Barbershop
I feel like a little boy in a toy store when I’m sitting in front of a barber shop. I’ve been in many barbershops on many streets around the world and each time I had the same strange feeling of stepping into another dimension. It’s a kind of ritual.
Being a barber was never a second hand job. For hundreds of years, the barbers’ guild continues to remain in this world where the moustache or the beard are symbols of the masculine couture and fashion is one of the terms that point to virility and potency. It isn’t even a surprise since the hair on a man’s face has had and still has a special significance in the human ideal of beauty and this ideal belongs to both the aesthetic of a nation in a certain time as well as to a feeling of belonging to a religion, a cultural tradition or a social class. Whether it is rich or poor, the man has had the same unquenchable need to be proud and groomed – this is part of human nature itself.
The barbershop is a unique place for men to socialize. The barbershop is a masculine place. The barbershop is the man’s home away from home. Barbers have a sense of human solidarity that goes beyond daily matters and into the essence of life.
A barber does not need too many special effects to set up his tiny universe. In Varanasi, on the bank of the holy Ganges River, a chair and a fabric canopy were everything a barber needed to create his magic place. In Katmandu I saw barbers fulfilling their “mission” in the little crossroad markets, between temples and stalls. Nor in Hanoi isn’t too much place – along the walls at the base of bridges, ad hoc barbershop opens next to the mopeds parked nearby. In Morocco, near the cemetery from the Fez medina, I saw clients waiting in front of an improvised tent. In Portugal, the barbershop is where soccer fans gather. In Turkey or Palestine it’s a place where one can have a cup of tea and a relaxed chat with a perfect stranger. In Castellammare di Stabia – a small town on the Neapolitan coast, a nonagenarian that seemed to have come straight out of a classic movie suddenly restored my lust for life. On a side street in Stockholm I found “Barber & Books” an extraordinary combination of a classic barbershop and bookstore. In Dublin I visited “The Waldorf Barbers’ a historical barbershop founded in 1929 and inherited from father to son.
Wherever you are, the bell that rings when you enter the barbershop has the same universal effect: you leave your worries and burdens at the doorstep and suddenly the wide-smiling man in the white gown becomes the best friend you’ve ever had. And then the ritual begins.
Barbershop
I feel like a little boy in a toy store when I’m sitting in front of a barber shop. I’ve been in many barbershops on many streets around the world and each time I had the same strange feeling of stepping into another dimension. It’s a kind of ritual.
Being a barber was never a second hand job. For hundreds of years, the barbers’ guild continues to remain in this world where the moustache or the beard are symbols of the masculine couture and fashion is one of the terms that point to virility and potency. It isn’t even a surprise since the hair on a man’s face has had and still has a special significance in the human ideal of beauty and this ideal belongs to both the aesthetic of a nation in a certain time as well as to a feeling of belonging to a religion, a cultural tradition or a social class. Whether it is rich or poor, the man has had the same unquenchable need to be proud and groomed – this is part of human nature itself.
The barbershop is a unique place for men to socialize. The barbershop is a masculine place. The barbershop is the man’s home away from home. Barbers have a sense of human solidarity that goes beyond daily matters and into the essence of life.
A barber does not need too many special effects to set up his tiny universe. In Varanasi, on the bank of the holy Ganges River, a chair and a fabric canopy were everything a barber needed to create his magic place. In Katmandu I saw barbers fulfilling their “mission” in the little crossroad markets, between temples and stalls. Nor in Hanoi isn’t too much place – along the walls at the base of bridges, ad hoc barbershop opens next to the mopeds parked nearby. In Morocco, near the cemetery from the Fez medina, I saw clients waiting in front of an improvised tent. In Portugal, the barbershop is where soccer fans gather. In Turkey or Palestine it’s a place where one can have a cup of tea and a relaxed chat with a perfect stranger. In Castellammare di Stabia – a small town on the Neapolitan coast, a nonagenarian that seemed to have come straight out of a classic movie suddenly restored my lust for life. On a side street in Stockholm I found “Barber & Books” an extraordinary combination of a classic barbershop and bookstore. In Dublin I visited “The Waldorf Barbers’ a historical barbershop founded in 1929 and inherited from father to son.
Wherever you are, the bell that rings when you enter the barbershop has the same universal effect: you leave your worries and burdens at the doorstep and suddenly the wide-smiling man in the white gown becomes the best friend you’ve ever had. And then the ritual begins.
