CINCINNATI — The kids call her granny. Others know her as Mrs. J.
Everyone knows she’s a character. On one Thursday afternoon, Anna Joiner looks straight into the camera and smiles. She's already been talking for several minutes, but now she’s ready to begin.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Ask your questions.” Joiner has been cutting hair in Avondale for decades.
She lived through life-altering riots here in the ‘60s , and her salon became a community staple after that. For close to 50 years, she lived upstairs and cut hair downstairs in her home on Reading Road. “I love Avondale,” she said.
Joiner also loves to talk. It’s one of the reasons she cut hair for so long because she met people — all kinds of people. And if she could, she tried to help them.
“I can’t tell you how much free hair I’ve done over the years,” she said. Because her salon was about more than just hair. Over time, it became a gathering place for her neighbors.
“It meant everything,” she said. Today, you can still see the sign painted on her front porch: “Mrs. J’s Beauty Salon.
” It’s mostly painted over now. Even though downstairs, the salon chairs and hair dryers are still there. And so is Joiner, trying to help her community in any way she can.
Even if it’s no longer by cutting hair. “I love Mrs. J,” said Jennifer Foster, vice president of Avondale’s community council .
“Mrs. J has been a pillar of the community for a long time.” But the 86-year-old uses a c.