Scissors
(In Which Our Hero Delivers an Exegesis on the art of the Barber, Gets Lost in Queens, and Nearly Loses His Way more Metaphorically)
Right, So:
Yesterday was a minor fiasco. Only the tiniest sliver of work got accomplished, hardly enough to count as such. I did, however finally get the hair cut done before I was fully overtaken by encroaching mulletness.
I was sad to discover someone new manning the second chair at the barber’s shop. I was used to it being these two Russians, a slight hunch-shouldered man, with short-cropped receding hair and a wispy moustache, and a woman of some relation to him it seems (though I’m guessing more cousin or sister than wife). She’s an enormous woman, large in every dimension, who lives behind dense round glasses and is perfumed deeply by smoke. She’s less anxiety producing, since she doesn’t seem terrified by the job being performed, but he gives the better cut, usually.
Yesterday, my buddy had been replaced by a new guy, a handsome older man, who looked like he came from central casting for “Italian barber” (though I assume he too was Russian.) The woman had moved to first chair, and New Guy was in the second chair. I drew him. I wonder if this is a temporary thing, or if I’d just never gone in on a Tuesday, or if my dude is actually gone.
I become totally incommunicado when I’m in a barber’s chair. That’s one of the reasons I like this place; the language barrier is such that there is no pressure to chat. I can sit transfixed by my own reflection and trying to figure out the methodology of proper barberdom. I fear that barbers that do speak English tend feel as though I’m being lofty, and feel they are there to serve me and not to kibitz with. Quite the contrary - I think anyone with a trade is fascinating and to be deeply respected (such is the result of the anxiety of being a liberal arts idiot - I don’t know how to “do” anything, really, though I can analyze at dizzying length the cultural implications of its being done.) Moreover, I’m really interested, and would love to talk to them, but I find what they are doing really fascination, and I just zombie up. It happens in the dentist’s chair, too. I envy any profession with its own discrete set of cool tools and gadgets.
The whole place is a little dubious (but, of course, I don’t expect too much for an eight dollar haircut negotiated across a language barrier.) For a long time, both the barbers had only “apprentice” licenses, which, in New York State at least, means they need to be in the direct supervision of a “master barber.” Needless to say, there was no master in sight. I wondered, given where in Williamsburg this place is (directly across from the dreadful Kellogg Diner, in an area desperately clinging to its Italian character, but losing in an endless onslaught of tedious hipsters) I always imagined that the master was some old Italian guy, now long retired to Florida, fishing his days away happily, but still “officially” the barber. At first sighting of New Guy, I though I might finally be meeting the Old Master but this guy had no license at all. (He’d strategically covered up someone else’s (expired) license with family photos.) Still, he gave me what I think is an unusually good cut, so maybe he is the returning master, after all, but his license has long lapsed.
Not that I’m all uptight about the licensing. For eight bucks, I figure whatever I get is cool. Moreover, dealing with the city’s licensing bureau is a nightmare in its own right. All business licenses of any kind (taxi, cigarette sales, night auctioneer, (something, since seeing the forms holds great interest), private detective, etc.) come from the same miserable office on an upper floor of a building on lower Broadway. I myself had to spend hours there in line and taking a test to get, of all things a New York City Tour Guide’s License (terrifying the things you will do to pay for an unhealthy habit like graduate school.) By the way, my license expired in April and I have yet to renew, though I’m lading two tours next week.
Anyhow, post haircut, I walked over to Queens (Long Island City, for those of you who keep maps of my movements with pushpins in their bedrooms) in order to by workpants at this cheap place, so I could cut them into shorts for the summer. Two bucks per pair - I do so like a bargain. Unfortunately, I misremembered and walked across the McGuiness Ave. bBridge not the Greenpoint Ave., so that by the time I scrambled along the base of Newtown Creek to correct my mistake, the place had long been shuttered.
The true fiasco part came later, however, with my impromptu rendezvous with Lymon. She’s a story that could take volumes in and of itself, but, suffice it for now to say it’s “tortured” and “complicated” in both the worst and best 9th Grade way. We sat and stared at the East River for a couple of hours, trying to look at each other without letting our hearts race too out of control, and then went our separate ways. Naturally, it was a lovely time. Hard to dislike the view of the East River at disk on a misty night in May. Hard indeed.
Now I’m up slowly today (nothing too unusual in that, really), and I’m wicked sore from having walked too far in the wrong shoes. Still, it’s still kind of a nice feeling, a little physical soreness and groggy headedness, provided there is good tea, is not so bad a morning.
But now to work.
Right, So:
Yesterday was a minor fiasco. Only the tiniest sliver of work got accomplished, hardly enough to count as such. I did, however finally get the hair cut done before I was fully overtaken by encroaching mulletness.
I was sad to discover someone new manning the second chair at the barber’s shop. I was used to it being these two Russians, a slight hunch-shouldered man, with short-cropped receding hair and a wispy moustache, and a woman of some relation to him it seems (though I’m guessing more cousin or sister than wife). She’s an enormous woman, large in every dimension, who lives behind dense round glasses and is perfumed deeply by smoke. She’s less anxiety producing, since she doesn’t seem terrified by the job being performed, but he gives the better cut, usually.
Yesterday, my buddy had been replaced by a new guy, a handsome older man, who looked like he came from central casting for “Italian barber” (though I assume he too was Russian.) The woman had moved to first chair, and New Guy was in the second chair. I drew him. I wonder if this is a temporary thing, or if I’d just never gone in on a Tuesday, or if my dude is actually gone.
I become totally incommunicado when I’m in a barber’s chair. That’s one of the reasons I like this place; the language barrier is such that there is no pressure to chat. I can sit transfixed by my own reflection and trying to figure out the methodology of proper barberdom. I fear that barbers that do speak English tend feel as though I’m being lofty, and feel they are there to serve me and not to kibitz with. Quite the contrary - I think anyone with a trade is fascinating and to be deeply respected (such is the result of the anxiety of being a liberal arts idiot - I don’t know how to “do” anything, really, though I can analyze at dizzying length the cultural implications of its being done.) Moreover, I’m really interested, and would love to talk to them, but I find what they are doing really fascination, and I just zombie up. It happens in the dentist’s chair, too. I envy any profession with its own discrete set of cool tools and gadgets.
The whole place is a little dubious (but, of course, I don’t expect too much for an eight dollar haircut negotiated across a language barrier.) For a long time, both the barbers had only “apprentice” licenses, which, in New York State at least, means they need to be in the direct supervision of a “master barber.” Needless to say, there was no master in sight. I wondered, given where in Williamsburg this place is (directly across from the dreadful Kellogg Diner, in an area desperately clinging to its Italian character, but losing in an endless onslaught of tedious hipsters) I always imagined that the master was some old Italian guy, now long retired to Florida, fishing his days away happily, but still “officially” the barber. At first sighting of New Guy, I though I might finally be meeting the Old Master but this guy had no license at all. (He’d strategically covered up someone else’s (expired) license with family photos.) Still, he gave me what I think is an unusually good cut, so maybe he is the returning master, after all, but his license has long lapsed.
Not that I’m all uptight about the licensing. For eight bucks, I figure whatever I get is cool. Moreover, dealing with the city’s licensing bureau is a nightmare in its own right. All business licenses of any kind (taxi, cigarette sales, night auctioneer, (something, since seeing the forms holds great interest), private detective, etc.) come from the same miserable office on an upper floor of a building on lower Broadway. I myself had to spend hours there in line and taking a test to get, of all things a New York City Tour Guide’s License (terrifying the things you will do to pay for an unhealthy habit like graduate school.) By the way, my license expired in April and I have yet to renew, though I’m lading two tours next week.
Anyhow, post haircut, I walked over to Queens (Long Island City, for those of you who keep maps of my movements with pushpins in their bedrooms) in order to by workpants at this cheap place, so I could cut them into shorts for the summer. Two bucks per pair - I do so like a bargain. Unfortunately, I misremembered and walked across the McGuiness Ave. bBridge not the Greenpoint Ave., so that by the time I scrambled along the base of Newtown Creek to correct my mistake, the place had long been shuttered.
The true fiasco part came later, however, with my impromptu rendezvous with Lymon. She’s a story that could take volumes in and of itself, but, suffice it for now to say it’s “tortured” and “complicated” in both the worst and best 9th Grade way. We sat and stared at the East River for a couple of hours, trying to look at each other without letting our hearts race too out of control, and then went our separate ways. Naturally, it was a lovely time. Hard to dislike the view of the East River at disk on a misty night in May. Hard indeed.
Now I’m up slowly today (nothing too unusual in that, really), and I’m wicked sore from having walked too far in the wrong shoes. Still, it’s still kind of a nice feeling, a little physical soreness and groggy headedness, provided there is good tea, is not so bad a morning.
But now to work.