Unlike some of the other interviews I’ve done lately, I probably could have figured this one out on my own. Turns out what a hairdresser does all day is cut hair (doye), rip butts out back and gossip with chicks. But then I remembered all the stuff I usually want to ask the person cutting my hair about the ins and outs of their job, like why the hell they got into it in the first place, and how disappointed their dad is in their life choice.
This friend of mine used to do the same thing I do: ask guitar players how excited they are about their new record and pretend it’s journalism. He was good at it too. Then he became a hairstylist out of nowhere, which, let’s be honest, is kind of a step up in the world.
SBTVC: What’s the salon you work at like? Is it considered a good gig as far as salons go?
HAIRSTYLIST: I work at a franchise that’s like the Hot Topic of hair cutting places. The staff is a bunch of drunks from the Island of Misfit Toys, and we all get along really well despite having nothing in common. We’re located on a heavy foot-traffic area of the city, so we get every type of random person walking in. Tons of college students, tourists, hood thugs, professional athletes, little old black ladies, little Asian kids. I have a trans client who I watched go from woman-to-man over the past three years, a record-setting powerlifter, a black female stripper whose head I shave, Fulbright scholars… it’s just all-over-the-place, which keeps it interesting. If I had to do just long layers and highlights or #2 clipper fades all day I’d be bored to tears, so the diversity of the clientele and the fact that it’ll always be steady business-wise makes it a good gig, though nobody will ever get rich working there.
What’s the pecking order in the styling biz? Does everyone aspire to work at the high end douche salon where you serve cappuccinos and shit to distract from the $300 blow dry price tag?
Some places are strictly hourly plus tips, some are strictly commission, some places are booth rentals where you pay weekly or monthly for your station and then keep whatever you charge your clients. It’s really maddening when you start out in this business, because each salon is its own microcosm and you don’t really know what a place is going to be all about until you’re actually in it for a while.
You’re also dealing with hairdressers, who probably have substance abuse problems and/or horrifying emotional issues, who have no idea how to run a business. I worked at about a dozen different places, from Supercuts to chi-chi shops in the suburbs with marble floors and mimosas, and pecking order and status don’t mean shit if you’re not gonna be happy or be able to build up a clientele. Personally I’d rather go back to working at Supercuts than a $300 blow dry type place. I have no desire to work with that kind of high maintenance clientele, and I can’t for the life of me imagine charging $80 or more for a haircut. There are places that charge literally $250 or more for a cut with their “lead stylist” or whatever. Bullshit. That’s not honest work to me and I wouldn’t be happy or comfortable in a salon that drew people willing to pay those prices, even though there are stylists working there making an easy six figures.
What sort of schooling did you have to go to?
You have to go for 1,000 hours to get your cosmetology license. I went to a Vocational High School when I was 26. They call it a post-grad program, but it’s like being back in full-on high school with a bunch of 15 year old broads. It was crazy. 15 year old girls now do not look like the ones I went to high school with. And these were like the bad dumb kids who go to voke in the first place, all orange from too much tanning, with their boobs and thongs hanging out. You could see how haggard and used-up they’d look by the time they hit 30. A bunch of them were doing oxycontin and whatever else on the reg, and they’d think nothing of having a 3-way with dudes, like that became standard practice in high school all of a sudden. I heard all kinds of stories that were sort of terrifying. At the same time though, they were like these little kids who’d sip Capri Suns that their moms packed in their lunch. It was a weird dichotomy.
That makes me a little nervous. So who are the worst type of customers, or clients or whatever you call them? What do you call them?
Indians are the absolute worst clients by far. 8 out of 10 of them stink like they live in a curry-scented septic tank, they’re rude, they don’t tip, and they want you to cut their hair five times. Like they can’t just fucking say what they want, they go, “Make it small here, and make it big here,” or “Give me a medium haircut.” I don’t know what the fuck a medium haircut is. The women all have hair down to their asses and want it blow-dried straight, which is backbreaking and takes forever. They invariably say something about how few rupees a haircut costs back home, like the equivalent of 90 cents here, and they tend to be demeaning in general. It’s not inherently their fault, their culture just sucks. College kids from Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey or any New York suburb, same thing – shitty attitude, shitty style, the culture just sucks. Off the boat Irish, English, and Europeans in general don’t tip and want dumb-looking haircuts.
What’s the grossest head you’ve ever seen?
Clinical dandruff is really nasty. When people say they have dandruff and go buy some Head & Shoulders to take care of it, that’s not really dandruff, that’s dry scalp. Real dandruff looks and smells like leprosy, just big chunks of oily skin falling off. What’s that other deal that’s all red and itchy and gross that people have, psoriasis? Sometimes you get one or both of those things on somebody who hasn’t washed their hair in a week, and you have to breathe through your mouth the whole time and get them out of the chair as quickly as possible and change the cape and Febreze your station, and your tools are all greasy and shit. Ugh, people are just nasty sometimes, but you get used to it.
You sort of decided to become a hair-person out of nowhere a few years back. What did your dad think? You’re Italian, right? Isn’t being a barber sort of a masculine Italian thing?
I’m not a barber, I’m a hairdresser or “stylist” or whatever faggy-sounding thing you want to call it. I have a cosmetology license, and part of my beauty school training was in doing mani/pedis, applying makeup, doing up-dos and perms, all that masculine stuff.
My dad still has issues with calling me a hairdresser when people ask him what his son does. I think a typical exchange with him is something like: “My son cuts hair.” “Oh, he’s a barber?” “No, he’s a hairdresser, but he’s not gay.” Cutting hair in general seems to be a big Italian thing though for some reason, like Koreans do nails and Eastern Europeans do waxing, not sure why that is. My motivation for becoming a hair-person was that I graduated from an unremarkable state college with an unremarkable GPA in my English degree right around the time the dot com bubble burst, followed by 9/11, and trying to live off freelance writing jobs and entry-level publishing grunt-work kind of sucked, as did the administrative office job I ended up doing for three years while trying to figure out what to do with myself.
I was working at a college in their night school program and was meeting all these adjunct professors, people with PhDs and shit, who were busting ass to make less than $30k a year, who had no benefits and no job security. I could’ve gotten a free Master’s, but had no idea what I would do with it, and the people I worked with all day weren’t the greatest inspirations to acquire even more useless liberal arts education. So I figured hair is always gonna grow, it’s a trade that I have in my hands that I can take with me anywhere in the world, I can be my own boss, open my own business, it’s tangible, I see the results right away, always have cash in my pocket, I don’t take anything home with me or have anything waiting on my desk in the morning, I work in a climate-controlled environment, I never wake up to an alarm clock, and it’s a pretty sweet way to meet girls.
Oh shit. You’re not gay. I probably shouldn’t have used that picture for this interview.
What picture?
Some gay dude.
Whatever.
So what the fuck am I supposed to tip when I get my fade done for like ten minutes? What do people tip in general?
I think $5 is a reasonable minimum no matter how much the cut cost or how long it took. I used to leave a $5 on my counter to make it look like that was what the last client had left to give people a clue. I don’t know why people put a premium on time when it comes to haircuts, or anything else for that matter, because I equate speed with skill and experience. I’ve done literally 12,000+ fades at this point and can do it really fucking fast, because I started out at Supercuts and that was the only way to make money, just do a zillion cuts and hope for fives. But if you go to some douchey high end place, those people are gonna spend an hour on your hair and charge you up the ass for it because they don’t know what they’re doing, and you’re paying them a lot of money to basically practice on you, which we call “fake it ‘til you make it.” If the person cutting your hair is taking forever and blowing all kinds of smoke about “texture,” they’re probably just buying time while trying to blend out whatever mistake they made.
Does the girl cutting my hair know she is rubbing her snatch on my arm the whole time or is that wishful thinking on my part?
Some broads are intentionally flirting with you, but then some do that to everyone to make tips, like a stripper. Regardless, a little flirting never hurt anyone, so go for it. Hairdressers are generally a bunch of drunk sluts. It’s a fine line to walk though, because there’s nothing more awkward than watching a dude aggressively hit on someone he has no chance with, and she still has to be nice and professional.
I’ll keep that in mind. So my friend wants to know if it’s normal to get a half boner when you’re getting your hair washed. Because that shit is really relaxing for him.
I look like Ricky Martin’s doppelganger and have a ton of gay clients, so it happens a lot. I know something’s up when I take the cape off and the dude just wants to sit and linger there, like he’s in 8th grade and stalling after being called unexpectedly to the blackboard to solve a problem.
What’s the best part of your job? Do you take satisfaction in helping people look good?
Most definitely, yeah. I think it’s really awesome when I do a couple’s hair for their wedding photos or whatever big occasion they have in their lives, and I played a part in that. Or when somebody’s in a career or relationship rut and I listen to them talk about their lives, give them a new look and make them feel better about themselves, that’s great. That and seeing the results of my work right away are probably the best parts, and feeling like I really did something tangible at the end of the day.
SBTV
