I didn’t expect to reflect on hair-cutting experiences until seeing the Colloquium by Barbara Thériault at the Wissenshaftskolleg zu Berlin on Tuesday the 24th of October 2023. Barbara’s presentation was in German, a language I unfortunately do not understand. Many of the questions were in English and so I was able to get some messages. Even if hair salons were just a device in Barbara’s talk, afterwards I began to whimsically revisit some of my long-forgotten and not-so-forgotten haircut memories.
I don’t like getting my hair cut. Not that I particularly dislike it nor that I crave long hair. It’s more my not really caring about appearances. Hair to me is just that.
I begrudgingly get my hair cut about every 2 to 3 months at my wife’s beckoning. At times when I’m away for long periods, ‘grow-free’ is the rule, and I usually give-in all by myself after 4 months. Yes, okay, I’ve considered reducing barbershop visits by getting short cuts and letting my hair grow back long, or eliminating barbershop visits altogether by just keeping my head shaved. I do sometimes resort to a big cut-back, but the idea of being bald is even worse than going to the barber. Then again, I could wear a wig.
Why don’t I like haircuts? The answer is small talk. I can’t stand being confined with someone I don’t know and allaying the awkwardness of silence with babble. Here’s how it always plays out. When in the hot seat, I usually noodle for a minute or two until the silence becomes totally unbearable. I then launch a comment and hopefully this sparks the "Groundhog Day" conversation. I figure that the hair cutter too lives a dozen of these situations each day, ... but then again maybe not.
To dig deeper. Regardless of my good intentions, there’s something about the obligation to talk without purpose to a perfect stranger that makes me feel uneasy. Probably because I have difficulty making meaningful connections with someone who I would never hang out with on my own volition. Someone who I’ll only see once for a few minutes every few months (if that). Don’t get me wrong: I’m actually fine with approaching a perfect stranger on the street to ask for directions. Or, if overhearing someone from out of town looking for a place to have a good meal, I’ll happily intercede at the right moment and make a suggestion. What I don’t like is the discomfort of getting my hair shortened in an overly comfortable chair. My father and both grandfathers were lucky. They were as bald as billiard balls. Not me.
My haircut memories are largely nonexistent. Of the probable 200 or so haircuts I’ve had in my life, I distinctly remember less than a dozen. Perhaps these hold clues to some deeper meaning.
Photoshoot
My first barbershop experience is the only one presented here for which I have no direct memory. The indication that it actually occurred comes from a slightly blurry photo taken on my first birthday. Yes, happy birthday Mike!
There I am sitting, or rather leaning sideways, in a baby seat in a barbershop, crying. I’m trying to somehow escape, but there’s nowhere to go. The photo is taken as a close-up from my right side with the barber in back of me. The barber has electric razor in hand moving in the direction to my ear. My grandmother is trying to keep me from falling and comfort me. My head seems mostly shaven and so somehow I got this far.
Despite the fright, I thank my mother for keeping this photo. I recall her telling me years later how well-behaved I was.
Caughtlefthanded
My first real memory of a haircut was giving one: playing barber with my little brother Jim. I must have been about 6 years old, making Jim 4. This is what the front porch of my parents’ house looks like today, where the haircut transpired circa 1967.
I was old enough at the time to have a child’s pair of scissors, that is, without pointy tips. The major issue aside from the fact that I had no concept of how to coif someone, was that I am left-handed. The pair of scissors I had was for righties, and surely the 10% of you who are lefties know that we have occasional difficulties living in a right-handed world. In the case of righty-scissors, when I cut a piece of paper, rather than cleaving in two, the cut is dull and usually the paper flips 90° and gets caught between the closed blades (see cover photo of this blog post). Righties simply don’t know! Lefties learn how to correct this problem by pushing their thumb a bit to the left and forefinger to the right so as to get the blades to perfectly graze one another and dutifully cut. When I was a little kid, I didn’t know this, and surely the scissors at hand were cheap with loose, dull blades. I gave my brother a haircut anyway.
Jim was conciliant and even seemed excited. But needless to say, things were not going well. First, his hair was not much longer than a half-inch, and so I had difficulty pulling on his hair to make a good cut. Second, and more importantly, I had no game-plan. I somehow didn’t even consider that once the masterpiece complete, our mom would wonder where Jim's hair went.
So, I just started cutting on his Jim’s left side, where, facing him, my right hand went naturally. I was confident that I’d get through the job in a jiff.
Despite my initial self-confidence, after the first clips I realized that the haircut was botched and irrecoverable. The cut was uneven – more or less down to his scalp – but I was afraid to be too brazen for fear of cutting him. My amygdala went into high gear and dark clouds formed on the horizon, but I kept cutting away, hoping this thing would be soon be done.
Sure enough, after about 5 minutes mother opened the front door directly revealing the scene. Given the angle we were at, she had to step out and turn to her left, perhaps giving her a second to hope for the best in what she was about to see. Not so. She gasped with hand over mouth and eyes wide open à la Lichtenstein as she saw the 3 x 1 inch triangle of baldness on the left front side of Jim’s scalp. It might not have been that bad had the cut been centered and not an irregular geometric shape. In my defense, I didn’t anticipate how long it would take to complete the job; had I known, I might have hidden on the side of the house to avoid being caught scissors-handed. In any event, the reality was that I was a lousy barber. I still am if my attempt to cut my wife's hair when we were low on money in Paris, or cut my own hair when I could not face going to the barber several years ago, is any measure (photos missing).
Back to the porch scene. I don’t recall if my mother screamed, yelled or laughed. She did have a great, morbid sense of humor, so I figure that at some higher level, we must have made her day. In any event, she couldn’t leave my brother that way, and since she had no hair-cutting talent herself, we were rushed to the local barber shop and had my brother’s head completely shaved. I don’t remember if she had my head shaved as well.
Coolman
Throughout the mid and late 60s, my mother took Jim and me to get our usual hair cut at the local barber shop at the Alpha Beta supermarket and TG&Y thrift-store shopping complex on Reseda and Nordhoff, in Northridge. For those of you who were around in the 60s, the US was populated with fall-out shelters in case of a nuclear attack. The fall-out shelter for Northridge was right next to the barber shop.
I don't remember the name of the shop, but it was probably something like "Gus's" or "Bud's" Barber Shop. The only thing I liked about this place was that they had facing mirrors on both walls, meaning I could shift my posture a bit and see myself in infinite regress. This is the idea:
As anyone who was old enough at the time knew, the “60s” did not become the 60s on January 1, 1960. They became more 60s-like as time when on, with a beautiful afterglow (for some) cast into the early 70s. People who were really hip -- that is, wearing bell bottoms, smoking pot and driving baby-blue VW vans -- were few and far-between until the early 1970s. I was just a kid through these years, but was pretty observant, especially with regard kids my age and those a few years older. It wasn’t until 1968 or 69 that most of the kids I knew were allowed to grow their hair beyond what we used to call a “Boy’s haircut”, which is something longer than a flat top (what we militarily called a “Crew cut”) and considerably shorter than the ultimate Beatles Mop-top reference. In-between Boy’s and Beatles was the “Man’s haircut” and this was what my brother and I yearned for ever since we heard Love Me Do. Mother capitulated when I was 9 years old. Jim had to wait. The barber followed my mother’s orders: he could not have removed more than a quarter inch of my hair. I became terribly cool.
Mosquitomemory
I debated whether to include the following experience or, rather, incident. I’d prefer to forget it and seems I had, since it only reared its ugliness once I had completed this blog post.
It was the 13th of February, 1970. A Friday as it happens. I kid you not.
I had patiently worked my way up to a Man’s haircut and this was now becoming the routine. The only difference that day in the Alpha Beta shopping center barber shop was that when mom was checking out at the cash register, my brother and I noticed a box with flat, soft plastic brushes for sale. They came in different colors and I remember taking a red one – an omen in hindsight. This is the same model:
And so we drove home, my brother and I sitting in the back of our 1969 metallic green Ford Country Squire Station Wagon. I recall my mother shouting as the car lunged up the driveway to our house. The reason became clear as we got out of the car. Our tabby cat Purrfect lay behind the right rear wheel in a pool of blood. I need not describe the horrible scene except to say that my mother pleaded that she saw the cat dart out of the bushes from the right just as she pulled into the driveway. The next-door neighbors came over, but there was nothing they or anyone could do. We headed off to the vet with our poor lifeless cat.
On returning home about an hour later, our driveway had been washed down by the neighbors. As we exited the car, I recall hearing a small group of older boys playing basketball next door. One of them snidely shouted “Did Purrfect get bit by a mosquito?”. The others laughed. How sick memories stick.
16$tyle
Boys’ haircuts in the early 1970s were less than $10. These were the days before the large chains like SuperCuts and before the Disco rage when – for some reason – men started paying a lot for attention to their hair. People I’d called friends were getting their hair curled just to get laughed at.
Given my hair had become wavy anyway, my mother got the clever idea “why not get Mike a proper hairstyle?” I must have been 16 when she took me to my first hair salon. I remember the inordinate amount of time spent in the stylist’s chair to do something I could have (albeit with less accuracy) in no more than 5 minutes. I also recall my mom paying $16 for what amounted to a few figure-8s on my head, and paying a few dollars more for a ‘special’ hairbrush. It looked kind of like this one
You see, the only way to maintain the hairstyle was to shower, towel-dry, and then complete the drying with a high-temperature blow dryer, whilst curling with the "special" brush. I did this until Saturday Night Fever came out (which, by the way, be reassured that I've never seen). My usual barber happily took me back.
Guesswork
Assuming I had my hair cut about 4 to 5 times a year, between the age of 1 when I had my first cut and the age of 16, when my mom took me to the stylist, I would have had my hair cut about 80 times. If I were to watch a video of each sitting, perhaps I would recall a few snippets here and there, but really haircuts were uneventful placeholders. They were duties. And so I have no memory whatsoever of any haircut after the salon in 1976 until was in Berkeley in the early 80s.
I reflect a lot on Berkeley in parts 1 – 3 of this blog series. Somehow, my early 20s were extra-special. Challenges were totally doable, haircuts included. This said, at Berkeley I had to work part-time to make ends meet and haircuts were a vanishingly low priority. I grew my hair long, but it never got very long since my hair was now naturally very curly. This is 1982, likely getting close to the next cut
My haircut frequency plummeted to 2 to 3 per year. For a while I was opportunistic and one of my roommate’s sisters even became my barber. The freebees were undependable however and so I had to find a real barber, usually being Bill Murray just before I would fly down to LA to visit my family. The easy, cheap solution? SuperCuts! The SuperCuts I frequented was on University Ave just off Shattuck.
The only reason why I remember this place is because I could get a dependable, fast, cheap, baseline haircut. The guy at the front desk came to know me and so I was almost happy getting my 15 minutes of irk, until that fateful day in 1984.
As I said above, I’m not one for talking much, especially small talk, and so it takes me a minute to get up to speed once a barber starts blabbering. This is okay – I was used to it and still am. The point is I really despise entering into anything personal with someone I don’t know.
The fateful day was borderline trauma, and etched itself into my brain: the barber’s face, hair, physique and even the way he chattered. He was about 6’1”, thin, dressed in hip Berkeley garb, had curly hair and must have been in his early 30s. I distinctly remember that dawned bell bottoms, which in the early 80s in Berkeley was uh-oh! at best. I’d never seen him in the barbershop before, which really didn’t matter since I just wanted to get it over with as fast as possible... which I did.
When I sat down in the barber’s chair, he asked me my name, which although I thought a bit odd, tumbled out of my mouth. He then asked the usual: “How do you want your hair cut, Mike?”.
I started getting nervous and massively flubbed it. “Trim about two inches off I guess.” Imprecise in every imaginable way.
He retorted: “You guess, Mike?”
He wasn’t going to just cut the "about two inches" as requested without helping me as as person.
I replied, “Yes, I guess”.
I could see by the look on his face that I should have deleted words 2 and 3 and held up two fingers.
To my chagrin, he then says “Mike, guessing is not good. You need to take controoool of your life Mike!”. If that was not surprise enough, he then torqued-up the drill, but I was now in fight or flight mode and couldn’t really hear anymore. I robotically jumped-up without the slightest snip to my head and walked over to owner to tell him what I thought of his employee. I remember barking a few words to the dumbfounded owner. We both looked to the other end of the salon, which seemed like a long, deep tunnel, only to see the barber shrugging his shoulders. The owner looked at me and proposed to turn back the hands of time and do a re-boot, but I could no longer trust the hair cutter. I stormed out.
I had to find another barbershop and decided to practice up on playing Tetris.
Baloney
My wife Joëlle and I spent the academic year of 1985-86 in Avignon, France. I had received a Bourse Chateaubriand to do a research project with a lab of my choice in France, and had made contact with an INRA institute in Antibes to conduct my work. Unimaginable bureaucracy ensued over glasshouses for my experiments, and I saved my sanity by transferring my fellowship to the Zoology Station at Montfavet. Here by the way is the article I would not have remembered had it not been for remembering my hair-cutting experience. My year in the Vaucluse was pretty unmemorable.
In the 10 months we were in Avignon I surely got 2 or even 3 haircuts, and really was not expecting anything different than the status quo. The problem was that I barely spoke French (see blog post here) and Avignon was a bit of a backwater as far as English speaking went. This was good for me since I was forced to learn French, and I complemented my Fringlish with a proper French course at the Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie in the center of Avignon. As I recall, the teacher’s name was Francine and this was ‘Level 2 French’, which would seem to have no direct impact on my hair. What did matter for my hair, or rather turned out not to matter either, was that one day before a class, a student came to talking about the wonders of the lunar cycle. One of them was that getting hair cut the day of a full moon will result in more luxuriant and faster hair growth. There are actually different versions you can now find in social media of this bullshit (at best if it were true and a placebo effect, it would be interesting!), and despite having a science degree, I decided to test it anyway. Of course, my stupidity was not limited to gullibility in bogus science: Why in the world would I want to test something hypothesized to make my hair grow more than the unacceptable usual?
I decided to be my own guinea pig. No one knew, not even my wife. So, I waited for the next full moon, got my hair cut (there were no bustling crowds of acolytes at the shop that day - a potential give-away) and waited some more. A few months went by before my wife prodded me for the next cut. I waited another few weeks just to be sure before acquiescing, somewhat relieved that my hunch was correct: my hair had grown but not more than normal. I’d never have to check moon phases again before getting my hair cut, or anything else.
Razorboy
If asked, “have you ever had a haircut that really stood out as being great?”, I am happy to say “yes, one!”. The pleasant surprise – and I do really mean pleasant and surprise – happened in 1988 in the town of St Fons, a suburb of Lyon, France. As you now know, I usually get haircuts when my wife says so. I instinctively hope that my hair stops growing, or better yet, somehow shrinks a bit, and I’ve been known to intentionally brush my hair so that it appears short. Happily, I didn’t pull this tomfoolery this time in St Fons, since I was in for the haircut of my life.
The tough decision had to be made as to where go in a city where I'd never had my hair cut. Everyone was clueless except my father-in-law Guy, who suggested I get my hair cut by his barber, whose name I have very regrettably forgotten (I think it was Marcel, which somehow fits the experience I'm about to relate). This was a one-chair barber shop and the barber was expecting us and, for the lack of a better word, confidently sat me down. Guy looked on with a radiant smile, surely knowing that I was about to get the best haircut of my life. This was not a highfalutin salon by any stretch of the imagination. Just how good could a haircut get? Here’s how. Rather than use a scissors and electric trimmer, the barber used a straight edged razor. Yes, it looked like this
These beasts are used for shaving faces or worse. But this barber was trained to use a straight-edge to cut hair! This device made the most wonderful crisp tic-tic-tic sound as it sliced, producing a layered effect that was impossible to achieve with scissors.
He drew the razor from time to time along the sharpening strap, which added authentic theatrics.
I was never really sure whether this magnificent haircut was due to his exceptional abilities or to the use of this instrument. I suspect it must have been both, since getting a single blade to cut requires pulling the hair out and at an angle, and drawing the razor cleanly and at the right clip. None of this dumb pressing of the thumb and forefinger together with a snip snip.
In any event, the next time that we visited my in-laws, the very first thing I said was that I wanted to get a haircut from this master. To my dismay Guy told me that Marcel had since moved to Toulouse. For just a moment I actually dreamed of making a pilgrimage to find the mage, but figured that there were limits to how great a haircut could be.
1988-2017
No distinct memories of ever having my hair cut, though if I’d skipped so many, then I’d have looked like this by the time of my next memorable cut in 2017
And I definitely did not.
Sillycu-t
I’m part of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute and recharge my science batteries there for up to several weeks each year. Of course, being there means living there and living there means my hair grows. After several close calls where my hair badly needed a trim, but I was in no mood to experiment in a place I only knew for its fantastic food, I finally figured out that all I had to do was get a cut a few days before any trip and all would be good.
Failing memory however caught up with me in the summer of 2017. It goes without saying that my wife usually reminded me about a week before leaving for my annual trip to the Institute. Perhaps she did this time too, but for whatever reason I didn’t follow through. My hair-alarm rang about half-way through the 6-week stay and given I knew nothing about barber shops and hair salons of Santa Fe, I decided to ask a colleague for a recommendation. I strolled through the Institute looking for someone with tidy hair and to whom I felt I could ask such an embarrassing question.
I luckily crossed paths with one of my scientific collaborators and popped the question. He was in a cheery mood and he gave me the name of this place. I was able to reserve online, so everything was set. I even saw online at what time the next barber chair was free. Frankly, it all looked very organized – just to my taste.
I arrive at the salon in the De Vargas shopping mall a few minutes ahead of time, and check in. I look around and see at least a half dozen barber chairs, all empty. No barbers. There’s just the receptionist behind the counter. She calls my name out loud as if there was anyone else getting a haircut. I was soon to discover what it was like to be in a Monty Python sketch.
The receptionist accompanies me to one of the barber chairs and despite the place being deserted, it was clean and appeared well-equipped. I sat down confidently, ready for the barber to appear and ask how I wanted my hair cut. Then something a bit strange happened. The receptionist put the protection smock on me and then put a smock on herself! I didn’t labor the point much but did wonder whether she was doubling as both receptionist and barber. Surely possible and, well, okay. But the strangeness lay in the huge distance between the barber chair and the reception = cash register. I had the fleeting thought that this person was filling-in for the resident barber, and was not a barber at all.
So, she asks me “how would you like your hair cut to-day?” So far, so good, yet the “to-day” ending seemed a bit off. I’m sensitive to wordings. The quarter-time rest stop between “to” and “day” drew my eyes, via the mirror, directly to her right hand as she fumbled the scissors. So, now, not good. I knew then and there that at best I would come away with shorter hair. But how short? And which hair?
I put this seemingly minor stuff out of my mind and confidently described how I wanted my hair to look. She appeared to have a game plan. She was in back of me looking in the mirror, and took her left hand (and I remember this in every detail) and gently pulled a lock of my hair out the way no hair-dresser would. As the lock hung limp, she asked:
“Would you like me to cut some hair here?”
My original instinctive fear was correct – she was a fraud! A good receptionist maybe, but couldn’t cut a stenciled daisy-chain let alone an unruly head of hair.
I don’t remember the next three minutes expect that I kept saying “yes”, “yes”, “yes”. A telltale sign of shock and a prelude to a "fight or flight" response.
My haircuts typically last about 20 minutes. They never go beyond 30. For this one, I came to my senses at the 2-minute mark, and said in a calm, friendly voice “That’s perfect, you can stop now.” After all, she was still holding the scissors and I was at least 50 ft from the exit. I couldn’t see myself running through the De Vargas mall, hair pulled back by my speed and its length, donning a barber smock.
Fortunately, she was reasonably compliant to me leaving, which also was a give-away. I calmly removed the smock myself as if all my haircuts were just like this one, and we headed very slowly with eyes down to the reception counter. There, I figured that the $20 charge was a great deal. She didn’t ask me if I was satisfied, or maybe she did. I probably said “yes” and left a tip.
Twotiers
I’ve lived in Prades Le Lez since 2001. It’s a town of about 6000, 10km north of Montpellier. Most Pradians want to be in proximity to Montpellier and to the beautiful back-country. Prades isn’t known for its services: we have a butcher, two bakers, three low-key restaurants, a pizzeria and a few hair stylists. There is no dedicated barber shop, but rather a stylist salon called Julien R. Julien’s shop is at the entrance of the local Intermarché, the perfect-sized convenience store to have in a town our size. Whenever entering Inter, I look to my right to see if Julien is around, and when he is, give a nod.
I actually didn’t start frequenting Julien’s shop until about 2010. For the first decade we had a stylist named Cathy who would come to our house every couple of months and cut the family’s hair. What a ritual to see who amongst the four of us would go first! Let’s just say I never rushed to the front. The only session I recall is when she accidentally cut my ear. To be honest though, her hair cuts were great: no-nonsense and quick. She didn't talk much, which was fine too.
As time wore on however, our kids eventually moved out and finally Cathy stopped her route: she lived about 50 km away and could only make a day profitable if there were enough customers in the Montpellier area. Each of the Hochbergs now had to find their own solution based on the value each gave to their hair. For me anyway, travel outside the village was out of the question and I was not longing for an hour of discomfort every two or three months in one of the remaining true salons in Prades. Julien R. seemed the ideal solution as he was no more than a 10-minute walk from our house and was a no-nonsense stylist.
For the first year or two I would just reserve a space at Julien’s before doing my shopping at Inter. I never had a personal hair cutter in my life, though this was the default situation when Cathy used to come by our house. Julien had anywhere from 1 to 3 other people working for him in his salon at any given time, and the place was always crowded. Despite what could have been a mess, the salon was clean and well organized – never more than a 15-minute wait. Best of all, my cuts were all "said and done" in no more than 20 minutes.
I never had a bad haircut at Julien’s, although my son (also named Julien) claims that the people there don’t know how to cut hair. My Julien probably takes after his mom, who is demanding in what scissors does to hair. I am quite the opposite (saving silly in Santa Fe): I just want things to come out symmetrical with more on top and in front than on the sides and in back. After about a dozen sessions at Julien’s salon it was nevertheless becoming clear that some of the stylists were more able than others. With little surprise, Julien was the best of them, or at least the one who checked all of my boxes: fast, accurate, didn’t talk much.
With time, I became closer to Julien than I ever had with a barber. We would talk about places we went, what our kids were up to and local news. Julien came into Prades daily from the village of Clermont l’Herault – quite a trip. But with the years it was becoming clear that the travel and the profession of hairstyling was weighing on him. He notably had troubles getting qualified stylists to work in his salon: the profession was in gradual decline, not helped in any way by COVID. After more than 20 years in Prades, Julien decided to set down his scissors and retire from hair-styling. He told me he would focus on buying and renting lodgings, something he now enjoyed and made for a good living. The fact that he told me this was indication that he somehow felt comfortable with me.
I only learned of Julien’s decision to leave the trade this past August 15th. I do not believe in providence, higher powers and the like, but this unfolded like the final scene of a Greek Tragedy. Quite strangely, there was no one in the salon that day except for Julien. There he was staring out the entrance, expecting me. Something he never did before.
We went through the ritual and I asked why the place was empty and he said
“It’s mid-August and everyone is on holiday”.
We then talked as usual about our travel, our kids and the future.
As Julien was finishing at 20 minutes sharp I said
“Thanks, see you in about 2 months.”
He paused, looked me right in the eyes via the front mirror and replied: “I don’t think so.”
After the hypnotic comfort of the perfect haircut, I sat up like an 80 year-old, at half-speed. He explained exactly what I related above about moving on, and that he was in the process of selling his boutique to some hair-cutting chain.
I had trouble processing what was happening. Good things are not supposed to end until they become bad and clearly they had for him. It all seemed so matter-of-fact and was going against the stability and trust I enjoyed so much over the past decade. I felt light-headed for more reasons than one.
As I got up out of the chair and walked slowly with Julien to reception, I saw he had tears in his eyes. Jeeze. I paid the 18 euros for my hair cut, gave him a 20, and put usual 2 euros in the tip box. Only then did I realize he had never raised his price for me over all those years.
Julien was no more than 5’9” and had a very strong build. He clearly worked out. His straight gray hair went down past his shoulders. He rode a sport motorcycle. A Ducati as far as I could tell.