By Jon Wiener

As soon as young customers enter Just Kids Hairstyling, they can tell there is something different about the Loyola Corners shop.

The traditional barbershop chairs are conspicuously missing. Instead, customers can sit on carousel-style plastic horses, toy tricycles or a mock tugboat. All of those seats are facing a television set showing a special feature of the Disney hit “Monsters, Inc.” In the back of the shop, nimble-fingered children can play Sega Genesis or Sony PlayStation while they get their hair cut.

Owner Dave Calderon practically grew up in his father’s barbershop. Now that he has got a shop of his own, he does more just welcome kids, he caters to them.

“There’s a whole technique to cutting kids’ hair,” Calderon said. “It’s like hitting a moving target. You have to move with the kid.”

Calderon started cutting hair when he was 12 years old. He came up with the idea of a children-only barbershop when he was in high school.

“I was a kid myself,” he said. “And I thought I would like a nice place and a friendly environment.”

After a brief career as a quarterback in the Canadian Football League, Calderon started opening Just Kids Hairstyling branches throughout the South Bay 20 years ago.

Calderon, 47, recently moved from Saratoga to Scottsdale, Ariz., where is he establishing a similar chain. He returns to the Bay Area once a month to work with the stylists at the 3-year-old shop at Loyola Corners.

It is the only location he has kept open, something he credits to the “kid-friendly” orientation of the local community. With a daughter in college here, and a lease signed through the next 15 years, Calderon plans to hang on to the shop for a long time.

“It’s almost like a home,” he said.

He is not the only one who feels comfortable there.

Just Kids Hairstyling is located at 981 Fremont Ave., Los Altos. For an appointment, call 949-5040.