Barbershop...

There's a barbershop on my street.

Not a hair salon, not a hair stylist, but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned barbershop.  Opened in 1952.  And it looks like it hasn't changed much since then, with the exception of several framed pictures of the Obamas added to the walls.

And the walls are packed.  You know that old-timey kitsch that places like T.G.I.Friday's and Applebee's try to capture with all that faux-historic, pre-packaged, plastic junk they hang all over their walls?  This place is what those poseurs are trying to replicate.  Framed pictures of Martin and Malcolm (and now Barack and Michelle), Hall of Fame plaques from old football and baseball players, signed jersyes and ballcaps, framed newspaper clippings spanning the last 50 years, and all mixed in with portraits of his family, his sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, and their spelling bee ribbons, and A+ report cards, and other tokens of their achievements.  It's cliché, but true - it felt like stepping back in time.

The barber's name is Buddy.  Which, again, seems so perfect that it's almost cliché.  Of course his name is Buddy - how could it have been anything else?  A slim, older black gentleman, with a thin mustache, he took over the shop from his uncle in 1960, when he was just 16 years-old, and he's been running it ever since.  He lives upstairs, and there's a beauty parlor for the ladies in the back.

There's just the one barber chair.  He's the barber, so why would he need more than that?  Made of steel and cast iron, it looks like it dates to the '30s or '40s.  It even has an extra footrest above the normal one, where you would rest your feet in order to get your shoes shined, while you got a cut or a shave.  It's too bad that service was no longer offered.  The pricelist on the wall said, "Haircut - $10, Shave - $4, Afro shaping/trim - $15."

I could tell it's been a while since Buddy cut a white boy's hair.  His scissors were a bit rusty, and more than a little bit dull.  After a while, he just gave up and went to work on me with the clippers.  After all these years, he's a master with the clippers.  He's got 4 different kinds, and dozens of guards, and he can do things with electric clippers that they were never intended for.  When he's cutting your hair, he stands between the chair and the mirror, and he has you facing out into the room, with the mirror at your back; the exact opposite of every haircut I've ever had.  As I sat in his chair, looking at the empty room, and the line of empty chairs in front of me, I couldn't help imagining what it must've been like 20, 30, 40 years ago.  (Hell, with the way the neighborhood has changed recently, in part because of me I'm more than a little ashamed to say, we could probably even say just 5 or 10 years ago.)  At some point it must've been a center of local men's culture.  People hanging out, reading the paper, bullshitting about politics and local gossip, waiting for their turn in Buddy's chair.  There's an obvious quiet sadness to Buddy's demeanor, and looking out at that empty line of chairs, it was easy to imagine why that might be.

When he was finished with my hair, he gave me a shave.  Trimmed up my mustache and beard real nicely.  It's the first time since I grew them that I don't look like a hippie!  (Or, at least, someone trying to look like a hippie.  Thirty-six years-old, and I still can't grow a full goatee, much less a beard.)  When he was finished, he rubbed down my scalp with a lotion that smelled a little like roses, and dabbed my face with some sort of tonic that felt like an alcohol and smelled vaguely of eucalyptus.  Then he handed me a hand-mirror to examine his work.  (He never did turn me around to face the wall mirror behind the chair.)

He gave me a $10 haircut, straight out of the 1960s.  And it looks like a $10 haircut.  Too high in the back, way too high around the ears; a little too bushy here, a little too thin over there.  And it is awesome.  Exactly what I wanted.  Simple, and classic.  And more than a little nerdy.

I'm really looking forward to the next time I get to spend some time in Buddy's chair.