In alt.home.repair, on Tue, 01 Dec 2020 22:09:18 -0500,
wrote:

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.

I used to go to a barber, actually named Tony, at least that's what the
sign said. He had a collection of model cars from the 60's and was
interesting to talk to, when he was the one who cut my hair. But he got
old enough to retire, and the new people were not very friendly.

So I went to a VietNamese barber and he was very interesting, told me
about evacutating Vietnam sometime when the war was ending and going to
some refugee camp in the Philipines or even maybe Indonesia, I forget.
He spent a year or two there and then iirc came to the US. I think
he'd been back once. He taught me how to say that name, very common,
spelled funny... Nguyen. But I forget how to pronounce it now. It
doesn't come up often.

Everything was fine. I suppose he had one or two other barbers working
for him, or not. But later he hired two Asian women, and he was busy
fixing some leak at the washing machine (they needed it for something)
and so I got one of the women, and she gave me the worst, the shortest
haircut I'd gotten since I was 8 years old. And 10 days later I had
what could have been a very important business meeting, to sell a
project of mine, and I looked ridiculous.

There were two Asian women and they looked nothing alike, but I still
couldn't remember which one I didn't like (look above and at my other
posts to see all the things I forget). Once I waited for the guy, but
it was inconvenient and potentially insulting/embarrassing. So I
changed barbers again.

This time I went to a Jewish guy and his son, and everything was fine
for 2 or 3 haircuts, and then came the virus. No haircuts since March or
so.

I've got a trimmer(famous maker but I forget the brand, with color-coded
height guards) and it's really good for my beard, but cuts almost
nothing on my head. Even though it's supposed to. I can't figure it
out.



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

Where do you live? I see you work for the government, but you don't say
which one.

What street?

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

The second worst haircut I got was at HairCuttery. Unisex. I couldn't
tell what was wrong with it, but I looked like a girl. Maybe it was my
imagination, but I don't think so. There's a comic strip about a
couple, probably with children (Hi and Lois?), and the guy has hair like
a girl. I'd decided that years before the haircut. I looked like him.

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

Aha. That explains it. Where in Manhattan?

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.

PCP? Pretty cool privacy? Polychlorinated Professor?