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The Barber Posting Date: Dec 14 2008 5:15PM 6520 Barbering has a long and distinguished history. It is, in fact, the world’s third-oldest profession right behind hookering and baking. It turns out that primitive man first got horny, then got hungry and then decided that if he ever wanted sex for free, he probably needed a haircut.
Barbering came of age during the rise of the Roman Empire when Barberius the Elder created the “I Claudius” cut (straight across the front, helmet-like on the sides) along with the “Gladiator,” an early version of the mullet. He also invented the first pneumatic barber’s chair.
Barberius the Younger, however, undid his forefather’s magnificent legacy centuries later when he gave emperor Romulus Augustus the first “bowl cut.” The die, as they said then, was cast. The emperor had lost his power.
The Dark Ages ensued and barbers retreated from the mainstream, becoming transient, back-alley businessmen who operated in the shadows between proper society and the criminal sub-culture. This hit-and-run existence forced barbers to find new skills to help pay the bills. Dental of Yorrick, a migrant barber working near Birmingham and a little in Bermuda during the winters, started a new trend when he began using his barber’s tools to extract teeth.
As the Middle Ages evolved, barbers shed their murky reputations after the great Sanguinio of Padua invented leaches. These little blood-sucking cash registers turned every formerly itinerate barber in Europe into a physician overnight. Suddenly, barbers regained their standing. They opened up shops again and since no one could read and a picture of a leach wasn’t exactly the Nike logo, Ramrod of Warsaw invented the barber pole by hanging bloody bandages on a post in front of his shop. Why this attracted business, no one will ever know, but it caught on and launched the Golden Age of Barbering.
The Renaissance made barbers into gods. Aramus Aquinas invented big hair and, in fact, crafted a coiffure of such stature on a commission from the Medici, that DaVinci invented the helicopter just to hold up the magnificent cowlick.
It was around this time that bereaved family members started realizing that no one treated with leaches ever survived. This led to the creation of actual medicine with doctors who went to school and learned things like, most famously, “Don’t put leaches on people.”
And so barbers became just barbers again.
Now, in the Twenty-First Century, the barber is an endangered species. Young barbers are being seduced into the “stylist” trade where appointments are required and anything that goes in your hair is called “product.”
The real barbers are now few and far between. They are, as they should be, Italians all with shops called things like Hollywood Hair Cutting or Barber Tony and Son. The shops smell vaguely of vinyl, motor oil, talcum powder and body odor. They have magazines like Popular Mechanics and Omni, a magazine last published in 1995. These magazines serve as the excuse for barbers to say things like, “So, you see they have square tomatoes in Sweden” or “This outer space helicopter, you think this is good idea for my wife?”
Shoved at random angles into the edges of the mirror, there must be at least a dozen images of Italy, from postcards of the Amalfi coast to fading brochures from Pompeii.
There must be clapping, as in, “So [clap], fine! Done! Neck massage? [clap]”
There must be stacks of business cards for real estate agents, masonry guys, aquarium installers and chiropodists. There must be a pile of bad chocolates next to a hand-written sign that says, “For $2, make donation to Handicaps.” There must be ceiling fans and a cassette player covered in hair clippings. There must be conversations that are rich in statistics like “64% of turkeys are giant chickens” or “72% of wives have children not from their husbands.” There must be questions like, “My fan has 1,600 revolutions per minute – is this good fan?” or “How much cost for a Jeep Wrangler 1998, 100% condition?”
The men who defend these traditions are dwindling in number. This proud legacy is at risk. Please, do what you can to save the barbers. Go get a $16 haircut and make sure to let Tony or Vince keep the change from your twenty.
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