There are two unisex salons in our part of town, which is a big number of such establishments for a town as accidentally retro as this one. Anyhow, been in one but not the other. The one I’ve been to (out of desperation ’cause my head was starting to look like an abandoned truck garden) had pale blue paint on the walls, thick as elephant skin, and the pressed tin ceiling was painted blue, as well. There were, of course, lots of crooked shelves stocked with tall and short bottles of pink and yellow fluids, sundry vintage styling appliances hanging from tangled phone cords, assorted industrial blow dryers that looked like the type you’d use to dry the paint on a battleship hull, enough worn-out Soap Opera Digests to restock the Library of Alexandria, and some really stilted CBS soaps on the t.v. (the kind where everyone has a completely unlikely name and several of the actors have dimples in places where normal humans rarely get dimples, like in the middle of their foreheads and on the ends of their noses). We never saw any of the CBS soaps growing up, so the characters and locations were all even more alien to me than usual; can’t stand that style of storytelling, in any case, but daytime t.v.’s also weirdly interesting, if you only have to see it once in a great while, like for the quick ten minutes it takes to get the occasional haircut. One minute more than that is way, way too much. But, you know, it’s funny how there are all these fake lives getting lived out on some soundstage in Culver City or wherever, some of ‘em connected to storylines that are decades long, and yet, it’s really, really hard to care about ‘em, ’cause the artistry of what they’re doing and how they’re doing it is pretty much 100% nonexistent. Meanwhile, there are real people with real stories walking into salons and beautyshops and barbershops every single day, and that’s what I wish I knew more about, all that kind of stuff, all the tangled-up hidden stories that are next door or just around the corner. Guess I oughta quit cutting my own hair (nowadays I work a trimmer over it like how a lawn care service works a suburban lawn - quick and without any subtlety). Guess instead I oughta go try out every barbershop in the whole dang city, maybe set aside a monthly budget for social research. Guess I oughta do a lot of things I don’t do, but which are nonetheless not completely terrible ideas.
Anyhow, the other unisex salon a couple of miles from me has this kind of nice sign, probably unchanged since the Seventies, with the name of the place in an old (and completely un-ironic) groovy font. In order to illustrate the nature of the business, the sign sports two portraits, a man and a woman done with a few sketchy brushstrokes. The hairstyles depicted are, in fact, pretty unisex, since the man and the woman both have Farrah Fawcett hair. You can only tell there oughta be a difference ’cause the guy has a scary moustache…it looks like a roadkilled ferret, or perhaps it’s more like a ruined wet cigar. So, yeah, obviously, I’ve nothing real compelling to say anymore. Tomorrow I’ve got to work and then work some more…always getting caught up. Better go think about that instead of thinking about this sketchbook thing, or whatever it is.
