Modern Haircut

I’ve never paid a lot of attention to issues of grooming, clothing, or other elements of style and fashion (and my wife would very happily verify this!). Basically my approach is utilitarian: keep myself reasonably clean and not too smelly, make sure my clothing covers all the naughty bits, and do the bare minimum of other things that appear to be required by consensus. The rest is irrelevant detail that I try hard not to get caught up in.

Haircuts, so far as I’m concerned, are one of those evils that “polite society” has thrust upon us. Were it up to me, I’d just whack any inconvenient chunks of hair off with a pair of scissors now and then, and get a friend’s help to do the same with any hair I couldn’t reach. But the result of such an effort would be considered unacceptable by my fellow Americans, especially in the business world (I might get away with this on a college campus). So at the longest possible intervals, generally every three or four months, I go visit a barber.

For many years when I lived in Chula Vista (a large — but largely unknown — city just south of San Diego), I went to a barber shop on Third Avenue. It was a tiny little shop with two barbers, located in a run-down strip mall; obviously low-rent. The barbers were a couple of older guys of Mexican heritage, ex-military types with a very earthy demeanor. My haircuts were very straightforward and consistent exercises. The only unknown was how long I’d have to wait; the cost was a few bucks (which I generally doubled with a tip). They’d ask me each time how I wanted my hair cut, I’d reply “short", and something like 3 minutes after I sat down my haircut would be over. My kind of haircut!

Later, after we moved out to the foothills of the San Diego mountains, the barber in Chula Vista was just a bit too far to go, and in the wrong direction. We were trying to escape the big city, not return to it. Somehow (I’ve forgotten how) we discovered that just outside of Julian there was a woman named Patty running a little barbershop. Her shop made the Chula Vista shop look luxuriously upscale. Her shop was heated by a wood stove, and was about the size of a medium-sized closet. Dirt, dust, and trash littered the place. And Patty was a serious “character” — a longtime resident of the area, currently living in a small home in Banner (just down the grade from Julian toward the desert). Haircuts at Patty’s shop were more entertaining — not because of the haircut itself, but because of Patty and her stories and engagement with our stories. The haircut itself was basically identical to the product of the Chula Vista barbers, and the price was about the same. Different than Chula Vista, but much to my liking as well.

But Patty had a disaster strike her little business, or rather, two disasters in a row: the Cedar Fire of autumn 2003, and the loss of well-water in the following year (almost certainly related to the fire, along with the sustained drought that didn’t break until 2005). She closed up shop, and there’s no indication that she’ll reopen.

So I was left with the problem of finding a new barber. I first tried a “his 'n hers” barber actually in the town of Jamul, but that didn’t work out at all — when I walked in and announced that I wanted a haircut, the nearly-Spanish-only folks in the shop were able to tell me that the barber who could cut my hair only showed up now and then, and haircuts were by appointment only. Definitely not my kind of barber shop. So I turned to one of the few people I know in town for advice: Manoli, the proprietor of the Bravo Cafe. When I asked if he knew of a decent barber near by, he reached under his counter and came up with a business card for “Mr. Cut", just down the road in Rancho San Diego. So off I went…

It was obvious at first glance that Mr. Cut was not the kind of place I would normally go for a haircut — they’ve got five or six chairs, and as many barbers, and the place is large, spotlessly clean, and thoroughly modern looking. I almost didn’t walk in <smile>. But I did, and I was greeted by one of the barbers, was served shortly, and ended up with a haircut much like the ones I was used to: simple directions (e.g., “short"), quick execution, low price, and no fuss. The same thing happened on my next two visits.

But on my most recent visit, things were just a wee bit different. My barber, for the first time, was a young fellow. He had a haircut himself that got me to thinking about its low-maintenance properties: no hair on his head was longer than a quarter inch. Just think of the savings in shampoo! But I knew things were going to be really different when my simple instructions ("short") failed to suffice. My new barber wanted to know all sorts of details that, frankly, I had never considered before. Did I want my hair trimmed straight across the back, or in a curve? After considering this vital question for, oh, 20 nanoseconds or so, I told him I just plain didn’t care — he could do as he liked, so long as the result was at least roughly symmetrical and there was no pain involved. Then he wanted to know if I wanted the sides of my head “tapered” or “blocked”. Again, I gave this weighty question due consideration (15 nanoseconds) and told him to do whatever he wanted. For some reason, my barber was dissatisfied with my responses (I’d have thought he’d enjoy the creative freedom!), and it seemed that now he was motivated to ask more and more questions. I can’t — and don’t want to — remember all of them. They were one and all complete irrelevancies to me, and I attempted to communicate this thought to my barber, but that seemed to be impossible for him to believe.

But after ten minutes or so (seemed like an eternity to me), we got past this phase and into the actual haircut. For as long as I can remember, barbers have cut my hair in exactly the same fashion: they pick up a pair of electric clippers, snap on a plastic guide that determines the resulting hair lengthy, and make quick strokes across my head with this contraption to remove all the excess hair. It’s not a complex mechanical problem, and that phase doesn’t seem to require great skill — the primary requirement is to avoid ripping off the customers ears, or stabbing him with the pointy end of the clippers. The trimming of the sides looks like it requires more skill, with freehand wielding of electric clippers without the aforementioned guide. Generally this whole process takes 2 or 3 minutes, and then we’re done. My new barber worked for over 20 minutes without ever picking up the electric clippers. He carefully wet down what little hair remains on my head, and proceeded to pick up tiny little tufts of hair in one hand, while trimming tiny little amounts of it off with a pair of old-fashioned barber’s scissors in the other hand. It was non-stop “snip, snip, snip”. Now I don’t have a whole lot of hair left, so to make this go on for twenty minutes he had to revisit the same tuft of hair many times. I longed to ask my barber why the hell he was doing this, but the look on his face stopped me cold: he was in some kind of a trance, and apparently having some sort of mystical experience. I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt him — he looked so happy and fulfilled.

At long last the scissors stuff was done to my barber’s satisfaction, and we progressed to the next stage. This was a ten minute exercise with the electric clippers, but not like I’d ever seen before. In this new performance, my barber repeatedly ran a comb through my hair, raised it up, and lopped off what remained above the comb by running the clippers down the length of the comb ("zzzzzzzt!", each time). He did this both along the sides, and on top where he had just finished all that laborious scissors work. Zzzzzt!, zzzzzzt!, zzzzzzt! for ten minutes or so, again with that mystical experience thing going on. At this point I was starting to worry that my barber misunderstood what I had ordered (a haircut), and that I was actually now in the midst of receiving some other service — a “makeover” or some other equally hideous thing — with results that I’d regret and a price tag that I’d regret even more.

But after the clippers work, with a slightly regretful look my barber put down his cutting tools and pronounced the haircut complete. He came around to face me, and I expected the usual routine of brushing off my face and clothes, removing the “cape” the barbers always put over your clothing, and I’d be done. Some of you with more worldly experience probably anticipate what came next, but I was ambushed, taken completely by surprise. My barber did start brushing the hair off me, but he also started asking all sorts of questions. Would I like some hair coloring? Would I like some mousse or some gel? Would I like my hair done up with little spikes, and have each one individually colored? And on and on. In some way, of course, I knew that people actually did things like this — after all, you can hardly help but observe the results out in the world. But somehow I never expected a barber to ask me about such things — and it seemed completely ludicrous that one would actually do so. I couldn’t help myself — I broke out laughing, right in my poor barber’s face. And he was shattered; deeply disappointed. It was obvious that he saw me as a greenfield opportunity, a blank canvas for him to paint on. But the canvas objected, and wanted not a single dollop of paint — not even some nice primer. It was with overt disbelief, and obvious disappointment, that my barber finally agreed to do nothing to my hair.

And to my relief, when I got to the cash register, the charge was $12 — the same as usual at this shop. This fellow worked on me for over a half hour for $12; in that sense my haircut seemed like a bargain. On the other hand, I’d much rather have spent just three minutes of my life in his chair, instead of thirty. I’ll be going back to Mr. Cut, but I’m going to avoid my young barber…