This is not my blog.

On the advice of my fellow bloggers from my last hair adventure (and I mention Rick Lee here) I stopped off at Shearcut Barber Shop on Fife Street today for my third haircut since being back in the Kanawha Valley. As I mentioned in my previous post I had a butchered $10 haircut at MasterCuts and paid more than I'm comfortable with ($28) at Visions Day Spa so I decided to heed your advice and check out the shop that I've walked by many times without really noticing until now.

First, I have to say that barber shops have always been oddly frightening places for me. They are very manly and smell of leather and cologne and remind me of growing up sitting in Tony's Barbershop in Elkview with my dad and a bunch of stodgy looking older men all quietly waiting for their turn or talking about sports, hunting, or other things that just didn't interest me and still don't. I don't do "guy talk" very well and tend to feel out of place in many of the barber shops that I've visited so I was a little trepidacious about entering a place that had an honest to goodness striped barber pole out in front. I would soon find that this place was very warm and friendly and its proprietor, John, was more than amiable as he told one joke after another and really got to know a person during the time that he spent working on my hair.

That was something else that surprised me. I'm accustomed to 20 minutes or less and being done as the hairdresser buzzes my sides and back of my neck with a clipper and then uses scissors on the rest. John used scissors most of the time, then used the razor some, and then used an actual blade razor to finish it off (something I don't think I've ever had done). I would say that it took me about an hour including some time for chatting before and after the haircut and that was something else that was different about this place. As John said, as he closed his shop after me, (he keeps short hours ... 8am till he's ready to go home he said ... usually around 2:30pm) he likes two things about his job: he likes to take pride in his work and he likes to talk to people who don't mind talking back ... guilty as charged as he noted that I seemed to have a penchant for making smalltalk myself ... putting it mildly I suppose.

John told me that he's been at this job for 41 years and that he now does it for his own amusement. He has a large collection of antiques all around his shop that Rick Lee has photographed on several occasions. John told me that he sometimes sells his things but that he just has them there more for himself rather than for any other reason. He mentioned that he used to schedule appointments but too many busy people would show up late and would get huffy so now he just says that you should come to him when you're not worried about where you have to be or how long it's going to take. I liked that philosophy and found it rather comforting. He told me that my boss is one of this clients and he also mentioned Mr. Rick Lee who I had told him at the start had suggested his shop. John told me that I had to deliver a personal message to Rick that he hasn't seen him in the shop for a while and that he knew that Rick would never go to someone else. I told him that I've never met Rick and that I only know him because he finds something worthy to read about on my blog from time to time. Nevertheless, John wanted me to deliver the message that it has been several months and that he'll be expecting to see Rick in his barber chair real soon ... (hopefully not in Sweeney Todd fashion)!

All in all I think that I'll have to go back to John. I can't say that I've had a better haircut for a long time and I think that it looks pretty good ... well as good as my hair tends to look I suppose. But I'll let you guys be the judge of that. Cost $15. I didn't know how to tip him (I suck at that kind of stuff) so I hope that $2 was enough ... maybe it should have been $3? I didn't want to make him feel any more awkward than I felt, but I probably failed miserably at that in any event. Maybe I'll do $3 next time ... unless it should have been $5 this time and he does my hair in two different styles in retaliation! Stay tuned...

Labels: myphotos, stories, wv