Even if I had hair - I prefer being a skin head. But when I was a kid Alec The Hack was my barber. I wasn’t concerned with fashion at all so I didn’t care what he did. I’d give him his money and ask him for something that’d make my mom happy but not get me beat up by the big kids at school. If I was lucky the lineup of customers would be long and I’d look at the skin mags he left out for the adult customers. One day mom was passing by the shop and looked to see me reading a playboy or a Penthouse… and she came right in the shop and gave us both supreme shit and stormed out with me in tow. And that was that for the porn mags in Alec’s barber shop. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a capital offence and I got beaten up for a couple weeks straight by the angry boys that were also victims of The Hack. After that it was sports illustrated, maybe some hot rod or fishin’ mags and that’s it. My brother even beat me up and gave me a haircut of his own that was so bad that Dad had to get out the clippers and take it right down to the wood so that at would grow back even.
I haven’t been in a barber shop for at least 30 years. I bought some good clippers, and a Bic … and I’m good. I wonder if they even have barbershops that are spaces for men anymore?
I'm with ya Filthie. I had long hair in the 1960s & 70s and the ladies loved it, but now I'm a numb below the waist Chrome Dome life is easier.
ReplyDeleteUp until about 5 years ago, there was a shop in our small town with two barbers, brothers. One was a mean old sumbitch who made Archie Bunker look like AOC and you got 'high and tight' , period. You'd see people who wandered in there randomly, leave within minutes, pale as ghosts. Good times. Barber shops nowadays all have females as employees and big screen televisions, even the "darker" shops ain't Cedric the Entertainer anymore.
ReplyDeleteThey are trying to make a comeback here in Texas, but the barbers and clientele are 90% latino. A little too hipster (if that's still a thing) for me, but better than nothing. Lots of big screen TV's stuck on sports channels and a mini-bar!! Yeah, I want a fucking highball at 10 am before my haircut. Otherwise I'm stuck with chain places like Super Cuts staffed with old ugly asian women. The last real honest to God barber shop I've been to was at least 20 years back.
ReplyDeleteMy childhood barber was a 250# former marine whose motto was "Nobody gets out of my chair without a haircut". Many a child cried & tried, but Vinnie the barber was invincible. Even parents were intimidated by him. I tried to be slick one time by telling him I just wanted a trim. He gruffly replied, "I KNOW how your father wants your hair cut!"
ReplyDelete- WDS
We still have barber shops in rural Tennessee, but I think they are MANNED by wahmens.
ReplyDeleteI gravitated to the hunting magazines.
Here in Oz, we had a new, proper barber shop open up in our main shopping centre. It was run by Persians. Serious, bearded older men that stank of cigars & cologne and barely spoke english. They offered proper hair cuts and shaves, complete with hot towel afterwards. Fricking brilliant. Then the single mummies started bringing "junior" in so he had some sort of actual man in his life. I couldn't get a haircut & shave because it was always packed full of tattooed skanks & their sprogs from different fathers. In short order, all the Persian men had quit, and were replaced by vibrant, tatted-up lez-be-friends "barbers" with crap fast-paced music blaring. Never again.
ReplyDeleteI know of two real old style barbershops here in Columbus, and one is fifteen minutes from my home. That's where I get my hair cut, and it's a pleasant place. I was in there a short while ago and was holding my hat as I sat in the chair. My barber, an older white man, asked me if he could take my fedora. I love that place.
ReplyDelete