Eagerly awaited new hair salon opens this month
By Colleen Gundlach

The light that went out on Station Place last December at the closing of Great Impressions hair salon is being rekindled. Less than five months after Tammi Pavano closed her business next to the former Corner Store, a new owner has filled the empty spot.

Vickie Thompson, a graduate of the Torrington Beauty Academy has been a hair stylist for all of her adult life and will now open Norfolk’s newest business.  She is best known for her first salon, Hair West in West Cornwall (which she began at the age of twenty), her home salon in Goshen, and Studio G in Goshen. She has a large following of clients, most of whom will follow her to her new location. “They have been with me for many years,” she says, “and I think they will find Norfolk to be a lot like West Cornwall, in terms of the small town feel and the artsy, encouraging, friendly people.”

While Vickie grew up in Winsted, at Highland Lake, she is no stranger to Norfolk.  Her father, Donald Linkovich, Sr., along with his siblings, and parents Joseph and Vera (Ostapko) Linkovich, owned a farm in North Norfolk where she often came to play as a child.  The property was near Campbell Falls, a place of which Vickie has fond memories.

The salon, named Norfolk Hair Station, appropriate for its location on Station Place, was actually scheduled to open in early February, but problems with frozen pipes during the harsh winter proved that it was not yet meant to be.  Vickie arrived at the salon on the day she signed the lease for the space and found the sinks in the workroom backed up and overflowing.  The resulting repair work was a familiar sight to residents who dodged the backhoes and jackhammers on Station Place for many days as crews dug up and repaired the frozen and broken underground pipes.

Eventually, with the assistance of the landlord, friends and relatives, Vickie renovated the interior of the salon.  “My sister, Laura, was home from Florida to help,” she says, “and my daughter, Tessa, put a lot of hard work into getting the business ready to open.”

In late April, the Connecticut Department of Public Health inspected the area and officially gave her license to open her doors.  The salon will be open for business beginning on May 1.

Norfolk Hair Station will be open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from late mornings through evening hours.  “I like to have later hours so that people who work all day can still stop in afterwards to have their hair done,” Vickie says.  She will provide hair styling services to men and women, providing a full range of services, including precision cutting, coloring, highlighting and perms.

Vickie plans to decide how best to expand her business by asking for suggestions as to what specific services the clients want and then work to implement those.  “It’s all about the clients,” she says.

To make an appointment at Norfolk Hair Station, call 860-542-1111 or just stop in and say hello.

Photo by Bruce Frisch.