Clip Show

For the twelve years I've lived in Los Angeles, I've never gotten my hair cut at the same place twice. It's because I've had for all intents and purposes the exact same haircut since age 12 and so direct comparison between places is easy--the judgement swift and severe. One haircut, one look in the mirror, then BAM! The place is scorched earth.

Plus--remember that I'm grading on a curve here. I realize there's nothing these people can do about the sorry state of my face. I only judge on the hair and only in comparison to how it looked before. That's the problem.

It isn't that the places I've been trying have just been bad--the series of barbershops and salons shows a definite pattern of decline. I have the uneasy feeling that I arrived in LA with a decent haircut and things have been getting progressively worse since.

When it became clear a week ago that my hair was too long and that Los Angeles was 3000 miles away, it seemed like a opportunity to start with a clean slate. A new day, tonsorially speaking. My brother recommended a father-and-son barbershop near his house with an important caveat. Stay away from the son. He's a butcher.

Simple enough.

So the place is a tiny, two-chair clip joint. A third was cordoned off in back--maybe Dad was expecting two sons and only got one. Anyway, I sat down and looked for a newspaper and got smut. You know, Van Nuys Crude. Pornography.

This was obviously not the first time I had seen porn in a barbershop. It's common. Still, when my brother and I grew up, we went to a place run by a devout Italian Catholic who had a picture of the pope on the wall. His magazines tended toward Sports Illustrated and Catholic Digest. That's why, when I see Penthouse at the barber, it still throws me.

And there it was. A guy in the chair was flipping through it right as I walked in.

How did it evolve that the barbershop became the one acceptable public place to look at porn? I'd love to know this.

It's not like the porn is an accessory to the business's primary function. It doesn't enhance the haircutting experience. It isn't even a bite-the-bullet situation where you require distraction from an inherently painful procedure. You're getting your hair cut, for Christ's sake. Make conversation for a half an hour.

And--you're in a barber's chair looking at porn. You're not admiring the gentle aesthetics of the female form. It's porn. So...what are you going to do about it? Granted, you have a huge sheet draped over you, but still. You're not going anywhere. You're not doing anything. (Please, God...let you NOT be doing anything.)

My brother's theory is that the barbershop is the last guys-only bastion of American life and so that's where we have to keep the porn. I could argue that that is incorrect, but even if it were true it still comes back to the question of things-you-do-in-public vs things-you-do-in-private. Getting your hair cut--public thing. Looking at porn...not so much.

Bottom line: There's a place to get your hair cut and a place to enjoy your porn and never the two shall meet. I just will never get it.

In any case, there was also a Boston Herald on the shelf--the articles of which are probably less-researched and poorer-written than Penthouse's, but it had a puzzle. And the haircut turned out to be okay. Every hair on my head ended up about a half-inch long, so I'm ready for them to reinstitute the draft.

It could have been a lot worse. I could have gone to that awful place on Beverly, where they play horrible Russian music videos at full volume for every second you're there. But at least they have some porn to distract you.