A Rainbow of Barber Shops
Some unthinking adult told me as a young child that there’s a pot of gold at the end of rainbows. Lacking the critical hardware to evaluate this idea, I began to chase gold. Just as the grass is greener, what I sought was always just around the corner. But long after the Lucky Charms leprechaun had joined the tooth fairy among my childhood eccentricities, that listless desire to find the end of rainbows remained.
***
The wall of Bill’s Barber Shop looked like that scene out of Men in Black where Tommy and Will go to the gun locker and peruse all the weapons. Bill had a rocket launcher, a bazooka, a crate of hand grenades under the register and a side piece in case anyone tried to steal from behind the counter. For a measly hundred-something dollars a robber would have to fight this well armed World War II veteran with a penchant for fade cuts and close quarter combat. Word around town was that Bill was a quartermaster in the Army, not that I had any idea what that meant as a kid. “Do you think he’s ever shot anybody?” I sheepishly asked my dad. “Only if they were trying to steal an extra blanket,” Dad replied.
I’ve always had this fascination with barber shops and it all began at Bill’s. His shop could have been a second town library, one dedicated exclusively to the history of World War II. While I waited for older gentlemen to finish their trims, I would thumb through the stacks of books. Here is where I learned about the diva Douglass MacArthur, the demon of war George Patton, and the strategist turned statesman Dwight Eisenhower. Every barber shop in the world sends a message to its patrons and Tom’s was telling us (and the dead) “Never Forget”.
But you cannot keep a wild stallion penned up and my hair wanted to be free. In college I received cuts from a guy in the dorm room and then went through several years where I let it grow out completely. I think we all go through that exploration phase.
My first year in China there was pack of barbers who operated under a bridge in town. They charged 5 Mao (~25 cents US) and used the same clippers that were hacking hair during the cultural revolution. In fact, China was quite a rollercoaster of hair cutting experiences for me. I went from trims under the bridge to several years later getting my hair care at the Tony and Guy in the mall. The mall was my pinnacle, a heyday of haircuts. At Tony and Guy they were so hip you could drink cheap watery beer during the visit. It was a shop for people with salaried jobs.
As times grew financially leaner the Tony and Guy Lifestyle couldn’t be maintained. I started going to a place called Wen Feng (pictured above). Wen Feng is a hair mecca among middle aged Chinese men in oversized suit jackets. The fine people at Wen Feng want you to show a certain level of commitment by purchasing a member’s card (Hui Yuan Ka). Their message to you is “Commit to Me!” I left them after one of the barbers offered to shave my goatee. He used no shaving cream and a dull rusty blade. From his face I could see he’d never shaved himself. I stopped halfway through and ran from the shop, half mustache of blood dripping down my face. They screamed down the street at me as I ran off “Do you still want a membership card!!?”
***
May I strongly recommend not watching the Ice Cube films Barber Shop and Barber Shop 2: Back in Business if you’re going through a crisis of haircare? Or at least remind yourself “they’re only movies.” Like fuel to a fire of discontentment, those movies make it seem like everything is possible when you get a haircut: barbecue and roast battles, friendship, community, and a deeper sense of purpose. I was motivated by these films to find my pot of gold in the black barber shops of Detroit, only to find them dully quiet, with the same shitty Marvel movies white people like playing on a TV in the background.
There is a saying in Chinese – “A Fallen Leaf Returns to Its Roots” (Yi Luo Gui Gen). So am I back in Michigan trying to find my follicle utopia. Many of these shops have all the character of a Kmart cleaning supplies aisle. They seem to blandly state to their customers “This is just a transaction”. Others are filled with people; miserable, unsmiling, grumpy people. Finding joy in these shops can feel like the final puzzle in a Where’s Waldo book.
Perhaps there is no end to the rainbow after all. Maybe what Bill’s Barber Shop was telling me all along was “This is as good as it gets.” It’s just a haircut, a clipping off of old hair to make room for the new. In the same way that sunlight hitting water vapor at a certain angle seems majestic, perhaps the variety of people around the world doing such a mundane thing as cutting hair is beautiful in itself. Still, I hope to find that shop to end all shops. I’m out here chasing a rainbow of barbershops.