Will A New Hairstylist ‘Cut It’ Or Embarrass You?
One of the few disadvantages of moving from Los Angeles to San Diego was the challenge of finding a new hairdresser.
After all, hair is an important part of our personality. It’s one of the first things people notice about you. If it’s good, then you can make a favorable first impression on others. If it’s bad then, well, they are likely to remember it forever.
So when I moved, I wanted to find someone I could trust. And with a very small pool of resources to ask for recommendations, I at first made the two-hour drive back to Redondo Beach to get a cut from the same person I had been using for years.
That, obviously, was not a long-term solution. Eventually a friend recommended a person and I went to see her. She did a good enough job but she charged $60, an outrageous amount for a simple man’s cut.
So for the next time, I was on my own. I checked the neighborhood gossip site Next Door and all the recommendations were for places not near me in the Gaslamp. I considered walking down the streets and peering into hair salon places but then remembered there’s a Floyd’s Barber Shop on Market Street, a five-minute walk from me.
I knew of Floyd’s from Los Angeles and it had a reputation of having sexy, beautiful girls as stylists. Hoping things would be the same here, I walked in there one afternoon.
And sure enough, there was a sexy girl at the counter. I was naturally hoping she would say “walk this way,” take me by the hand and sit me down in a chair.
Instead she pointed to a pale, chunky woman whose both arms were covered in tattoos – just the type of girl I don’t like. As luck would have it, five minutes later a guy walked in and got to sit in a chair serviced by a girl that looked like a young Shania Twain.
I showed my stylist a couple photos of me when I had a perfect haircut to give her an idea of what I wanted in a cut. “Got it,” she said.
She then proceeded to turn on electric clippers – something I had not seen a stylist use since my dad took me to the neighborhood barber shop when I was a teenager – and began to go through my hair as if if I had just joined the Marine Corps. It was like that haircutting scene in Stripes.
When she took off a whole chunk right by my ear I called out for her to stop. The entire left side of my head was buzzcut. Herein lies the problem of finding a hairdresser in a new city – once your hair is gone, it’s gone. There’s no going back and fixing it.
“Er, I like my hair to hang over my ears a little bit,” I said. “Like in the picture.”
Pretty much ignoring my commands, the girl replied “yeah, well you see, once I do this and that, it will be over your ears.” This was impossible, of course, because there was no hair left there anymore.
Anyway, she left me with buzzed sides and most of my remaining hair on the top of my head. Were I to spike it and put on thick-rimmed black glasses with blue lenses, I would look like magician Murray John Sawchuck.
The price for the cut was $31 and I did tip her, $5.
All was not a loss, tho. On the way out, Shania Twain was at the counter and I told her she looked like the singer. She was so complimented – “she’s beautiful,” the girl swooned – she opened the door for me on my way out of the salon. Maybe I’ll get her next time if I go back to Floyd’s.
Personally, I don’t like the cut. I’m actually kind of embarrassed by it. But what do I know? Maybe people – girls in particular – will love it. Only time will tell. Right after the haircut, I went across the street to the market and on the way out asked the check-out girl what she thought of my new style.
“I like it,” she said. “It fits your face.”
That was an endorsement I needed to hear at the time but I’m still far from confident about it until I encounter more people. So, for the time being anyway, I am still searching for a San Diego hairstylist.
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