Friday, August 21, 2020 - Postcards from New York: Roosevelt Barbershop - Ninth Avenue (Between 57th & 58th).
Hello Hello! It's been a long time but I did it: I got my haircut, in New York, on Ninth Avenue (between 57th and 58th), at Roosevelt Barbershop. I only noticed the shop two weeks ago, when I was standing at the walk-up coffee shop known as Birch, which stands next door.
The place is lo-fi, and I love it. And by lo-fi, I mean, vintage, and by vintage, I mean it feels like a home –––– as though you’re getting your haircut in someone’s kitchen on a Friday evening, and while you’re resting in the chair, your mind starts thinking about which of the two movies you rented from Blockbuster you’ll watch first. Said otherwise, the atmosphere isn’t piped in; it’s already there, and it arises all on its own.
There's only two chairs; which are now divided by a plastic panel of a structure similar to a ziplock bag, which descends from the ceiling and doesn’t quite reach all the way to the ground.
Hesitant and masked, earlier today, I pulled open the door and walked in. My hesitation was less about an uncertainty as to whether I wanted to get my haircut there, but more a response to the size and intimacy of the shop. One cannot walk in without being noticed, and given the domestic and quaint feel of the place, I felt compelled to enter the shop in a quiet and reserved manner.
There were two barbers working, one male and the other female, both in their late forties or early fifties, and one male customer, mid-to-late twenties, who was getting a new doo.
I took the chair farthest away from the door and asked for my standard cut; which is quite low: a “one” all the way around (I had shaved off my beard; which was becoming far too bohemian (it had been growing since April), the weekend before).
The radio, which was of a small and compact variety, the type of which one would take to the beach, stood on a shelf in the corner, and played Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to do With it?"
The woman who was cutting my hair ––– mea culpa, I did not introduce myself and ask for her name, from time-to-time, asked me to hunch down in the chair so that she could reach up to the top of my head. For about five minutes, she sang and also hummed along with Ms. Turner, not quite knowing the words.
Her colleague, slightly younger, with glasses, and who was moving with the efficiency and swiftness of a master barber as he was finishing with the other customer in the shop, was laughing, and spoke out across the shop in Spanish: "¡No sabes las palabras!"
