About

A Barbershop Haircut That Costs a Quarter, also known as A Barbershop Haircut That Cost a Quarta, A Barbershop Haircut That Cost a Qwarta or Bro Had the Entire Audience in Less Than 10 Seconds, refers to a clip of an amateur production of the musical Newsies in which one actor delivers the line, "A barbershop haircut that costs a quarter," in the song "King of New York." He sings it with an inflected New York accent, making "quarter" sound like "quarta" or "qwarta." People in the audience are heard cheering when the actor delivers the line. The actor's name is Kevin James Sievert (@kevinjamessievert), and the original video went viral on TikTok in 2021. It resurfaced en masse in 2025 due to viral reposts, which led to Accuracy Meme Reenactments of the moment.

The video was later integrated into the Adrian Eeffoc Brainrot genre of brainrot and lobotomy videos, which combined exploitable video elements into absurd edits, largely focusing on the Adrian, Explain Our Friend Group and Coffee Spelled Backwards is Eeffoc memes.

Origin

On March 3rd, 2021, TikToker^[2] @jordanarrasmith posted a video that showed a scene in the musical Newsies when the song "King of New York" is performed by the actors. The scene centered on the line, "A barbershop haircut that costs a quarter," which was delivered by TikToker^[3] @kevinjamessievert. The video had text overlay as well, reading, "Y'all, I'm about to quit my job because this is gonna steal the whole thing." The video received over 151,900 likes in four years.

On December 11th, 2023, TikToker^[1] @shawndholmes posted the original video, saying that @jordanarrasmith had gotten it from him. The TikToker geo-tagged the video in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It gained over 1.9 million likes in two years (shown below).

Spread

On January 10th, 2024, Instagram^[5] user @marynaaksenov reposted the video with text reading, "Bro had the entire audience in less than 10 seconds," gaining over 1.7 million likes in a year (shown below).

On March 1st, 2024, TikToker^[4] @athanhernandez7 reposted the abovementioned video, gaining over 416,000 likes in a year.

The video resurfaced en masse in 2025 when TikToker^[6] @mokamochaa posted an Accuracy Meme Reenactment of the original video on May 14th, 2025, gaining over 210,200 likes in 15 days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References