micky wrote:

OT How many of you get haircuts these days?
Versus how many of you don't in order to avoid close contact with a
barber?

How many of your wives go to the beauty parlor?
versus, same question?

I think Cindy is the only regular poster here who is a woman, and IIRC
she didn't go to the beauty parlor in the first place, but if I've got
that wrong, same questions in reverse to Cindy.

I have had only two haircuts over the last year, one by my wife and
the other by my normal barber. I fired my wife after her first effort.
My normal barber is in a unisex haircutting establishment with about
ten chairs staffed by all Chinese from some place in China. I think
they said something like "WooAnn" (just joking). There are a few
Chinese females cutting hair or shampooing or dyeing but I've never
had one. Being a visual pervert who likes ogling their small bodies I
see them as an add-on benefit to relieve the boredom of the
haircutting. Most of the staff don't speak English so there's some
difficulty in instructing on the finer points like trimming my
eyebrows but we work it out using the normal gestures. Cheap $10 + a
$3 tip.

As to masking the barber has a two mask setup for himself and when it
comes to the customer he has you remove yours and hold it over your
face when he cuts the areas near the ears. The rest can be done
without removing the mask.

There are at least 10 other hair salons in the street in about 10
blocks intermixed with greengrocers, restaurants, bakeries, and
similar run by Chinese, Russian, Azerbaijani, Italians, Ukrainian,
Japanese,...oh, and maybe a few Americans. The babble is overpowering
and there might be a little broken English added. Personally I like it
a lot. The Russian supermarket is especially good both for the food
(lots of ready made) and the quality of the female cashiers one of
whom is trying to expand my Russian.

Anyway this is supposed to be about barbers...

So my wife had tried getting her hair cut at the same place. The
actual haircutting, dyeing, and similar was OK but she missed the
normal female gab fest and declined another venture into diversity. My
son goes to another Unisex place and suggested his mother should come
to the same place so about the beginning of the pandemic she started
going to his. Workers were Hispanic, Italian, Balkan, etc, few of whom
spoke English but it's much bigger and in Manhattan. From her
description the Covid19 precautions seem about the same. I never
visited myself. More expensive but not extortionately so. She was
happy but then she learned that it too was closing due to lack of
business. Well its demise even hit the NY press and then two angels
(financial) came in and resurrected it.

So ends my hair saga.

If you demand it grin I could write a similar text about my wife's
visit to the Russian dentist... or mine to my Syrian PCP.



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