Newfangled barbershops

The place where people go to get their haircut goes by many names: barber shop, beauty salon, hairdresser, beauty parlor, hair stylist, tonsorium.

Whatever you call it, “getting your hair done” has succumbed to the forces of technology and modernization as almost all widely available personal services have. It’s not the same experience it once was.

A friend recently recounted the troubles her grandmother has experienced with the retirement of her town’s hairdresser. No one else in her small community knows how to do “Southern lady hair” the way she likes hers, and it must be done each week before attending church. Can you imagine the conversation around a solution to grandma’s problem?

“Grandma, just download the app, check-in online, input your style request and color selection and whichever stylist is on duty will get you all fixed up.”

You are literally speaking another language at this point. Grandma’s struggle is real.

I have largely worn my hair very short since my mid-twenties, and even I have experienced a few haircut crises when I relocated to a new town or had a once reliable barber close up shop. I preferred the locally owned and operated gender-specific shops with a rotating barber pole sign and such waiting area conversation topics as the state of the Parkview Panthers, Atlanta Braves, Dawgs, Falcons, Hawks, maybe golf and the weather.

I do not have a hipster beard, do not wax and curl a mustache, have only one layer, don’t do anything too colorful and never use a comb or hairbrush. I know there are wizards out there with a straight razor, but I’m too acquainted with Sweeney Todd to trust them.

I am the definition of low maintenance when it comes to my hair. I will confess to the use of a pomade, but I haven’t found a better way to paste down my cow licks. Besides, as Ulysses Everett McGill famously said, “I like the smell of my hair treatment. The pleasing aroma is half the point.”

Somehow over the last several years I became an app guy. I swear by the convenience and even with someone different cutting my hair each time, their customer database allows them to know I like a no. 2 guard on the clippers for the sides, no. 6 for the top with a scissor-cut blending and treatment on the front. It’s all right there in the system, for which I am grateful because before I started frequenting these newfangled establishments, I could not have told you how I get my hair cut.

An even more consequential than technology, though, was the impact of the pandemic. A lot of us joined the “grow club” for months, and some have kept their flowing locks. I developed a new habit. I arrive 15 minutes before the shop opens, wait outside so no one cuts in front of me, and I’m one of three people in the establishment, and I’m in and out in no more than 18 minutes.

I have become the old guy in the windbreaker waiting outside the barbershop for his haircut. 

There are great gender differences with hair, and I cannot pretend to be an expert on what happens in salons that cater to women. In my imagination they’re all like Dolly Parton’s shop in “Steel Magnolias,” but that’s probably an outdated exaggeration.

I also can’t speak to ethnic differences. I have seen representations of black barber shops from such films as “Coming to America” and the appropriately-titled “Barbershop.” I’ll leave it to someone else to unpack the changes in those establishments.

What I can say about my haircut world is that it’s different than it used to be, and it’s another clue to the slow boil that technology has brought to Southern culture. I’m just the frog in that particular pot, and I’m noticing the water is starting to feel warm.

It does feel like overkill to employ such technology for as simple as my every-five week haircut is. Just keep it short so that the “blond” at my temples doesn’t get too unruly.

And I’ll always tip extra if they mow down my eyebrows. It keeps Carla from being tempted to come at me with her tweezers.