Bobby Kennedy, a man with a good haircut
At home in Texas, a barber is not hard to find. From small town to big city, you will usually have your choice between more than one small barber shop that features: a stack of magazines (sports and outdoors), a refrigerator (soda), Pinaud talcum powder and after shave, straight razors, black combs, and your choice of haircut: regular, flat top, or buzz cut. I prefer regular.
DC has a lot of boutiques that are little more than overpriced suburban strip mall salons. These are pretty easy to spot, though, by the overworked young women who would rather be somewhere else, and the shiny black plastic sinks they want to wash your hair in before they cut it. I suppose if you've a head full of gel, that's probably necessary.
DC also has more than one "gentleman's salon" that features complimentary cocktails, dark wood, and hunting prints on the wall. But while the decor in these places may nod towards traditionalism, once seated in the chair, one is berated with suggestions as to how one might accomplish the latest gauche trends out of California or New York. One fellow (clad in all black, nach) even went so far as to roll his eyes and proclaim that the haircut I requested was "boring." If you want to be an artist, buddy, go buy some paint. All I need is a haircut.
Tonight, however, after renewed research, I found a barbershop in Foggy Bottom that looked promising. I trekked through the freezing cold in the hopes that I'd have a decent haircut for Christmas. It all felt right. There was Pinaud, hair all over the floor, Sports Illustrated (current), and a row of guys getting good old, boring, red-blooded-American, regular haircuts.
All signs point to fully satisfactory at this time. I was wearing a hat to protect from the cold, so hat hair is skewing the results. But the man didn't flinch when I requested, "long, but off the ears." He'd clearly heard it countless times. We talked about the weather, the best plan of attack for shoveling snow (consensus: if you need to shovel in DC, just take the day off), and how paying a bank every month isn't the same as "owning" a home. It felt right.
5 comments:
I had the same problem here in SoCal: the local place even had "barber" in its name, but still wanted to style my hair for thirty bucks. I finally found two different places a few miles apart, both of which are run by Vietnamese and which give me almost exactly the haircut I'm looking for. And for just eight bucks.
I learned from my barber in the tiny Virginia town I lived in for five years that my preferred hair style is called an "ivy league," where it's short, but left slightly longer on top than the back or sides--sort of a like a crew cut that's had three weeks to grow out a bit. Only took me thirty years to learn what my hair cut's called.
But I miss my first barber, Ray the Barber. Learned to cut hair on an aircraft carrier and never got any better. One style, poorly executed. Still my first choice.
http://www.popstarsplus.com/images/HumphreyBogartPicture.jpg
You could set your watch that guy's hair. I mean sharp!
I'm lucky. I've been getting my hair cut in the same two shops since I was a boy, by the same people. I go to one, and if the lines to long, I go to the other. There's no rivalry between them, because after all, its only haircuts.
The pneumatic chair, half of the days news paper, jars of Marvy Barbicide, Pinaud, and faded newspaper pullouts of the Boston Red Sox set the tone.
I don't even have to tell them what I want, I just sit down and it comes out perfect everytime. The only time I speak up is to say something like "My friends getting married this weekend, so make it extra nice."
The best part is watching a newcomer salon type kid stroll in with a complicated explanation and seeing them nod then proceed to give him one of the three haircuts you described earlier.
I am moving to DC in the Spring. I will definitely have to check this place out. Thanks for sharing.
Colby, look for Puglisi in Foggy Bottom.
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