Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits

Thursday night G-man had a game. They did real well. The team they played was a lot bigger than we were, but we still won 41-10. G had one passing TD. He had a 40 yard TD run called back for holding. I don't know how many yards he had, but it was quite a few. They were up 35-0 early in the 3rd quarter. Everyone got to play. 

I'm still trying to get G to get a haircut from Cliff. Cliff would love to get a hold of that hair with his shears. As I mentioned in my previous post, Cliff has been my barber for over 15 years. He's gotten progressively more cantankerous over the years. If you're not a regular customer I don't know what you'd think of him. A while back I was there and 4 or 5 customers were waiting and in the middle of a haircut, Cliff went and got his guitar and starting serenading an elderly customer's wife who has Alzheimer's. He often will get out his guitar and play and sing songs. I know more of the words to the songs than he does, but I'm not a singer... I just know the words.

He has a game he plays with Becky, his wife, who also cuts hair. If he doesn't want to cut someone's hair, he will go into a stall and it will take him an hour to cut your hair. It doesn't matter how many people are in line. Also if its slow, he may take a while. Several times, I have thought I was done, and he'll put the cover back on and start in again. I'm not complaining because I don't know of a better barber, but it's like eating at a nice restaurant when we were in Germany. Don't go if you are in a hurry and can't enjoy the ambiance. It will only make you  mad.

A couple of years ago he started giving straight razor shaves and used it to trim the neck, and around the ears and sideburns. Only Cliff, not Becky. She said she wasn't certified to use a razor. She may not have wanted to. It lasted about 6 months and then he went back to using shears for neck and sideburn trims. He'll still do it upon request. It adds another 10 minutes to the haircut. Kinda like an after dinner cup of coffee.

When I was in a few weeks ago, Cliff gave a young guy who works at an auto parts store across the street a business card and said if he'd give it to someone as a recommendation to use him, he'd give the guy a free haircut the next time in. He said the recession has hurt his business. I would not think barbers would be affected. I guess if it hurts fancy restaurants I should've known it would affect fine barbers.

Last year I heard that one metric the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan used to gauge the economy was sales of mens underwear. Maybe he should've just had a better barber.