NOT MANY MEN are like 67-year-old New York Times columnist Russell Baker, who started cutting his own hair when the price of a haircut increased to the princely sum of $2.25. That was a long time ago. When Baker told Vidal Sassoon he snipped his own locks, the hairdresser stoically replied, "It looks it."
Although a few men will get a haircut from a spouse, most over 40 prefer to go to a barber - an experienced one they know well, who will give them the same haircut every three weeks, for $7 and up. If they like the barber, they will continue to patronize him for the rest of their lives.But both the barber and the customer are in painful transition, because the traditional barbershop is clearly vanishing.
As more and more barbers retire, leaving devoted customers in panic, the chain "style shop" is flourishing, often in malls or shopping centers. Unlike traditional barbershops, these places have several chairs, and many of the stylists are women. What a customer gets there - a shampoo and a styling job - is almost always more than a traditional haircut.
But many men still search for that barber pole on the corner, symbolizing not only the traditional haircut but long talks about sports, politics or their personal lives.
According to the old-timers, that search will soon be in vain. Arnie Pace, who has been cutting hair for 41 years, mostly in Farmington, confidently predicts that within 15 years the traditional barbershop "will be virtually dead and gone. A dying breed - yes indeed! I don't know where you could find a barber who has been in the business for a lot of years who would feel any differently. They say when we're gone, it's over."
Other barbers who have been around a long time agree. Clyde Ashcroft, whose shop is adjacent to the Avalon Theater at 3609 S. State in Salt Lake City, doesn't see a buyer in the future, but, he says, "that's so far down the line I'm not even worrying about it."
Then there's 76-year-old James Wardle, who has been cutting hair for 58 years in a little shop at 424 S. State. He's being forced by the state of Utah to move three blocks down the street in April in deference to a court complex. So his present shop is literally vanishing, but he plans to continue barbering until his 100th birthday.
"My guardian angel promised that I would be shot by a jealous husband on my 100th birthday."
Louie Barbiero, a 36-year veteran who operates at 2993 E. 3300 South, says, "You'd be surprised at the number of guys who come and say, `Tell me, can you give me an old-fashioned haircut like I used to get 25 years ago?' "
Joe Italasano, an instructor at the Barber College, remembers a cartoon showing a barber taking down his sign from "Ray's Barber Shop" and putting up "Ray's Style Shop." "Two guys were walking down the street. One guy nudged the other and said, `Gee, I can remember when he was the best barber in town.' "
Many of the older barbers are critical of both the Barber College, located in the administration building of Salt Lake Community College, and the newer, prolific style shops that represent their accelerating competition.
Pace claims there will be no one to take his place when he retires, "They don't come out of barber school trained anymore. They don't know how to cut hair. They don't know how to use the clippers.The barber colleges do not teach the way they used to. They are scissors-and-comb oriented. Cutting hair is getting to be a lost art."
Barbiero agrees. He says Barber College students are not qualified to give a "regular haircut. What you learn at the Barber College is not what you do at the barbershop. They don't know how to use the clippers. I don't know whether they don't teach them or what."
An example many barbers use is the alleged inability of a graduate of the Barber College to give a customer a flat top. Pace says people go into a style shop and ask for a flat top and "come out of there looking hacked-up bad." He remembers one of his flat-top customers telling him about the haircut he got when Pace was on vacation. He went to a style shop and got his hair cut by a woman barber. "As soon as she started I knew she didn't know what she was doing, and I came out looking like a teepee instead of a flat top."
Ashcroft explains it this way: "A lot of guys just don't like women to cut their hair. It's an uncomfortable feeling for them. I think a lot of times their wives don't like them to have women cut their hair."
Barbiero says he has no women as customers. He had some in the past who came in to get short "pixie cuts, but some of my men customers would say, `When I come in here, I don't want to find any women here.' You'd be surprised at how many have told me if I hired a woman they would not patronize me. They just want to come and do their thing and get out. They don't want to watch their language. They want to tell jokes. They want to be in a barbershop, not in a women's shop."
Roy Dalton, proprietor of Roy's Foothill Barbers, operates a shop with five chairs. Dalton, who has been in the business for 26 years, employs one other man and three women as barbers in his still traditional shop.
"There is no styling here at all. We've always done the traditional clipper and shear haircuts - none of the wet-your-hair and blow-dry and all that fancy stuff. We find out how they like their hair cut, and we cut it. We do something that they can comb themselves - not something they go home and sleep on and get up the next morning and can't comb."
Dalton admits there are some men who object to getting haircuts from a woman, "but they'd better get used to it, because there are few men coming out of barber college now. When we hired the first woman in the shop we had a few opinions like that. One guy came in and said, `Well, I don't like this situation. I'll get my hair cut this time, because I'm in the chair, but I'll never come back again.' That's a little far out to feel that way. There's nothing wrong with men and women working together. Women are very good barbers."
In fact, Dalton's shop has a clientele of about 96 percent men. Allison Steadman and Joan Shunk, the two full-time women employed by Dalton, both graduated from the Barber College at Salt Lake Community College. They clearly know how to effectively use clippers. They have noticed the occasional male who "waits for Roy," because they are uncomfortable having a woman cut their hair, but they say there are only a few with that prejudice.
Even Italasano noticed the male-female prejudice when he was a working barber. "I had a woman in my chair one day, and I was cutting her hair, then I did one of the fellows, then another fellow got in the chair, and he says, `Joe, I don't mind waiting while you do a man, but I'll go to hell before I'll wait while you do a woman.' And I thought, `Well, to heck with you.' "
Italasano notes that the Legislature "joined cosmetology and barbering, which I think is beautiful. I thought, `I'd like to go to school now, because you get both. When I went to school I only got barbering. And that's what you're going to see out in the shops. And one of these days, the guys are going to accept these changes, because I don't think anyone's going to go out and do strictly men's work anymore."
Italasano says that currently 95 percent of the 70 students at the Barber College are women. When he started at the college in 1974, there was almost an even balance between male and female students. Anyone who visits the college and watches the students cutting hair will see that they use the clippers with ummistakable expertise.
The style shops tend to attract a few more women than men, and the men who frequent them tend to be younger, in their 20s and 30s. Christie Call, a cosmetologist trained at a school of cosmetology, says they mostly use scissors at Haircuts Plus in the ZCMI Center. There are eight chairs and eight stylists, and all are women.
Call says the men who frequent the shop know exactly what they want. "Most who want it styled want it really short on the sides, a little bit longer on top with a part, with gel and blow dried."
I happened to notice a man who appeared to be in his late 50s in one of the chairs, so I chatted with him. His name was Bruce Sherman, from Stamford, Conn. He said he was in the shop because he needed a quick trim to help him look better for a meeting. Normally he goes to a barber in Stamford who has been cutting his hair for 30 years. "He knows my head like nobody else, see. He cherishes every little hair, just like I do."
At the Crossroads Haircuts Plus, Russ Hayes, a veteran who was trained both as a barber and a cosmetologist, claims he is seeing "more of the traditional barbershop customer in here. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the old, traditional barbershop is fading out. It's kinda funny because you can tell they don't have that friendly or comfortable feeling. They're in-and-out quick haircuts."
Hayes thinks men in increasing numbers are caring more about their appearance and regard haircuts less and less as an every-three-week "maintenance thing." "We do a large number of businessmen and attorneys, and they're into styling. I do a number of attorneys myself, and they'll even let their hair go in between - and then they have an important case come up, and they'll come in and get it cut to improve how they look."
About the half the stylists in the Crossroads shop are men and half are women.
Sheri Nakashima, manager of the Top Cut style shop in Foothill Village, says she sees many businessmen come in "because it's quick. At the barbershop they do the same cut on everybody. So we do get a lot of older gentlemen in here. They may be a little bit leery the first time, but afterwards they like it a lot. They realize they can get it personalized to their needs. We shampoo each client, which they don't do at barbershops, and so a lot of them like that also. They say, `My barber doesn't ever do that.' "
Nakashima has six stylists, all of them women. "We've tried men before, and they just don't work out. Men tend to be flakier as employees."
Both barbers and stylists agree that the traditional barbershop is fading. But the brisk business of the style shops suggests that younger men see them as the wave of the future. It makes a big difference as to what a man grows up getting - a cut or a style. Even if that corner barbershop is gone in 10 or 15 years, a chain of style shops will almost certainly fill the void.
By then the older men will be cutting their own hair - like Russell Baker.
- ON THE COVER: James Wardle tidies up his traditional barbershop at 424 S. State St.