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Gristmill: Cut Men

Wed, 04/12/2023 - 17:16
At a New York barbershop, 1956.
Angelo Rizzuto Photographer, Library of Congress

Through no planning of my own, I’ve developed a remarkably consistent once-every-three-months haircut regime. But while I might protest how the simplest scissor cut or buzz of a follically challenged cranium rings up at a minimum of 35 bucks these days, at least I don’t bang a bowl over my head and have it done at home.

I can certainly understand the once-a-month crowd, the every-other-week devotee, such is the pleasure of those visits — more head-clearing than any meditation, more relaxing than a massage, more drowse-inducing than riding home shotgun after a day at the work site. You sit in a plushly upholstered chair, its heavy armrests at the ready. You’re ceremoniously draped in a smock, medical and yet reminiscent of infant feeding time. Your shoulders slump at the barber’s laying on of hands, the stress escaping your body like dishwater down an unstoppered drain.

I used to be a boxing fan, more so a boxing writing enthusiast. Strangely memorable stories like Floyd Patterson — who knew he was a pilot? — flying himself off into the night after a brutal beating at the hands of a much bigger Sonny Liston, or maybe it was Muhammad Ali. Or the trainer out at dinner with his fighter, grabbing the pugilist’s plate to scrape the starchy fried potatoes onto his own before returning it, steak and vegetables only.

One now-dated essay I read suggested that the boxing gym, the stool in the corner of the ring, the training room were counterintuitively the only places society allowed men to be tender. The care taken, the attention paid. The barbershop, too, I would submit. Ever since you were a kid, where else has someone dared to gently touch your skull? And is there anything quite like the careful hot-foam shave of the back of your neck? Then the cooling tonic applied like a poultice after.

The one change I’ve noticed over the years, no surprise, has been in the color of the clippings that gather in my lap — from chestnut brown to almost entirely silvery gray. I was all of 33, in the year 2000, when I first took note of it, getting a trim at a barbershop on Larchmont Boulevard; if you’ve never been, it’s an unlikely touch of Main Street, U.S.A., in the middle of Hollywood, near Hancock Park, not all that far from Paramount Studios. A Mayberry with macchiatos.

“Just take out the grays, right?” the barber asked.

I prefer silence and solemnity when getting a cut, but what can you do? “Ha, I kind of like them,” was the best I could muster.

“Right,” came the answer. “Those are earned.”


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