Sweeney Todd’s Barber Shop
$$ Barbers
4639 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
I got a haircut here over a year ago. The experience here still sort of pinches my memory.
First, the idea of a half-century old barber shop is so cute. Big old-fashioned chairs and tables and men with conservative short brown haircuts line this store. If men with short brown haircuts are having homosexual sex with each other here, it is behind the backdoor where the door is kept closed and never spoken about or mentioned again. Aw, 1950s.
That’s where it ends. It took me almost an hour to get my haircut. Not because it was particularly busy, but because the guy who chose to do my hair decided to take a long break after seating me in the chair. After telling me to get up on the chair, he went outside to take a call on his cell phone. It took him five minutes to do this. He came back inside and saw that the garbage needed to be taken out, so he did this and was gone again, for almost another ten minutes. Maybe he WAS having homosexual sex. Before he even came back, a guy who was seated in another barber chair after me was already finished with his haircut by another guy who took him and left.
I felt like I was having a sit-in without being black. I was almost about to get up from the chair and leave when he finally came in. Okay, yeah, I should NOT ask for point-cutting or razor cutting in a 1940s/1950s-style barber shop so I didn’t. I described to him what I wanted as if I was role-playing being Jack Kerouac at a barber shop or something. But it felt more lame than cool.
He said, “I’m gonna give you some jags.”
“Jags” seemed to describe exactly what I wanted without saying something gay and modern like point-cutting. He took the scissors, swooped them upwards into my bangs, four or five times. He cut my hair efficiently fast. I was done in no time, certainly in less time than having waited in the big barber chair.
All in all, I’m glad I had the experience of coming here than the experience in itself. I believe the 1950s is best left in the 1950s. It is a very niche barber shop for the conservative-haired man!
Useful: 11 Funny: 8 Cool: 0
4/19/2013