At any one point during the workday at C&C Salon in the Galleria at Crystal Run, someone is cleaning something.

Including this Town of Wallkill location, Giuseppe Acampora and his family operate seven salons in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

While the state’s COVID-19 reopening regulations delayed the reopening of his Hudson Valley locations, Acampora and his staff spent countless hours cleaning, rearranging for social distancing, updating clients, and rescheduling appointments.

When the salon was finally allowed to reopen, they were ready, Acampora said, and so were the regular clients.

“We’ll take their temperature. Then we’ll escort them into the back of the salon,” Acampora said during a brief tour of the updated salon.

“We have these markers that show us where to go,” he said, pointing at arrows meant to minimize contact by keeping clients in one direction around the reception area.

The client would then arrive at a newly disinfected station and be draped in a disposable cape.

No clients would be in the chairs on either side.

Every other station is blocked with yellow police tape to ensure no one even casually sits in the chairs.

“We’re making sure that within your six-foot bubble — within anyone’s six-foot bubble — it’s just going to be you and your stylist,” Acampora said of the changes. “This has kind of been the industry norm now ever since we opened back up.”

“It’s working well,” hair stylist Diane Butler said.

Butler said she is getting her clients back, and she can still work a full schedule despite the occupancy restrictions.

The hardest adjustment: wearing the mask and working around the clients’ masks.

“That’s the only adjustment we’ve felt like we need to make here,” Butler said.

“As they receive the haircut, as they maneuver around the ear, we ask that they hold their mask,” Acampora said, demonstrating with his own mask. “Then we can take the mask off on the one side, and they can clean around that area. Once that’s all finished, we put it back on and we repeat the process on the other side.”

Butler’s client, Virginia Rodriguez, was getting her first professional haircut since before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

She has no problems with the rules, even if she needs to be reminded.  She began walking straight back to the station once her name was called, and Acampora quickly caught up with her to take her temperature.

“We have to do what we have to do to help each other out and keep each other safe,” Rodriguez said. “So I agree with everything.”

The end of a haircut is the beginning of the next.

“Once the client is finished, we dispose of the cape, sanitize the station again, before bringing in the next client,” said Acampora.