Why the hell is it so hard to get a haircut?
I mean, it isn't hard to just go and get your hair cut. There are plenty of places around that will do the job. I can think of five within a three-mile radius around here that will do the job. I guess what I really mean is, why is it so hard to find a barber?
I bring up this subject because I recently had to break up with my barber. This one kind of hurt. We were pretty serious and had been together quite a while. But, sad to say, it just wasn't working out anymore. Real barbers are surprisingly difficult to find.
When I was a kid, barbers were everywhere. They were all 85 years old. They were nearly all Italian. They all had the same shop: tile floor, big mirrors lining the walls, those creepy leather and steel chairs that could lay back so they could give you a shave; all those stainless steel implements laid out on the counter in front of the mirror, all with a specific purpose; jars of blue liquid with combs, and whatnot soaking in them. The walls were usually plaster and painted, or done in some kind of paneling. The place had a certain smell; the kind of smell that causes you to feel like you are safe; the smell of sweat, and Clubman Aftershave; the smell of your grandfather. I don't remember much superfluous conversation, which, it turns out, is part of the reason for my conundrum.
When I was a kid, my grandfather would take me to get a haircut. We went to Walter in LaGrange. At least he is the first one I remember. According to my mother, I got my first haircut at the Garden Market Barber Shop from Jim Zacagannini. After Walter, we went to Big Bill. He was a heavy-set guy who played the banjo between customers. After Bill died, I was old enough to go for my own haircuts. After a string of beauticians at places like SuperCuts, I formulated a couple of hard and fast rules: 1) I would only get my hair cut at a barbershop, and 2) a woman was not allowed to cut my hair.
I hated the feeling of being in a modern hair studio (I refuse to call them a barbershop). The chairs were uncomfortable, and the place was strangely decorated. It used to be way more expensive compared to a traditional barber shop (though due to inflation and some other factors, that isn't true anymore). But I suppose that I mostly hated the talking.
The stylist always wants to talk to you. Perhaps they are just naturally outgoing personalities. Perhaps they are taught that in beauty school to ensure a good tip. I don't know, and I don't care. All I know is that Walter never had to ask me how to cut my hair. My grandfather just sat me down in the chair, and he got cutting. I only had to tell the other real barbers I went to how to cut my hair once. Neither Bill nor Jim ever had to ask me, "OK, what number do you want me to use?" What number!? I was astounded the first time a stylist asked me that question. How in God's name am I supposed to know what "number" you are supposed to use? What number are we even talking about? I'm supposed to tell you what tools to use to cut my hair?! That's why I came to you, a professional. Otherwise, I would just get out my clippers, set them to whatever number equals a shaved scalp, and take care of business at home on my own.
But I digress...
Eventually, the fickleness of society and time claimed all my barbers. Walter died, so we started going to Bill. Bill died, so I started going to Jim. Jim had a stroke and quit cutting as much, and so I was thrust into a sort of haircut purgatory. Franchise shops. Beauticians. Friends of relatives who were going to "beauty school." None of those haircuts were satisfying. All I wanted was to sit down in the chair in front of a reasonably elderly man and say, "I want an Ivy League, please." Then, he would say ok, and that would be the extent of the conversation, not counting the formulaic pleasantries required by barbershop etiquette.
Barbershop etiquette dictated that a certain amount of conversation take place between barber and patron. I haven't done the research to prove it, but I believe that the formula developed over many centuries to allow introverts such as myself to feel comfortable at the shop while communicating vital information to the barber and at the same time telling him that this guy doesn't want to engage in a rich and fulfilling philosophical dialogue.
"Hi! Have a seat."
"Thanks."
"What can I do for you?"
"Gimmie an Ivy League, please."
"Ok."
At that point, for me, the conversation would be over until the barber said, "You're all set," and started walking over to the 150-year-old cash register to ring up my $8 haircut plus a $2 tip. If you got anything else, you were dealing with an inferior barber. Only during the first visit is it permissible to ask the patron something like, "So, how about those Cubs?" in order to judge the patron's level of conversational comfort. If the guy responded with anything greater than a three-syllable response, the barber could carefully probe the acceptable topics of conversation, a list consisting mostly of sports-related topics. If he got three syllables or fewer, then he knew that they had already reached the maximum level of talking.
There were a few brief respites, some oases of traditional barbering in the desert beauticians, franchise shops, and stylists. When I got to graduate school I found what was billed as the oldest barbershop in Lexington, KY. It was a great place, and I used to go there to get a shave and a haircut every two weeks for $12. It was there that I broke my rule against women cutting my hair when an honest-to-goodness male barber was available. She was the owner's granddaughter, and she was going to barber college. She needed 300 hours of chair work, and they offered me free haircuts if I let her work on me. Apparently, all the other regular patrons had a similar "no females" rule. However, I was in grad school, and they had me at “free.†It didn't hurt that she would sometimes gently rest her boobs on my forehead when she was reaching over to shave under my chin...
But I digress again...
After I came home from college, it seemed that the barbering landscape had changed. There were still a lot of places claiming to be barber shops, but looks can be deceiving. I bounced from one to another to another, only to find inexperienced stylists masquerading as barbers. They were all startled at my answer to the question, "What are we going to do today?" "What's an Ivy League?!" they would say, audibly annoyed. So then, I had to come up with a way to describe a classic men's haircut to a person without any grounding in or respect for the rich tradition of barbering. I eventually found that "Just taper it up the back and sides as short as you can, thin out the top, and leave the front longer so I can comb it back" generally did the trick.
But I would have to tell them every time.
And, inevitably, there would always be something that would cause me to have to quit the establishment. Usually it was inconsistency with the haircut exacerbated by the incessant talking. After a while, the inferior haircut just wasn't worth the tremendous amount of effort required for me to endure the conversation. The worst were the stylists who couldn't talk and cut hair at the same time. Intolerable. It was a wonder to me that they made any money since I had to spend so long in their cheap and wobbly tubing-and-vinyl chair each time.
I've now gone to my most recent barber twice. I am cautiously optimistic. While it doesn't have that turn of the 20th-century vibe of the barbershops of my youth, it still feels like a barbershop. It's full of men, for starters. They do have a TV on, but it has sports. And not mainstream sports. Soccer from other countries. Again, I'm not interested in it, so I can generally tune it out of my mind. But the tile is there, the real barber chairs are there (even if they are newer models), and the most important thing is there. They don't talk to me.
We did have a bit of a snafu on my first visit, as evidently, the language in the barbering world has shifted again. He was utterly confused when I told him, "Just taper it up the back and sides real short, thin it out on top, and leave the front longer so I can comb it back." After some rapid-fire conversation with his partner in Arabic, he turned to me and said, "You want fade? Fade is different than taper. What you describe to me is fade."
Slightly disappointed, I said yes, and he gave me a haircut.
But it was a good haircut. By the end, I looked like I wanted to look. It took about 10 minutes total. And the best part is that the only other words he said to me were, "Thank you," after I put my debit card in the reader to pay. That was a huge win. That's why I gave him a second date.
Still, even after all these years, the little differences catch me off guard. For instance, the smell. It smells like a barbershop, but it doesn't smell like my Grandfather and America. But that's just nostalgia. And I was totally unprepared for the aftershave. It used to be that the barber after he was finished cutting, would shave the neckline and around the ears with a straight razor to create clean lines. That is for sure a thing of the past in most places, and this was no exception. After he would shave you, though, he would usually, and without asking, use some Clubman aftershave to "salve the wound," so to speak. So, when my new guy asked me after my second haircut if I wanted some aftershave, I thought about it for a second and said yes. A break of protocol for sure, but hey, this is a new day.
I said yes, and he walked over to the counter where this black spray gun was. Affixed to the spray gun on the underside was a glass globe filled with blue liquid. Before I could react, he picked up the spray gun and sprayed me all over my entire head with aftershave, like he was dousing some kid with DDT in the 1950s. It was a full 10 seconds of medium-velocity spray. And 10 seconds is a long time to hold your breath in a cloud of Aquavelva, or whatever brand of turpentine he had in there.
I'm still not entirely certain that he wasn't trolling me.
But, overall, I was pleased.
I even asked him a question when we were through. Now I know, if someone should ask me, that my number is "1". ###