HAIR CUT
The high point of the day was my visit to the barber. While the rest of the group visited the botanical gardens I took a shower and washed my hair in preparation for a haircut. I located the barber’s pole on the wide avenue on the way to the cathedral near the shop where I has bought lovely paper flowers.
I went in to a courtyard but couldn’t find it. But I kept looking and. walked up some steps, met someone at the top and asked about the barber and was told to come ahead. This guy ran a second floor coffee shop that also no one could find. Since I only had 200 pesos I asked the apparent barber what it would cost and he said 280 pesos, but that he would take a card. So I sat down and first was offered a choice of a variety of coffees from the coffee shop guy, chose capacinno, then the young, male, tattooed, earringed barber began to work on me with a young woman, a barber in training, working on me at the same time.
He clipped my hair with scissors and she had a little machine that cleared every hair from my nostrils and my ears and then she started on my mustache while he continued to clip away slowly and carefully, a twenty minute process. Soon he was also using a straight razor to clean my cheeks and neck and around my ears. He applied very hot towels, swaddling my face, and around my neck to open my pores and then on the top of my bald head. Then he applied aftershave to the shaved areas and then applied wet ice cold towels, mummifying my head, to close my pores. He was very considerate of my skin. He massaged my neck a little and then continued applying touch ups all over with a buzzing device while the woman did as well. On and on it went for over an hour. When he was finally satisfied I asked for the price and he told me that the actual price was 550 pesos, $27.50, but that he was offering a discount of 320 pesos which I raised to 350 with a 10% tip or $17.50.
My Trump loving Swannanoa barber charges only $11 with a tip to $13. His barber shop was spared when all the other stores around his shop on Rte. 70 in Swannanoa were destroyed by the floodwaters of the Swannanoa River after tropical storm Helene, spared a direct intervention by God he said, without explaining why his Trump loving neighbors were washed away. But my Swannanoa barber trims my beard in two minutes and this beard trim took much more than thirty. And my Swannanoa barber doesn’t use a straight razor or gently open and close my pores and make sure that I am comfortable the whole time or provide a choice of coffees to sip when done. In fact, the experience was so intense that being made presentable was the smallest part of the experience. The cross-cultural experience of getting my hair cut was one of the high points of my visit to San Miguel de Allende. The glow I felt has continued for the rest of the day.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 