Free Republic

Soon, everyone will be allowed to get a haircut in San Francisco. San Francisco hair salons and gyms will reopen next week as the city enters its second phase of reopening. Everyone who isn't Nancy Pelosi will finally be allowed to visit indoor places like hair salons, barbershops, and massage parlors. But unlike the Speaker of the House, San Franciscans will still be required to wear a face mask indoors. ... Pelosi was captured on leak surveillance footage walking around the establishment without a face mask. Perhaps it was Pelosi's illegal visit to the hair salon that has now prompted...

Some small businesses are scrambling to figure out how to stay afloat after a high court ruling. A recent California Supreme Court decision is changing the way independent contractors are classified, and it’s already having a big impact on local shops. May fear it will hurt millions of workers and affect businesses’ bottom lines. The work doesn’t stop at Downtown Sacramento’s Bottle and Barlow, even if it became a one-man shop. “I lost my entire staff,” said owner Anthony Gianotti. He says all seven of his barbers quit after a state supreme court ruling that will change their way of work. “It doesn’t just affect...

Can God build a rock big enough that even He can’t lift it? This is a foolish question tempters and amateur atheists ask. Their intent is not to ask whether “omnipotent” is the best theological term to describe God’s power, but to tempt believers to question God’s existence. This is not an existence-of-God problem. It is really just a “trick question” of the same sort when one asks a righteous man if he has stopped beating his wife. That question contains an unproved premise and therefore cannot be answered “logically”. Another example from philosophy illustrates the real problem. Suppose...

The Orlando Sentinel reports that the Orange County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office has been enforcing Florida’s barber licensing requirements in an unusually aggressive way: conducting armed raids of barbershops, handcuffing barbers while their records are checked, and searching (without warrants) for drugs and other contraband. Adding to the sensitivity of such operations, all the establishments raided to date cater to a primarily black or Hispanic clientele: In “sweeps” on Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 targeting at least nine shops, deputies arrested 37 people — the majority charged with “barbering without a license,” a misdemeanor that state records show only three other...

"Pakistani Christian on Run from Taliban Death Threat Islamic extremist sermonizing leads to altercation at barbershop in South Waziristan." SNIPPET: "LAHORE, Pakistan, November 27 (CDN) — A young Christian man is in hiding in Pakistan from Taliban militants who seek to kill him for “blasphemy” because he defended his faith. In February Jehanzaib Asher, 22, was working in a barbershop his family jointly owns with his cousin in Wana, South Waziristan – a Taliban stronghold in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan’s northwest – when the Islamic militants showed up to try to convert him to Islam." SNIPPET: "He...

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Blog Details Pakistani Daily: Taliban Vow To ‘Reform’ Media And Banking The Taliban have vowed to ‘reform’ the media and banking system as a next step in their Islamization program, according to a Pakistani daily. In recent years, the Taliban had mainly attacked barbers’ shops for shaving beards, music centers for selling CDs and videos and girls’ schools. According to a report in Lahore-based newspaper Daily Times, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said their next target will be the banking system where "un-Islamic affairs are being carried out." The spokesman added that the...

Movies have been made and treatises have been written on the role of barbershops in African American life. In the pre-Civil Rights era, they were one of the first businesses that black men, especially in the South, could own, and, outside of churches, one of the few places they could gather. In recent years, the barbershop has continued to be a place of fellowship, where African American men meet, gossip and dissect sports and politics across generational and socioeconomic lines. Now barbershops across South Los Angeles have been targeted as the site of lifesaving efforts, thanks to Dr. Bill Releford...

A figure of speech, some say of the quarterback’s “black-on-black crime” remark. Others say it fans flames. Hear what fans have to say. During the lead-up to the world's biggest sporting extravaganza, the Super Bowl, Donovan McNabb fires off a salvo for the world to hear: Terrell Owens' criticism of his quarterbacking skills last season was "black-on-black crime." Black-on-black crime? A careless choice of words, given the daily tragedies in Philadelphia and other cities, or intentionally loaded? Or just a figure of speech? From the streets of Philadelphia, inside barbershops, and all day over the radio airwaves yesterday, people weighed...

Barber Jay Dutey is as quick as a quip as he is with his clippers.