And His Hair Was PERFECT

My earliest memories of getting a haircut were going to one of the two barbershops in my neighborhood.  Lamar Park Barber Shop was located next to Model Market and Hamlin Barber Shop was adjacent to Handy Andy Supermarket.  They were both old school affairs with red, white and blue barber poles out front announcing their intentions and mostly the same in terms of size and decor; four or five barber chairs and as many chairs to sit in while you waited.  There was usually a small black and white television broadcasting a sporting event if you went on a Saturday and it shared a formica end table in the corner with an ashtray and six month old copies of Sports Illustrated and Field and Stream.  The fluorescent lighting was dreadful, in fact I’m sure my 10 year old self used that very adjective to describe it at the time, and all of the barbers were nondescript older white men who wore smocks.  Honestly, I can’t say that I have a lasting memory of a single one of them, but I do have one lasting memory of all of them.  I still remember that after they finished cutting your hair they would take a wooden handled horse hair brush, dust it with talc, then sweep the back of your neck to get rid of all the tiny loose hairs.  To this day I can still  feel that brush and smell that talcum powder.

When I first came to Austin in the mid-seventies to go to school I set about learning the lay of the land and gathering important intel like places to park where you had the least likelihood of getting towed, who had the longest check float (you kids and your ATM cards; amateurs!) and of course where to find the cheapest pitcher of margaritas.  Also on that list was where to get my hair cut.  I don’t recall exactly how or why, but I ended up at a place called the Scarlet Angel Barbering Company. It was located in an old two story wooden house just north of campus on Guadalupe near 34th street.  Other than the barber pole out front it bore little resemblance to the barber shops of my childhood. The house, which sadly has since burned down, was painted lavender, had a beer tap in the waiting area and The Andrea True Connection may or may not have been playing on the sound system when I walked through the door for the first time.  But if there was any doubt that I had found my barber shop, it was quickly put to rest after I met my barber, Charlotte.  Charlotte was the first out lesbian I had ever encountered and she was without a filter (Note to self: “Lesbian Without a Filter” would be a great title for a future post.) Charlotte would regale me with tales of her exploits at a notorious lesbian bar at the time, The Hollywood.  She said that one night when she was there someone pulled out a pistol and started firing it into the air.  I’d like to think Loudon Wainwright III was in attendance and drew the inspiration for his song, “I Wish I Were a Lesbian” that evening.  I know I would have. 

I had been going to Charlotte for probably a year or so when she left somewhat abruptly. I don’t recall whether a U-Haul trailer was involved, but the upshot was that I needed to find someone new to cut my hair.  That was when I began my first long term barber relationship with Nancy.  Nancy worked alongside Charlotte and is everything Charlotte was not; gentle, soft spoken and I’m pretty sure has an aversion to any place where firearms and alcohol mix.  Nancy was a poet who just happened to cut hair.  I followed her from the Scarlet Angel to a salon in Brykerwoods and finally to 4001 Duval.  4001 Duval was originally a grocery store that served Hyde Park and is now a hair salon.  It’s a lovely space that combined with the time spent in Nancy’s chair provided an escape from the outside world if only for 45 minutes.  I would estimate that Nancy cut my hair for 15 years.  And while I’m not 100% certain, I think she may have been responsible for that amazing coif pictured above. Time and distance took its toll when I started a new job in the nineties and ultimately we broke up (I think I ghosted her, actually).  I’m happy to say, however, that we have kept in touch, have coffee together as time and pandemics allow and just recently ran into one another while having our cars serviced at the same time.  Her poetry is still very much a part of my life all these years later. 

As I began looking for a new barber/stylist located near my work I ended up at Supercuts a couple of times which is pretty much the one night stand of haircuts.  Leave the money next to the cosmetology license taped to the mirror and don’t forget to tip.  I did have a brief fling with a stylist who was the husband of a woman I worked with at the time.  His name was Herve and his parents owned a nearby salon.  He was also a train wreck.  After one particularly memorable incident in which Herve was a no show for my appointment and his mother had to call and tell him to get to the salon tout de suite,  I decided it was time to move on.  

About that time a new shopping center opened near my office and one of the tenants was a salon called Keith Kristoffer.  I figured, what the heck, I’m kind of desperate, I’ll give it a shot.  When I walked in there were two women standing behind the desk who looked like they were watching paint dry.  I asked if I could get a haircut and one of them, Kris, who I found out was the owner, said she would cut my hair.  Looking back I’m surprised that she wasn’t smoking a cigarette before flicking it onto the floor, crushing the butt with the heel of her shoe, then blowing smoke in my face and telling me, “Sure, I got nothin’ better to do.”  Kris cut my hair for the better part of 15 years.  I watched her children grow up and catered her oldest son’s and his wife’s rehearsal dinner right there in the salon.  We enjoyed a bond that comes from seeing someone you connect with if only for an hour once a month.  I can still remember the time I went to get my haircut after my mother’s passing and Kris asked me how she was doing.  The look on her face in the mirror as I tried to keep my composure is one that is burned into my memory.  We shared a lot of moments; happy, sad, pissed off, until one day I sat in her chair and she said she had something to tell me; she was breaking up with me.  I got the standard “It’s-not-you-it’s-me” line but I was devastated nonetheless.  She assured me that she wasn’t going to leave me hanging and had someone new already lined up to cut my hair: her daughter, Madison, the little girl who used to come in after school and help out around the salon absorbing everything there was to know about cutting hair and ultimately running a successful business.  Madison has been cutting my hair for about three years now.  She has all of her mother’s talent (and then some) as well as a good bit of the same attitude. 

One of the things that I find interesting about the relationships we have with the people who cut our hair is how we communicate with one another – we talk to each other in front of a mirror for the majority of the time we are together, not really face to face.  While it seems kind of strange it also allows for an openness that can be difficult to achieve when looking someone directly in the eye.  What other setting can you think of in which you do that?  Note that standing in front of the bathroom mirror in the morning and telling yourself out loud, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” does not count.

I hope to have another long term barber relationship with Madison until I only have ten hairs left on my head, half of which will be in my ears. Though I can’t rule out the possibility I might break up with her.  Current Google search: Breck Guy+Wig.