Forum: Author Hangout

In my area, men-only barber shops seem to be disappearing. When I was a kid, I got a haircut every Tuesday, and paid 40 cents each time. There was no tipping.

Today, with tip, it costs me 40 dollars for a haircut and beard trim. The people who cut my hair are all female, and i could also get a pedicure or fingernail trim (for more money). When I go there (every few months instead of weekly), I am usually the only male in the joint.

What happened to all-male barber shops, where you could listen to other patrons tell tall tales, and I could buy a comb or a brush or male condoms?
My hope is to include a "lack of barber shops" scene in a work in progress.

According to my wife, I had to ask to be sure, we have been cutting each others hair for the last 50 years.
I never asked the price.

If you don't mind going to a "Black" neighborhood, there are plenty of Barbershops, and it is a distinctly MALE atmosphere! Testosterone posing is possible.

Warning!

You may feel like the Asian kid in Gran Torino!

I haven't been for a haircut since I let my grow out into a ponytail at seventeen, and that was a couple years after USSR collapsed and there was 1000% inflation, so talking about prices would be rather meaningless even if I remembered those.

But as far my memory goes, in Soviet Union men only hair salons were either non-existent or extremely rare, at least in our area (I think there was a men section in the large salon of the central "fashion house" beautician school, but even that was like, "that row on the left is priority men" and not all that separate).

Now, I'm not sure. My father followed his hairdresser even when she changed towns (to be fair, it was convenient), but since the pandemic I cut his hair.

I visited the barber today.

They had posted a sign warning that a shave and haircut would be $45 starting April 1!

The real problem seems to be that few barbers are capable of providing a "normal" haircut. Weird stuff with shaved sidewalls seems to be no problem, but a plain old haircut that a grown man will look good in seems to be something they can't handle.

Asking for a shaveh with hot towels and a razor is also asking too much. The young ones don't know how, and the old ones shake too much to be trusted.

But women barbers do tend to do a better job than the males.

Nevertheless, they're still doing better than the folks who work at the burger place, where they don't always think to cook the meat, or the cook at Waffle House who could only cook bacon one strip at a time, because that was the way they demonstrated the bacon fryer when she was hired.

Just a sign of the times: incompetence everywhere.

When I was 15 I was traumatized by a haircut. One summer I worked at a YMCA camp when the nurse offered to cut the split ends off my long ponytail, before I knew it she also cut my bangs in a Dutch boy style.

Karma did it's thing, The nurse got caught growing pot behind her office. I also learned another thing, the director came in carrying a 3 ft. plant and shoved it down the garbage disposal and tried to destroy it. Never shove a fiber plant in a garbage disposal. It makes you say bad words.