A Little Off the Top

I've written before about my barber shop in Greenwich Village. It's a fantastic throwback with bad 1970s paneling on the wall and three barbers who look like they're frozen in time. When I go into the shop, I just sit down in the chair of whichever barber is free, although I really prefer the haircut that the guy in the first chair gives me. The last time I was in the shop, I got the guy in the third chair and wasn't really pleased with the results. I've decided that you need to be wary of a barber with a bad hairstyle. This guy is largely bald but the hair that he does have is dyed a weird shade of red -- in fact, his skin on his head seems to be the same shade of reddish orange. He looks a little like something put together by a police sketch artist. He seems like a perfectly agreeable gent though.

Today, I lucked out and got first chair. As always, the place was buzzing with activity on a Saturday afternoon, Italian music blared the radio and the guys chattered to each other in Italian. After I sat down in my chair, an older man wandered in and sat in chair #2 -- he also was chattering in Italian. Then an interesting exchange occurred during which I understood two things:

Barber 1: Italian chatter
Barber 2: More chatter
Patron 2: Cheerful chatter
Barber 2: Increasingly emphatic chatter
Barber 1: [Italian] ... "You're wrong!" ... [Italian]
Patron 2: [Italian] ... "Tiger Woods!" ... [Italian] ... then much laughter by everyone, except me.

I got my haircut and then went home and took a nap. Interestingly, when I woke up my hair appeared to be much shorter than I remembered before I took my nap. I think I was too busy trying to decipher what was going on to pay attention to my haircut. Nevertheless, you gotta love chair #1.

Benvenuto alla via del Thompson

My first job out of law school was at a bank in New Jersey. I call it the Dilbert years for me, because I worked for a giant corporation in a cube farm in a glass box building in a suburban office park in New Jersey. Anyway, when I worked there, one of my workmates, Dave, was sort of the class clown. Insult humor was his thing. (Oh and he was also "Dave from Metuchen" on sports radio 660.) Every time I would get a haircut, he would stop me in cubeville and grimmace and say, "you didn't pay for that haircut, did ya, Paul?"

Well, tonight I paid for a haircut and could not be happier about it. For the record, I must admit that I am having hair issues these days, as in "See hair, lack of." (What do you call it when the bald spot on the back of your head meets your receding hairline?) Nevertheless, I needed a haircut and went to my local barbershop in Greenwich Village, complete with old timey barber pole and everything. When I walked into Frank's Barber Shop on Thompson Street tonight, I found three barbers in the shop and one guy laid out flat in a barber chair getting a shave with an old fashioned straight razor. Everyone, except me, when I entered the place was speaking Italian. I sat in the chair as my barber friend carefully did his magic with the electric clippers. I must have been in the chair for 20 minutes. This was no Supercuts zip zip haircut. This place is such a throwback. As always, I got the warm shaving cream/straight razor treatment on the back of my neck and on the sideburns. Halfway through my haircut, I realized that the radio station they were listening to was broadcasting in Italian. (Yet another reason to love New York.) And I'm not the only one who appreciates the place; there were three college boys waiting for haircuts by the time I got up. But perhaps my favorite part of the experience was when I looked up at the price board. It listed prices for haircut, shampoo, beard trim, etc., but at the very bottom of the list was best of all: cleaning and styling of hairpieces - $17. Sounds like a bargain to me.