Men of a certain age, regardless of race, creed, color, sexual preference or socio-economic status, share a certain, specific, and almost wistful memory, once every week or two during their youth, their mother gave them a couple of bucks, and they went to the barbershop for a haircut.
Much as been made of this by media types, cultural experts and people who look important when they appear on TV. They throw around phrases like American icon, window to another era, and similar-sounding social babble. Some have even heralded the return of the barbershop, tied to the current fascination with retro (whatever that is) shows up in all the New York magazines.
All of which misses the point about barbershops.
Men who remember going to the barbershop remember it because they didn’t want to go. Hated going. It was boring. It was scratchy. It took forever – and it took time away from doing something important, be it riding bikes or playing ball or beating up your brother.
“I can’t tell you how many times I went to the barbershop with my brother and my dad,” says Alan Clarke, who frequented the since-vanishe Avery’s Barbershop in Casa Linda in his youth and today patronizes the A and A Barbershop at the other side of the shopping center.
“As a kid, I remember Dad would never let me get a flat top – too expensive – and while he never said it, he probably feared it would turn me into a hooldlum. And the only advantage to the cut was the Double Bubble gum on the way out.”
Yet barbershops are still with us, despite constant predictions of their imminent demise since the late 1960s, when men started to let their hair grow and thousands of barbershops did close. As recently as the 1970s, there were about 10 shops in and around our neighborhood. Today, there are half that, and one, Wise’s, recently closed.
But many barbershops haven’t closed, and for good reason. They are functional. They are efficient. They are practical. If someone has to do something they don’t want to do – and most men dislike getting a haircut today as much as they did when they did when they were 7 – why not get it over and done with as quickly as possible?
“Do you know why there are still barbershops? Because a lot of people have gone to the new places and found out they weren’t the same as a barbershop,” says Dee Carvajal, who owns the Lakewood Barber Shop. “Those places don’t know how to give the old basic haircut.”
His point is well taken. Look around our neighborhood, and what’s left from the old days other than the Lakewood Theater? Doc Harrell’s drugstore is gone. All the M.E. Moses are gone. That leaves the barbershop, which longtime owner George Lehman sold the Carvajal three years ago. His barbershop has been in the shopping center for something like 60 years, which speaks volumes about the demand for a basic haircut.
It also speaks of neighborhood, which is something the pop culture gurus either overlook or don’t understand. When they do mention it, they talk about bonding being connected, which might sound good on Oprah, but talks around the point. On some level, visiting the Lakewood or the A and A every couple of weeks might be the stuff of a doctoral dissertation, but it overlooks something more basic. It’s possible to have a neighborhood without a barbershop, there’s no doubt that you’re in a neighborhood.
It’s no coincidence we publish magazines in three Dallas neighborhoods, and that each neighborhood includes barbershops of almost legendary status. On the other hand, there will almost certainly never be a barbershop in a place such as the West Village, the developer-generated urban something or other at Lemmon and Central, which means that no matter how hip and trendy it becomes, it will almost certainly never become a neighborhood.
In fact, it’s places such as the West Village that pose the newest threat to the continued existence of the barbershop. Real estate prices have increased in urban neighborhoods significantly in the past decade, which has put the squeeze on places such as Wise’s, located on Greenville next to the Arcadia for years. When it closed, the nightclub took over its space.
This is a loss anyone who lives in Lakewood or Casa Linda can appreciate. It’s spooky, in a way, to walk past the Lakewood or the A and A on a Saturday morning or after school during the week, and to see kids waiting to get their hair cut, often with parent in tow, as if it was 1972 and not 2002.
One of the funny things about memory is how it comes in waves. One minute, you’re in the present, and the next, you’re remembering long-forgotten things that happened  30 years ago. Barbershops have that effect on anyone who ever sat in one, clutching a couple of dollar bills and bouncing impatiently while waiting for the next barber to wave them over.
I haven’t been to Burt’s Barber Shop in the town I grew up in more than 25 years, and the shop has been gone or more than a decade, but I remember where it was, and I remember what the shop looked like and what Bart looked like and what we used to talk about. Will anyone be able to say that about places such as the West Village in 25 years?
It’s something to ponder next time I’m waiting for the barber to call my name.
