My expensive haircut story

I usually don't pay much for haircuts; I had an awesome Azerbaijani hairdresser who used to firmly wedge my head in her ample bosom as she gave me a quick cut every month. 20 minutes and 20 bucks later (and with warm ears), I was done. As my own mother once said, no point fretting too much about a haircut - I'm stuck with the face I have and there's only so much you can do about it.

But recently, since I moved, I've had my hair cut by a Vietnamese lady - very sweet, but I just can't get her to cut it the way I want. Somehow, the broken English and the gesticulating doesn't quite get across the message that I want the hair on the sides of my head cut just like so.

Well, so when I was walking past this barbershop (ok, "salon") I decided to just walk in because I needed a haircut, I was tired of the same old "just-not-quite-right" cut, and someone had talked up this place big time. It looked like a decent place from outside, nothing outside the ordinary. I guess the fact that the group of hairdressers looked like an alt-rock band with their tattoos and spunky hairdos, and the iMac-like decor should've been a giant red flag. But I went in, and told the dude that I needed a simple haircut. Sure, he said.

They first fed me some food and gave me something to drink, and then the nice Russian chick in the corner made me sit in a recliner chair. And then proceeded to massage my head, bumps and all, while humming softly to herself. Yeah, sure, it was nice. She also rinsed my hair and put three different things in it and rinsed and massaged some more. And all this was even BEFORE I got to sit in the actual barber's chair.

I think I was supposed to be relaxed by then, but honestly, all I could think of was about how I was SO screwed. I mean, can't back out now, right? Got to go with it. So I sort of resigned myself to some more new-age relaxation bullshit before I actually got the freaking hair-cut. I hoped that by asking for the simplest possible cut I might reduce monetary damage. Nothing doing. The dude took 45 minutes to snip every hair individually (stepping back every now and then to look at it critically), and then, after a good deal of snipping and critiquing and buffing and combing and hand-running, this is what my hair gets to look like:



Exactly. "Meh" would be an understatement. Well, it might not have been a $16,260 haircut, but it was $50. 50 bucks = 10 Guinness, a nice amount of good brew. And 50 bucks and 65 minutes is how much I spent to get my hair to look like this. Again, not that it broke the bank or anything like that. But for that much time, money and hype, I better come out of the place looking like Brad freaking Pitt.