urban bicycle journeys

Is it just me or does anyone else feel uncomfortable in a barber chair, not knowing what to talk about? I hate having to make small talk.

I do not recall ever driving a car somewhere to get my hair cut. I have always gone by bicycle. Even as a kid in Virginia Beach I always bicycled to get my hair cut. After several years of moving around America I have lived in Chapel Hill and Carrboro NC for thirty-five years. By far my most frequent place to bicycle for a haircut has been in downtown Carrboro NC. Only a block away from the progressive co-op health food Weaver Street Market is the very different old-school Friendly Barber Shop.

At the Friendly the barbers all seem to have country Southern accents. They do not take appointments. One just has to sit and wait for an availability. I have always had trouble making small talk. For their credit the barbers at Friendly Barber Shop have always been completely, like their name, friendly. The problems have been all mine and in my head. The easiest thing to talk about is sports but I do not follow UNC basketball as closely as I should. There were always uncomfortable silences. In a very small way I always dreaded going for a haircut.

There used to be two Black barber shops a few blocks away on the Chapel Hill / Carrboro line, now there is only one. Black hair certainly has a different texture but my bald head is not a challenging cut. In recent years I did get my hair cut several times at one of the Black barber shops. The haircut was fine. The barbers were friendly and professional but in my psyche I still had the “making conversation about sports” problem, not to mention “white guy in a Black barbershop” problem. I did not look forward to these haircuts either.

About twenty years ago for only two or three cuts I experienced a third option. Gail was from northern England. Maybe thirty years ago she booked a package tour from Manchester UK to Disney World in Florida, taking a very young daughter but no husband. Hanging around a swimming pool she met a guy from Chapel Hill NC who had a similarly aged daughter but no wife. Gail and the guy enjoyed watching their daughters play together around the pool. Gail eventually married the guy and they moved to Chapel Hill where she resumed her English career: haircutting. Gail not only expertly cut hair, she blathered on in a delightful non-snooty northern English accent about whatever she felt like talking about. One could just relax and have their hair cut. Gail did all the talking. As time passed the only problem, which was only a problem for me, was that seemingly everyone of both sexes in Chapel Hill soon wanted their hair cut by Gail. One had to book weeks in advance. My wife Tootie had Gail cut her hair for decades. My simple bald head seemed overkill for the woman’s skill level. Only recently Gail’s now grown daughter moved to London England and had a baby. Gail has left Chapel Hill and moved to London where I assume she continues to cut hair. She still enthusiastically reads my blog.

COVID was catastrophic for many people but also put a big hurt on the haircutting business. Along with the daily commute to the office and outdoor eating at restaurants, that disease crisis changed many aspects of our lives, inviting us to think differently about how we do things.

For more than twenty years I have had almost no hair. For a barber to cut my remaining hair with electric clippers is an easy task. For about five years I have followed my brother Alex’s advice and at barber shops have requested “just go over it with a number one”, referring to the smallest size clipper. The barber tries to make it a big deal but really they can cut my hair in about three minutes. I normally want something just short of a complete shave. On the second month of the COVID crisis in early 2020 I bought a fifty dollar electric hair clipper. I could just cut my own hair in the privacy of my bathroom, looking in the mirror. It took about ten minutes. Tootie had her objections. She commented repeatedly that the self-cut hair looked sloppy. Neither she nor I really know how to trim the eyebrows. Still, for about two years I did not go once to a barber and my eyebrows just looked, well, sloppy.

For more than two years Tootie and I have had a second home in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans. Three blocks from our place, on the nineteenth century covered sidewalks at 2122 Magazine Street is Bearded Lady Barber Shop. I have now had my hair cut three times at the Bearded Lady and have never felt so relaxed. You do have to book an appointment but can make it by telephone talking to an actual person. Appointments are usually available a day or two in advance. The prices are not high, about the same as those back in Carrboro.

The Bearded Lady has an unusual but comforting decor, like the inside of a bar. The TV in the back is always playing guy stuff, like old James Bond movies. At the end of your haircut they usually offer you a free beer, although for some reason I have never accepted!

My barber the last two visits was Sarah. Conversing with Sarah is like low pressure psychotherapy. I found myself telling her my life story and listening to hers. She looks thirty-something and is originally from Massachusetts. On my most recent visit she told me about her plans. Her husband or significant other had two more years to go in whatever he was doing in New Orleans. Graduate degree? The Navy? Anyway, HIS father is living alone in Annapolis MD and getting on in years. She and her partner have a plan that in two years they will move to Baltimore to be closer to his father. While she is only an employee at Bearded Lady she says she gets on really well with the Bearded Lady husband and wife proprietors. She wants to take the model of The Bearded Lady and open a barber shop herself in the inner-city Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden, somewhere she has only vaguely visited.

Baltimore is not as cool a place as New Orleans but it is still a very cool place and in a better location. From Baltimore you can drive is just a few hours to Washington DC, Richmond, Philadelphia, New York City, the mountains; all sorts of places, even North Carolina! From there Sarah could more easily visit her family in New England. Yes, I have bicycled around Baltimore’s Hampden. It is sort of like New Orleans’s Ninth Ward but on Baltimore’s north side, a working class neighborhood of row houses with its own culture and accent. Outside arty types have been moving to Hampden for years. It is nearby but seemingly a world away from Johns Hopkins University. I wish Sarah luck on her endeavor. I am sure I will hear more about it on future haircuts here in New Orleans.