Home can be a tricky place. True to the idiom, home can be the place that will always be in your heart—the place you are most comfortable, where you can be your true self. But your hometown can also be a trap, especially for the ambitious. Victor Fontanez, known to the world as barber Vic Blends, loves his hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina, to the point of having “2-6” tattooed on his neck, but he is also aware that getting the hell out was the best thing that ever happened to him.
“I love Fayetteville, I love it so much, but it’s a love/hate relationship,” he says. “You’ve got to understand that if you stay there, it’s like quicksand. You can’t make it out. I’ve seen that my whole life. Seeing people who have lived there for the last 40 years, they tell you you don’t need to change because they made it here and they’re alive. But they ain’t really living.
“I want to live,
