She no longer cuts hair, but an elderly Queens woman has not given up the barbershop she opened in Harlem decades ago. Borough reporter Ruschell Boone tells us why she's still a fixture in the uptown neighborhood.

She hung up her straight razor last year after losing some of her vision and hearing, but Allean Elam still keeps a close eye on the barbershop she's owned in Harlem for 45 years.

The barbershop is one of the oldest in the neighborhood and the 93-year-old trailblazer has become a fixture there.

"Even if I'm not working, I just love to sit and watch," said Elam, the owner of Morningside Barbershop. "It's real nice. I still love it."

Elam's passion for barbering raised some eyebrows in the 60s, when women rarely cut men's hair.

But the doubters changed their tune once some of the men began buzzing about her cuts at the Morningside Barbershop on West 116th Street.

Douglas Dervin, a customer: She did a good job at making you look good.

NY1: So you would always come to her?

Dervin: Every other Saturday.

Dervin has been a customer for more than 30 years. Friday, he went to the shop to wish Elam a happy birthday.

Elam began as a hairstylist at the barbershop in 1964, mainly cutting women's' hair, but she preferred working with men a lot more.

So, she decided to become a barber exclusively. Her husband encouraged her to buy the business in 1971 when it became available.

"She cut all three of my sons. She even cut my son's son's hair," Bonnie Armstrong, a customer, said. "So she had three generations of us: my husband, my sons, and my grandson."

Unable to cut hair, Elam decided to close the shop last year, but her family and the community wouldn't have it.

"She's a part of this neighborhood," said Armstrong. "If she's not here, everybody comes [around and asks], 'Have you seen her?'"

Elam's daughter and grandsons took over the daily operation, but she still travels from St. Albans, Queens to Harlem three times a week.

"I have been working under my grandmother since I was 16," senior barber Stanley Elam said. "I learned the business from her and I just took it on and carried it on because I started enjoying myself, too."

"It's something that's always been in the family, and when I heard that she might give it up, as I was retired, it was perfect timing," said Jacqueline Elam Belizario, who is also the manager of Morningside Barbershop. "I said, 'You know what? Let's keep this going.'"

The family hopes to keep it open another several decades.