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Sunday, January 29, 2006
Getting a Haircut is Really Getting to Be a Problem
Most working people don’t watch often enough to realize this trend, but if you turn on the television any weekday afternoon, what you’ll see will, without a doubt, be a very blurry image. Nothing is wrong with your television. This is the result of a strict pan-network rule in effect Monday through Friday from ten in the morning to five in the afternoon: There must be some gelatinous fluid on the lens. The amount of Vaseline smeared there is directly proportional to the mean age of the female hosts on screen. The View, a program where a middle-aged lawyer, a soccer mom, and a “comedienne” provide the audience with their opinions on George Bush, pilates, and How-Come-Men-Never-Ask-For-Directions-Ha-Ha-Ha requires a full tub. The three gals are blobs almost indistinguishable from the aurora borealis.
When the program you are watching has clearly been subjected to the Vaseline rule, that’s a sign that it is time to change the channel. And when the promotional photographs of the barbershop you’ve just walked in to have been similarly smeared, you’ve made a terrible mistake.
Oh, but it was too late. I’m new in this town, you see, and late last week I stumbled headlong through the frosted glass doors of a local barber, saw such promotional literature scattered atop a few minimalistic black stools, and before I knew what I had gotten myself into, a black-garbed and comely desk attendant was entering my “preferred nickname” (I opted for “Joe”.) into what was surely an immensely complex customer management system on her computer. Then she asked, “Would you care for a beverage?” and my heart sunk. “No, thanks,” I said while slumping down onto the backless, black, and minimalistic leather stool. I was going to be there for a while. “Alright Joe, Alexa will be with you soon.”
Who’s Alexa? What kind of a haircut joint asks if customers would care for a beverage? What kind maintains a database?
I opened my Wall Street Journal but couldn’t read. Synapses were firing. My eyes darted between a scraggly Pottery Barnish coat hanger, the girls all in black, their immaculate countenance, and the glossy pamphletage. Plants, miniature statues, and strange lighting fixtures were everywhere. Somewhere amid the din of quiet, polite conversation and the Best of the Eighties, Nineties, and Today there was the sound of a babbling brook. I realized that this was no barbership. I had walked into some kind of regional The View showset, where they intended nothing less than to cut my hair and then smother me and everything I love in Vaseline—even my Journal. I was two minutes early to the appointment as is my wont. They kept me waiting on the backless, black, minimalistic and horrifically uncomfortable stool for fifteen. I should have taken that beverage.
Alexa arrived from the rear, hand extended, although she did not offer her name or request mine. Neither was necessary, of course, because I had answered the feigned chumminess of the entryway gal and Alexa had from the firm’s computer database my name, family history, and, I suppose, a list of my fears. I was escorted to the rearmost area of the establishment, to the hairwashing contraptions. I never get that done, usually. But I was very confused at this place, so I submitted to the washing of the hair out of intimidation more than anything. I sat down in the giant chair and she turned the on the water, asking me to let her know if it was too hot. I couldn’t fathom a situation in which I’d jerk up and bray that the hair washing was too painfully hot for my dear scalp, so I just let her know that I really didn’t mind the water temperature and thanked her very much for her concern. By the time most of the shampoo had drained, I was just ready to awkwardly lift my head and be able to see again what was in front of me rather than the star-spangled ceiling. But then from the lips of Alexa came the strangest question I had ever been asked in my life: “Would you like a complimentary scalp massage?”
I suddenly wanted to quit the place. The sinews in my knees were tweaking from excitement at the prospect of giving chase. Why no, no I would not like a complimentary scalp massage. The question was so fundamentally wrong. My hair, after all, had just been shampooed—a sufficient simulacrum of a scalp massage in itself, not that my scalp was particularly tired from a long day’s work and needed any kind of relaxation in its own right. Besides, Alexa could have simply transitioned into the massage herself, without giving me a command prompt. At least then I couldn’t complain, because, hey, she probably likes me; check out my free scalp massage. It would have been impromptu and sincere. But no, she asked me. And it was not any old query. She used the parlance of the promotional brochure. She referred to her own offering as “complimentary”. I imagined a hotel waiter carting in a morning’s room service breakfast. I imagined him not saying, “Sir, would you like me to complimentarily pepper your eggs benedict?” And him not saying that seemed exactly right.
Were this establishment’s clientele often concerned about the hefty price tag associated with a scalp massage? Was the previous policy to simply ask if the customer wanted a scalp massage, but too many were reacting by screaming, “Whoa, whoa! And how much is that going to cost me, you harlot?”
So I told Alexa that I would not like her complimentary scalp massage. Now it seems like such a mean thing to have said—another problem with her having asked at all. I should have taken that scalp massage.
Our stilted and tortured fandango around the gratis massage complete, Alexa escorted me to what she called a coffee bar. It turns out that it was, indeed, a coffee bar. She needed time to prep for the barbering portion of my barber visit. I read another article in the Journal. Eventually she came back, cut my hair, and we were done. L’addition ended up being $40, so I paid that and tipped her $10. Precisely one hour and thirty minutes after I entered the den of fluffiness, I walked out the doors and swore never to come back. I was spared the Vaseline, though my head was dripping with Product. I was $50 more destitute. Should have taken that coffee.
Getting a haircut is really getting to be a problem. Where has this reliable proprietor fled to? Surely in this wide world there is a true demand for the way it used to be done. For a barbershop that is only a barbershop, and not a massage parlor, beverage dispenser, coffee house, or zen garden. Where the barbers are men, and efficient men. Where the decorations on the wall come not from haute couture galleries but are instead a single frayed cut out of the Marilyn Monroe spread. The haircut doesn’t cost $40 and no lubberly communication between the cutter and the client is necessary. An initial mutual acknowledgement of the wonder of Ms. Monroe will suffice. I’d like a barbership where one can read through the front page in the time the trim takes and then be on my way forthwith. No beverage blocks or scalp sideshows. Are their kind extinct, and are men relegated to drown in Vaseline salons?
Well, not yet, but they’re getting there. Two weeks ago in Tuckerton, New Jersey, Sonny DiElmo, 72, gave his last haircut at the barbershop he had run for forty-eight years. The closing day also happened to be he and his wife’s forty-fourth wedding anniversary. For the whole of that marriage, Sonny’s barbershop was called the Main Street Barbershop, precisely because it didn’t need to have a name at all. He had one product: a haircut. And one loyal customer base of sons, fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers. There was no shampooing, and he didn’t have fancy chairs—just a buttery brown leather throne. “It was a slow week,” he said of the first time he got behind that very chair. He was 13. “My father was a barber. In them days, you did what your father did.” He did just what his father did—on the very same families—for a half century.
Sonny can now be found one block down the street, at the new place called X-treme Cuts. Maria Mantorano owns it, and she offered Sonny a place to cut hair for just a few more years. The Figaro of Tuckerton, though, is not an employee of the new salon in town. On January 8th, the Press of Atlantic City quoted him as saying, “I’ll be mainly working on my customers. I’m still an old-fashioned barber. And my customers want an old-fashioned barber. The one’s who’ll want a shampoo and stuff will go to Maria.”
UPDATE: The Inbox is full of college haircut anecdotes! Excellent stuff. To answer one question, yes, this $50 haircut actually was pretty good. But, hey, it’s a $50 haircut.
Posted on January 29, 2006 07:33 PM. Permalink 