Sort of.
Back in NYC, after many, many years of searching, I had found a hairdresser I liked. I always got a good haircut at a reasonable price and, best of all, he was only two blocks away from my apartment!
The proximity is important because I have—I won’t really call it a phobia—let’s just say, it’s a severe dislike—of getting my haircut.
It’s not that I mind scissors snipping around me. It’s just that it seems an awful lot of trouble and money for something that so rarely seems to be an improvement. That, of course, was until I found Joe.
I had tried various other routes.
The Astor Place Barbershop used to be very popular. $8, you take whatever barber is open, and you get what you get. Definitely affordable in my young, starving actor days but not necessarily reliable.
There was a school in the basement of the Empire State Building. Also affordable—but they were “cutting edge” (no pun intended), and when you got what you got there, likely as not you got something rather weird which didn’t match the headshot on which you’d just spent hundreds of dollars.
There were stylists on the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side who gave cuts of varying degrees of proficiency. The problem with them is similar to a complaint of Jean Kerr’s in one of her extremely funny books. If I remember the quote correctly, it was something to the effect that they always acted as if, in another moment, it would have been too late.
I don’t need a hairdresser looking down his or her nose at me. I mean, I’m sure they do. I just don’t need to feel it every minute I’m in the shop.
So…along came Joe.
I loved having my hair cut by Joe. He was fast and good and friendly.
Moving down here to Florida, I was worried about finding a place to get a good haircut.
How thankful I am that there is a little shop over behind Whitey’s Fish Camp where Susan of Susan’s Total Image hangs out!
A friendly welcome and no sense that she thinks she is doing me a favor even to run her comb through my hair.
And walking distance!
Susan and Joe.
My hair and I are thankful.
