Dixwell Crossroads Goes From ​“G” To ​“K”

Never known to do things the traditional way, Karaine ​“Kay” Smith-Holness cut a ceremonial ribbon that was, in fact, a brightly colored track of red weaving hair.

Everybody who knows Smith-Holness has a story about how her. Most of the stories are about some generosity, about the role she plays in New Haven’s West Indian community, or kindness she’s shown them in the 26 years that she’s been styling hair.

With reggae and soca pumping and sounds of the Caribbean flowing, on Sunday her friends, family, and clients gathered to tell some of those stories and celebrate the Jamaican-bred stylist and owner of Hair’s Kay as she cut the ​“ribbon” on her new salon at 320 Ashmun St.

If the salon’s new home looks familiar, it should. The space used to belong to the Red Café Ultra Lounge, and before that, the Cardinals Café. Most recently, it was an outpost of the G Café, which opened as part of an overhaul of the intersection of Ashmun, Henry and Munson streets nearly two years ago to develop the apartment complex above the salon, Ashmun Flats.

Smith-Holness, who opened Hair’s Kay at 143 Fitch St. 22 years ago, was looking for a change — something smaller, more intimate and modern. Her friend Jackie Buster, of Wow! Creative Group brought her to Ashmun Street and declared, ​“This is your salon space,” Smith-Holness told the crowd gathered in front of the salon Sunday.

“This new space is amazing,” she said. It was made amazing with the help of Haiti-native Georges Clermont of Elm City Pallet Design and students from Riverside Education Academy. Smith-Holness kept the beautiful tiled floor, white subway tile, and chalkboard from the space’s days as a café. But in addition to adding all the trappings of a salon such as sinks for washing hair, dryers and styling stations, an eco-chic vibe was added thanks to wooden pallets that were repurposed to provide accents throughout the salon, including an entire wall covered in the pallet wood to resemble shiplap. 

“When I stand and I look at the wall they created for me it actually brings me back to the place where I was born,” she said ​“And so even when standing behind a chair 14 hours a day, it brings me back to that time in my life and why I need to continue being who I need to be.

“When you go in see my amazing wall, talk to Georges and Ron, they used pallets — things that are thrown away, often like our communities,” she added. ​“But you can see from things that are discarded there is so much beauty. Always look for the beauty no matter how ugly it seems. That’s what the salon does for me. It keeps saying ​‘We’re beautiful, we’re wanted, we’re needed, we’re part of a community.”

Mayor Toni Harp, who is a client and friend, said that Hair’s Kay is one of the places where she gets to truly let down here hair.

“It’s one thing to be her client,” Harp said. ​“It’s another thing to be in the group of people that share food after everybody is gone, and she let me join that club. I was so thrilled that she actually treated me like a person. So often when you’re in public often people treat you like you’re an office and not a human being. But Kay understood that I’m a human being too. It makes all the difference in the world.”

Harp also applauded Smith-Holness’ role as a leader who excels at bringing people together. Smith-Holness is a founding member and president of Jamaican American Connection (JAC) of New Haven Inc., which promotes West Indian culture. She also is a founding member of the New Haven Caribbean Heritage Festival and organizer of an annual women’s retreat to Jamaica called Sistahs Jammin’.

“I think that I was so honored and privileged when I first met Kay,” Harp said. ​“What’s great about her is all of you. She brings people together. I would say that the greatest thing that a person can be is a conjunction. And Kay is a conjunction. She knows all of the people and she brings everybody together to benefit each other. I am so thrilled I got to be her client.”

“The other thing about Kay is she is a leader. She’s a natural leader,” Harp added. ​“She leads certainly the Jamaican American Connection, and she makes certain that everyone who has even the least taste of Jamaican in them is a part of it. But beyond that, all of the Caribbean people in the area look up to Kay as their leader and someone who helps them understand their relationships with this community and how important it is for them to participate so that they can feel like they too are America.”

St. Lucia-native Christine Bartlett-Josie could attest to that. When she moved to New Haven 20 years ago from New York City with its large, well established, tight-knit Caribbean community, she was reluctant. So much so that in the early years here she would pack up and spend entire weekends in the city. But while managing one of State Sen. Gary Winfield’s earlier races she kept hearing about a woman named Kay, or as her daughters would later call her, even before Bartlett-Josie met her, ​“Aunty Kay.”

“They never called anyone in New Haven that,” she said. ​“It was instant. When I finally did meet her it was interesting because she knows all these people that I also know, but we haven’t connected. But I swear I’ve known her all my life.”

Bartlett-Josie once she met Smith-Holness and then began to participate in events like the festival and Caribbean Heritage Month at City Hall, she found that community in New Haven that she thought only existed in New York.

“Through her, I’ve found this whole new community and this whole new family,” she said. ​“My children say, ​‘Mommy, why didn’t we know Aunty Kay years ago?’ Kay has this way of bringing everybody together.”

Smith-Holness’s new salon location might have a hand in bringing more people together Dixwell and Newhallville. State Rep. Robyn Porter said she was claiming it for Newhallville. Dixwell’s top cop, Sgt. Jackie Hoyt, said, ​“un uh.”

“We’ll call it Newhallville-Dixwell,” Porter said.

“It is what is,” Hoyt said with a laugh. ​“Dixwell!”

No matter which neighborhood claims the shop — it sits right on the Munson-Henry border of the two — Porter said the community would benefit.

“This community is going to be tremendously blessed for having not just this shop, but having the spirit of Kay in the neighborhood,” she said. ​“It’s not just the hair here. It’s about your heart and your condition. She’s a therapist and doesn’t know it.”

She’s also a daughter who makes her mother pretty proud, too.

“I’m so happy and I’m so proud,” Smith-Holness’s mother, Yvonne, said. ​“Everywhere I turn, you make me proud. From day one.”

Smith-Holness said after all the well wishes that she was speechless.

“That never happens,” she said with tears in her eyes.