Make it worse please…
It must be a side effect of the mass consumption in America. No matter how many different tailors or barber shops I try, I can’t get the service I have gotten used to in Europe, especially in Turkey.
Hair please stop growing! The cheap barber shops are like slaughter houses where a random person who has been accidentally given a trimmer jumps into your hair without questions asked. No matter how many times you try to explain or show a picture of the style you want, you always end up with the style I like to call the Bird nest head. Really short on the sides and long on top. It doesn’t get any better with the more expensive “full-service” barber shops. Although you get 2 minutes of peace when they kindly wrap your face with a warm towel, now you have to deal with hierarchy. Do you want to pay up and go for a senior stylist or save a little and go for a rookie stylist? Having tried both, I can tell that it still makes no difference. Cheap, expensive, fancy, old-style or luxurious, you still smile, but cry inside when they show your new hair while they surround you with mirrors. You still go home with millions of tiny hair needling their way into your neck, ear and shoulders. You end up asking yourself again why they wouldn’t wash your hair after they are done cutting it. The irresistible moment of truth awaits you at home in front of the mirror before you jump into the shower, thinking a long shampoo might make the bad style go away. You become the Bird nest head and start praying for your hair to grow back by the next morning.
Pants please fit! As if it is not difficult enough to find the comfortable, good-looking pants, the length is always an issue. The tailor comes in. You watch his/her every move as the measurements are taken. With the needles and chalk, the length looks perfect. You give the OK and a few days later you get the pants with the full excitement of wearing them to the next big event. You put them on. Something is not right. Suddenly you look like Charlie Chaplin on the mirror. How the heck can you see your socks when you are standing up? The length is totally wrong.
When it comes to hair and pants, something is really wrong in America. Every episode I have with barbers and tailors makes me go back and analyze the lack of attention and handiwork in the services I get. Hands must have lost their touch and the people who are providing the service must have lost their care in all the speed and mass consumption that surrounds us in America, especially in New York. Maybe it is yet to be perceived in Europe and Turkey, but I hope that when it arrives I will be too old to care about the style of my hair or the length of my pants.