Posted on 05/12/2025 9:50:16 AM PDT by DallasBiff
Being a female, I don't have any personal experience with barbershops; however, I wonder how many modern men today visit one. (Yes, I know that some shops cater to women, but for the purpose of this post I'm talking about the barbershop as a male-centric business.) Back when I used to get my hair cut regularly at a local Supercuts (before I finally realized that they didn't know what they were doing and were butchering my hair) I noticed that the place was loaded with male clientele. It was always a little surprising to me, because in my opinion there's nothing manly about the inside of a Supercuts--there are screaming kids, perfume-y styling products and (often, but not always) incompetent stylists who don't know how to cut hair.
(Excerpt) Read more at goretro.com ...
Well it is sad that you can't see very far. I remember Floyd the barber and had one very much like him.
I remember Floyd the barber and had one very much like him.
For ~10 years. Probably saved ~$4,000.
ROFL!
RECENTLY—BLACKS DO NOT HAVE HAIR DOS’
THEY HAVE REVERTED TO “HAIR DONT’s”
Its funny they are sister own the place together they mainly do ladies
That was a fun movie
Old time barbers are rare these days. I found a real barbershop after the COVID BS and really needed a haircut. The shop is run by two brothers and they give excellent haircuts including a hot lather straight razor finish around the back of the neck. Their shop lacks the obligatory mounted fish, outdated magazines and dusty bottles of Lucky Tiger hair tonic on the shelf that were a staple of my youth, but they still provide a satisfying barber haircut. Sadly few barber’s these days give old time straight razor shaves. I had the experience once and it was amazing.
I was probably 30 years old before I visited a real barbershop for the first time.
Growing up my father cut our hair. He had many talents; hair cutting was NOT one of them. I got butchered more often than not.
About 10th grade one of the slightly older girls in our Youth Group/Bible Study group was working at a hair salon and volunteered to cut my hair (probably felt sorry for me). She did a fantastic job and I went to her for a while. (Was in college for some of this and went 3-5 months sometimes w/o a haircut - but it was the early 70s so nobody cared.)
Finally graduated and I went to a few unisex places. Finally tried a barbershop and so I’ve mostly been going to those places since.
The one I go to now is in a small town. The barber is a woman. And yes, it is a barber shop. She cuts only men’s hair.
🤣. Humina Humina Humina.
The problem now is that the industry has been taken over by women, who will work for lower rates. Can you imagine being a guy now, going into the barber business, and trying to raise a family on that? Also, if you are a guy, and you said you wanted to be a barber, everyone would assume you are gay.
My aunt and uncle were licensed barbers. Up until I was about 13 or 14, we’d just go visit them and get a ‘free’ haircut.
Uncle Kenneth and Aunt JoAnn had one of the glass bottle coke machines, and we’d always pull out a bottle of Dr. Pepper...
I bought electric clippers from Amazon for 20 bucks and saved about a thousand so far..
I find staring at my 57 year old self in the mirror for a half hour to be unsettling...
It now gets cut at home
I liked barbershops. It was a place you could be a guy, around other guys undergoing a ritual. It was a ritual, and it has been my experience that a lot of guys like rituals, even small ones.
There were women you could find in barbershops, but they weren’t there to have their hair cut like they sometimes are today. They were almost always there with a six or seven year old kid, and sometimes a whimpering three year old who found the experience somewhat intimidating and even scary.
There was something stable about a barbershop. Many of the barbershops I went to in my life gave an impression of having been (and in reality, had been) around for a long time.
Very few of them were polished and clean. They were tidy, not like a fastidious sparkling tidiness, but more like the tidiness that came from the little piles of hair they would sweep up in between haircuts.
There were calendars on the wall, sometimes current, and sometimes a bit dated and faded, calendars with cars, calendars with attractive women or even pin-up girls that were racy but not obscene.
The tables near the chairs we waited in were covered with magazines such as Popular Science or Popular Mechanics, and sometimes Life, Newsweek, and Time, in a time before those magazines turned fully to the Left.
There was often an old bakelite clock, and the barber chairs were aged, but still well kept. No rips or tears.
Almost all of them I remember had the linoleum floors, sometimes dark tiles, sometimes light, sometimes dark and light tiles laid in a pattern.
There were walls of mirror, jars of liquid with combs in them, various potions and implements that had their backsides reflected out to you in the mirrors. The woodwork around and above the mirrors and under the counters seemed always to be dark-stained, almost black.
In the front window there might be a barber pole (when it wasn’t outside the door) sometimes lighted, sometimes rotating. And in that window, you might see a picture of a Little League team with some trophy or plaque next to it.
Yes. I miss that, in the same way I find myself missing the Boy Scouts of America. Like the Boy Scouts, barbershops had the air of a masculine refuge that are an anachronism in the eyes of some who view masculinity as something to be stamped out.
I don’t get my hair cut anymore. And I miss it.
My dad, for nearly his entire career, had a flat top...and he looked good in a flat top. I emulated him in every way I could, but I could never get my flat top to look like his. This is how I always remembered him:
My dad was stern and very earnest about us getting our hair cut at regular intervals like he did, but when I was 14 after we moved back to the states, he let us do what we liked, and my brothers and I let our hair grow out long and bushy as it was done in the early Seventies...:)
My wife gave me a gift certificate to one of these high-end full experience barbershops. It was for $100, and I used the whole thing. There were only two chairs, each in its own walled in room. The walls were dark stained wood that had a reddish tinge to it.
By appointment.
The guy was an older guy in his sixties, and appeared very expert. The other barber was a younger, more “hip” looking guy, but the guy I had was all business and gave the impression of a craftsman more than a barber.
You choose your music if you wanted it. I chose some classical and had the volume set quite low. I got a full head shave and a full face shave. It took an hour. They brought out the damp hot towels and left them on your face for I think about ten or fifteen minutes.
Then they did the hot shaving cream with a brush and mug.
Shaving was done with a straight razor. And it was done expertly.
When done, they completely washed my face and head, and toweled it dry with warm towels. I found it interesting that they didn’t use soft towels (which I don’t like) but towels that felt somewhat rough. I asked him, and he said that in his experience, guys like the rougher towels better.
Then he put some kind of fragrant, masculine smelling oil on my face and head and delivered a full head and facial massage, really working it in well. Not roughly, but expertly with the light oil.
It was a few years back, but I think he did one more wash and application of the hot towels (I don’t remember precisely) after which he applied what appeared to be some kind of aftershave that had a very pleasant, nondescript masculine smell that was in no way overpowering. It was very subdued, and I really liked it.
I have to say-It was amazing. When I walked out of there, everything around me seemed brighter and more upbeat.
On the way out, I did buy some of the products they sold, but...I never really ended up using them. Somehow, I felt that the power of all that stuff was encased in the application and presentation of them, and when I tried them after I shaved at home...it just was not the same at all.
I never went back for another round, and a few years later, they closed up shop, but boy-that was an amazing experience. My wife sure knew a good gift for me!
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