CHICAGO --
A historic Chicago barber shop where Muhammad Ali used to get his hair cut and Sen. Barack Obama still goes for weekly trims is moving after the building it's in was sold.
The Hyde Park Hair Salon, long a gathering place for the city's black community, is moving after about 80 years in business under different names and owners, said owner Abdul Karim Shakir.
But unlike in the movie "Barbershop" -- in which a Chicago barber shop owner fights shady developers to save his historic shop -- the sellers in this case, the University of Chicago, have promised to help move the salon to a new location, possibly just a few blocks away.
The university is selling the building to a development company for $2.3 million, which plans to lease space to local and national stores and restaurants, according to the university.
"My heart just bleeds," said Leroy Cain, the salon's former owner. "I hate to see that shop move out of that building, period."
Hyde Park, where the shop is located, is a neighborhood that's home to the university and has strong connections to the city's black leaders.
James Spiller, 41, stopped in Wednesday for his regular cut. He said he enjoys the shop's lively conversations about sports and social issues.
"There are certain conversations you can only have in a barber shop," said Spiller, who said he sometimes brings along his 6-year-old son to hang out. "I will go to wherever they are to get a haircut."
The salon's clientele, like the neighborhood, has changed over the years, Cain said. Staff and customers in the 1960s were mostly white, he said, but it began drawing more black customers after he bought it in 1965. Cain said the shop, which he renamed "Cain's" from "Joe's" when he bought it, got its current name in 1975 when he decided it would give the community a sense of ownership.
He said the shop's had an eclectic mix of customers that has included university students, Chicago politicians and baseball players.
Chicago's first black mayor, the late Harold Washington, was one of his personal clients, Cain said. But Ali, a former heavyweight boxing champion, preferred one of his assistants.
"At the time he came in for service, I was really backed up," Cain explained. "One of my assistants was available and he started cutting it and continued."
Shakir said Obama, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, visits weekly for his hair cut.
"He doesn't miss unless he's out of the country," he said.
The shop will have to move before construction begins next fall, although no specific date has been set.
Hank Webber, University of Chicago's vice president of community and government affairs, said the school has been working with the salon to find it a new storefront and has chosen a tentative relocation site "a few blocks away."
It will require a zoning change, he said, because it is closer than 1,000 feet to the nearest barber shop, a quirk of local law.
