reaffirms him and provides a connection to the African American. The barbers and patrons set the social standards (Anderson 2003); a sort of subculture exists amongst these men, both barbers and patrons. This case study examines The Sphinx barbershop in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin over the period of two years. The Barbershop has historically been a counter public space, with its varied present usages. It has essentially been an aid to cope with the disappointment and illusion southerners arrived with the idea of a "race blind" North. African Americans were still subjected to inferior status despite the ability to be allowed industrial employment. The industrialized North presented the African American with different frustrations. The Southern migrant's arrival afforded new dignities that were accompanied by his strategic compartmentalization. The barbershop evolved as one of the many forms of entrepreneurship that presented an alternative route to achieve the American Dream that was denied to him upon his Northern arrival. Popular culture (books, movies, and documentaries) has consistently demonstrated/reflected the importance of the Barbershop as a cornerstone of the African American community. The barbershop has been used as a space to critique the public of its exclusionary politics and framework.