Man’s Best Friend
I’m sure we can all agree that if you are an adult male, one of the worst mistakes you can make is to show up somewhere with a dicky haircut.
(I use the word “dicky” here, which is a broad term that could be replaced with any number of substitutes, many of which are inappropriate for polite discourse. Dicky can comprise a number of qualities, including being clownish, stupid, dweeby, whack, lame, not manly, ill-advised. In other words, a quality that makes you look like a dick.)
To be clear, I don’t mean that a man’s hair needs to be anything special. In fact, it doesn’t need to add any appreciable value. I will be the first to admit that my hair is objectively nothing to write home about. Sure, I’ve managed to keep most of it — thanks, Science — but a good percentage of men my age have little to no hair, which is fine, maybe even preferred. Because if you do happen to have hair, that hair will grow, and, since hair will grow, from time to time you will need to cut it. It is here that you are at risk of violating that cardinal rule: showing up with a dicky haircut.
It is for this reason, gentlemen, that if you do happen to find yourself a reliable barber, hold on tight and never let go.
There’s an early scene in the gangster movie, The Untouchables, in which a barber carefully gives Al Capone a close shave with a straight razor while Capone is being interviewed by a group of reporters. At one point, the blade nicks Capone’s cheek and he starts to bleed. Everyone watches in horror, including the barber, as they await Capone’s reaction. What does the volcanic and bloodthirsty Al Capone do in that moment? He immediately forgives the barber, “it’s all right.”
What does this teach us? That Al Capone is a serious man who understands how valuable having a solid barber is to his serious endeavors. Later in the movie, he smashes another guy’s head repeatedly with a baseball bat.
I’m not sure this is true everywhere, but among the friends I grew up with in Queens, you were always subject to relentless mockery for . . . well, pretty much anything, but definitely and most obviously for any and all personal style choices. Your clothes in particular were always subject to collective scrutiny, and ridicule was the name of the game if you slipped. Even more than a bad shirt choice, however, the worst decision you could possibly make was to show up with a dicky haircut. The mockery was intense and constant, and hair doesn’t grow back overnight. I distinctly remember one of us making fun of another kid’s haircut by repeatedly referring to him as Little Lord Fauntleroy. That’s how deep the references would go for a good burn.
To this day, whenever I encounter a male peer, in business or life, I am tempted to make fun of the way he looks. I’m usually able to resist, but sometimes I can’t help myself. Sorry, Vesty, the damage from my childhood was that profound.
When I was a kid, my brother and I would always go to the Italian barber on Metropolitan Avenue. One day in high school, I walked to the avenue to get a haircut, and the shop was closed. The sign was gone. He was gone. “For Rent.” This caused a great deal of consternation and panic. Thankfully, it turns out he had only moved his shop two blocks away. But what if he decided to move away forever?
This trauma has arguably led to some over-corrections.
My first job after school was at a big law firm in downtown Manhattan. It was so long ago that the lawyers at the firm were actually required to wear suits every day to work (casual Fridays notwithstanding). It wasn’t quite Mad Men, but it was a period of office culture that is probably closer to what you would find in the 1960s, as compared to whatever exists today.
In the basement of my office building there was a barber shop, Salvatore’s. This shop catered to all the seasoned and aspiring professionals who worked upstairs and nearby. Sal’s main source of business was the bankers at Goldman Sachs, whose trading operations took up a number of office floors above us. Since I spent an unholy number of hours in that building as a young lawyer, if I needed a haircut, I had no choice but to go to Sal’s. Back then, there was no skipping out early so you could take the subway back to the outer boroughs to see your preferred hairstylist.
Every barber at Sal’s followed a certain protocol. They washed your hair; they blow-dried it; after cutting it, they took a straight razor to the back of your neck; they trimmed your eyebrows, nose hairs if necessary; and, when done, they showed you the back of your hair in the hand-held oval mirror. Fun fact: to this day, I never look at the back of my hair in the mirror. I always try to discern the infinite number of my heads extending as deep into the mirror as possible. Wouldn’t that be something if there were that many of me? Imagine the insights!
It took me a few months of cycling through the various barbers at Sal’s before I identified the best fit: Mike. While the other barbers were universally solid, they were generally old Italian guys. Mike was young. He was hungry. He went the extra mile. He always held up the mirror with pride, anticipating my reliable nod of approval. Sometimes I would throw in the word, “perfect.”
The die was cast. I was now a productive, wage-earning member of adult society. I had entered a world where I would go to meetings, engage with other adults, professionally and socially, and was now confident that I would be able to participate in such endeavors free from the anxiety that one day I would show up with a dicky haircut.
That was 25 years ago. That streak has continued uninterrupted to this day, thanks to Mike.
In fact, last week Mike cut my hair once again.
Eventually, I left my first job. My next job wasn’t even in Manhattan. However, still being a productive member of adult society with adult responsibilities, I kept going to Mike to get my monthly haircut. I would drive there on my way home from work. I would take the subway. I would plan my meetings in the city to coincide with my haircuts. To this day, every time I leave the house and announce I’m getting a haircut, my wife and kids mock me for embarking on such an inefficient quest to do something that, in their mind, could be accomplished literally three blocks from home. Let them mock.
Mike, for his part, eventually left Sal’s and went out on his own, running his own barber’s chair in multiple locations downtown for the last 10 years, give or take.
During the quarter century that Mike has been cutting my hair, I got married, had four children (three of them now old enough to vote), Tom Brady won seven Super Bowls, and I’ve experienced my share of professional ebbs and flows. Mike has traversed a similar path. Mike was born the same year as me, months apart, in fact. We both turned 50 this year. But in the quarter century he’s been cutting my hair, his reflection has remained unchanged. So has mine.
It is worth noting that, to qualify the streak somewhat, there were exactly two times during that stretch that I did not get my haircut from Mike: April, 2020 and May, 2020. During those months, if you recall, New York City was shut down because of the pandemic, and all barbers and hair salons were out of commission. Many went out of business and did not return. My family did what most families did. We bought the electric shaver, consulted the YouTube, and gave each other haircuts. The good people at Amazon delivered not only the electric shaver, but also the barber’s cape, complete with buttons in the back. Given my childhood fears, one would suspect this was a trying time, but, truth be told, the risk of botching a haircut was greatly mitigated by the fact that I really didn’t have anywhere to go. There was no place I needed to enter where other adults were present who would make fun of my do-it-at-home haircut.
Little by little, things started to open back up, although the five boroughs tended to be on the tail end of those reopening trends. One day in June, 2020, right before Father’s Day, my wife asked if I could drive her to Long Island so she could go to a new hair salon. It seemed like an odd request, but she persisted, and we went. When we got there, she asked me to go inside first, which seemed even odder. She claimed she wanted me to stake out the place before she went in. I’m a good husband, and I appreciate that everyone has their hang-ups, so I went inside first. Lo and behold, who was there waiting for me next to an empty chair? Mike.
I slowly put it together that my wife had found my phone, reached out to “Mike the Barber,” learned that he was cutting hair in Nassau county, and arranged for me to go there as a surprise. And yet, despite this all-time-great gesture of marital affection, to this day, she still makes fun of me whenever I leave the house to get a haircut. Ha, ha, see you in three hours. Yet, strangely, no one laughs when I get home looking not only extra sharp, but squarely in the range of what I am supposed to look like, which will continue indefinitely for at least as long as Mike runs a barber’s chair on this planet.
There is one image that perfectly captures all of these points. It’s a photo that I gaze upon once a month. It sits at the base of Mike’s mirror, and has reliably accompanied Mike everywhere he has worked. It was taken in 2006 and shows Mike with one of his former customers, Henry M. Paulson, Jr. At the time of the photo, Paulson was the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Years before, when Mike used to cut his hair regularly, Paulson was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs. In the photo, Paulson’s hair is already fading, but to the extent he had any left, he certainly would have lost it a few years later when the U.S. economy was on the brink of collapse and everyone looked to Paulson to save the world. I didn’t follow the story closely at the time, but, since an Amazon delivery man will today bring me a barber’s cape within hours, I’m assuming the U.S. economy survived.
Here’s the lesson from the photo. It does not surprise me in the least that Hank Paulson, a serious man with serious responsibilities, knows that, with everything riding on his shoulders, the last thing he could afford to do was show up to a do-or-die situation with a dicky haircut. Imagine Paulson entering the conference room on that fateful day with the likes of Ben Bernanke, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and the CEOs of every other major bank in America, and having them wonder out loud why his hair looks different. Dicky, even. Obviously, that can never happen. Hence the photo. Paulson knows. Capone knows. My wife knows.
What about you, Little Lord Fauntleroy?
Mike gave a great haircut. Haven’t had one that good in a long time.