Vance Johnson was midway through cutting a longtime customer's hair last week when his client casually mentioned that she had gotten a ticket to Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field Thursday night.

Johnson stopped as if someone had given him a bad haircut.

"What?" he asked Wendy Ellis with a bit of exaggerated mock indignation. "I'm the chairman!"

Actually, the 53-year-old veteran barber was the Obama precinct chair for his Denver neighborhood during the Colorado caucus back in February.

Had he known back then that the Illinois Democrat would be addressing 75,000 people while accepting his party's presidential nomination in Denver, Johnson said he might have run to be a delegate.

In the meantime, he cuts hair at his two-chair shop at 2232 Oneida St. in the Park Hill neighborhood, where the conversation most days inevitably turns to the campaign and Obama and his history-making role as the first black major-party presidential nominee.

On a recent afternoon, with some gospel music in the background, Johnson, Ellis and fellow customer Andrew Midgyett covered everything from John McCain's temper to Russians in Georgia to Joe Biden's verbal gaffes to polls to Obama's acceptance speech.

"I'm looking forward to it because I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime," Midgyett said.

Johnson (no, he's not the former Denver Broncos wide receiver) is a former RTD bus driver who followed in his father's tradition of working as a barber.

His father cut hair for more than 40 years in Washington, D.C., where Johnson remembers being a kid running alongside John F. Kennedy's limousine as it passed through the neighborhood on its way to the White House.

He also remembers tagging along with his dad on Aug. 28, 1963, when his father closed the shop and took his family to attend the March on Washington. All of which makes his quest to attend Obama's acceptance speech exactly 45 years later seem more like a mission.

"I have a few people who are talking to other people," he said while putting the finishing touches on Ellis' hair.

When asked what would he have to say if Obama ever wandered into his shop, Johnson replied:

" 'You want a free haircut?' I'd give him one, that's for sure."

ensslinj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5291