Tiger Stripes – The $1.50 Haircut:

After my visit to Missoula, I’ve decided you can tell a lot about a place from barbershop. In Wallingford, at my usual spot, the “stylists” sport a minimum of 15 tattoos, have dyed hair, pho-hawks, and all play in bands. While cutting my hair they blast music, complain about his/her boss or how they are getting evicted from their place of residence and they charge extra for washing my hair. Haircut = $20 + tip. Now in Missoula, you get a drink of your choice (including beer, wine, cocktails) while you wait on the most comfortable couches imaginable while watching sports (Euro 2008 while I was there) on a giant plasma screen. The barbers/barberesses (?) are the friendliest down-to-earth people imaginable talking about their families, friends, and the on-goings in town. Included in the $20 is a single-blade shave, a warm towel for your face, and a hair wash. You can even grab another beer and continue to watch the game afterwards! Now in Jima…wow. So apparently after stopping by for 4 days in a row, it is only open on Sundays, although there is no sign indicating such. The ceilings must be no more than 6 feet 2 inches from the floor, with a dangling not-working light dangling to about the middle of my forehead, which does smart a bit. When we got their (Lara for moral support) we either third in line or second in line with one of the men representing a kid who was already getting his haircut with one of the 2 women who where cutting hair. As far as we could tell they were almost done with the two kids who were getting their haircut so we figured it wouldn’t be more than 20 minutes, which was confirmed when another man walked in and was told that it would be 20 minutes for him. Well after 20 minutes, they still weren’t done with the two whom they had been working on when we arrived, and now there was at least 5 people waiting. When they finished with one of the kids, all 5 waiting people (except me) stood up as if they were next. After some confused looks, a few Ecua-wines (Lara’s favorite as she gets this nearly constantly from her kids….it is short for Ecuadorian wining) one of the persons who was there prior to us did take his place in the chair. Something Lara and I are learning is whether waiting for a bus, to pay for food, or whatever, there is no concept of a line in Ecuador. Anyways, finally I was up and got the old switch-aroo, as the woman who was cutting the other guys hair stopped halfway through and came over to cut my hair. I was probably still a foot taller than her when I was sitting down, so I had to slouch in order for her to reach the top of my head. After a quick once over with a #2 guard on the electric razor the second switch-aroo was made with the woman who passed on my hair at the beginning stopped with the other guy and came back over to me. She proceeded to shave my neck and sideburns…so I was thinking okay, specialization of labor, one is better at using the electric razor and one is better at shaving the neck, except after paying the $1.50 and leaving the dark room and into the bright sun light, it was obvious that electric shaving was not the specialty of the first woman to cut my hair because their were stripes all over my head.