After our early walk today, I had to get moving to make a scheduled haircut in Kaimuki.
As I was sitting down with a cup of coffee, I had a startling realization.
I’ve been getting my hair cut in the same spot since 1969. That boggles my mind, to tell the truth. It’s a small barber shop on the ground floor of the round high rise building on 9th Avenue, just off of Waialae.
Prior to 1978, it was a rental building owned by Dai Yen Chang, a retired dentist and former member of the Honolulu Board of Supervisors (which later became the City Council). Chang was elected in 1926, the first full-blooded Chinese to be elected to the board.
We rented an apartment in the building from 1969 through the middle of 1978, and for part of that time our assigned parking stall was right in front of the barber shop. So it was natural to start going to Ms. May, who owned the shop at the time.
It was a comfortable spot, close to home, and made it part of my less-than-fastidious haircut schedule.
It’s been through only a couple of ownership changes.
When May retired after a few years, the business was bought by Arthur and his wife, Jean. That was sometime before 1978, when the building went condo and all the tenants moved out. Then, about 10 years ago, Art retired and the space was purchased by Leila, who formerly operated a barber shop in Chinatown. I rode through each transition.
And here I am, nearly 47 years after my first haircut in the building, still taking my business to the same place.
I tell myself that it’s like this in island communities. Mobility is limited, and people retain ties to their neighborhoods and their neighbors.
In any case, while there in Kaimuki this morning, I took a few pictures in honor of this long history.
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Sweet story. And now I know how you lost your strength. (ref. Samson and Delilah)
I have the Donald Trump solution to haircuts.
The last time in fact that I was in a barber shop was in 2005, in the bright stunning city of Sibiu, Romania. I saw my desperado image in the front bay window of a cheery barber’s on the main street there and respectively stepped inside. I mimicked that indeed I was on a strict budget, that there is that fine pair of scissors just sitting there, and may I not have a brief session with them in your lua (?). The loo was closed but I went ahead anyway with cutting all that back and sides hair off with amazing success.
So, it isn’t as if I had single-handedly eradicated the aedes aegypti mosquito or anything, but I do feel I have done away with the entire barber shop industry worldwide!
Worse than that, I have at this point as a de facto world leader inevitably by example come around now to feeling responsible for moving toward eradicating the entire Middle Class. In fact my only employee in life is Michelle Dockery, who has said, as Lady Mary in episode 5 of Downton Abbey, “all we studied in school was French, discrimination and dance steps.”