Men's Cut, Standard, Nine Dollars, Discontinued

The tablet asked me to describe my relationship with my hair.

It offered four options: Intentional, Evolving, Low-Maintenance But Curious, and It's Complicated. There was no button for It's on my head and it's too long, which was the entire reason I'd driven to Airport Boulevard on a Wednesday morning. I picked It's Complicated, because that felt honest about the next forty minutes.

The morning after an election is when a lot of men get haircuts. I have no data on this. I just know that when the world feels out of your hands, the back of your neck is one of the few things a stranger with clippers can still fix. That used to be a nine-dollar transaction. It used to come with a lollipop.

The Place That Was Here

For about twenty years, this storefront between a tire shop and a tax preparer was a barbershop I'll call Ray's, because that's what the sign said, in red vinyl letters that had partly given up. By the end it said R Y'S, which everyone pronounced "Rye's" as a kind of tribute.

Ray's had three chairs, two barbers, and one rule. There was no sign-in sheet. You walked in, looked at the guys waiting along the wall, and remembered who came before you. That honor system worked better than any app I've used since. Nobody cut. Once a man in a UT polo tried, and the whole wall cleared its throat at the same time, like a church.

The jar of Barbicide sat on the counter glowing that impossible blue, the color of a swimming pool in a cartoon. The place smelled like talc, Clubman, and whatever the tire shop next door was burning. A box TV in the corner ran a Spurs game, or a replay of a Spurs game, or a novela with the sound off. The barber, a man whose forearms had their own weather, would ask "Same?" and you'd say "Same," and that was the consultation.

Men's cut: $9. Kids: $7. Shave: $12, and you had to really want it.

Afterward he brushed the back of your neck with a powdered brush that sounded like a whisper, and you took a Dum-Dum from the bowl, even at forty-five. Especially at forty-five.

The Place That Is Here Now

It's called a "grooming studio" now. The name is two nouns and an ampersand, which I won't repeat, because I don't want to help its search ranking. Its sign is laser-etched birch with no letters that could fall off. That's progress. Now nothing can be mispronounced affectionately.

Inside, the walls are the green of a twelve-dollar salad. There's a bar cart with a brass rail. Someone has put a record player on a shelf, and it's playing, but I'd bet my car the sound is coming from a Bluetooth speaker behind a fern. The waiting area has one leather sling chair and a small shelf of hardcover books about whiskey and watches. Nobody has ever read them. They are load-bearing décor.

A young man named something with a Y in it greeted me, offered an oat-milk cortado, and walked me through the menu like a sommelier would.

The Menu

There's no "men's cut." I asked. He looked at me with real kindness, like I'd asked where to rent a VHS tape.

Here's what was on the menu:

• Signature Cut: $78. Includes consultation, wash, cut, "finish," and hot towel.
• Signature Cut + Beard Sculpt: $112. I don't have a beard. He said that didn't disqualify me.
• Scalp Ritual Add-On: $14. "Exfoliating, grounding." I didn't know my scalp was ungrounded. Apparently it's been floating.
• Express Tidy: $52. Fifteen minutes. That works out to about $3.47 a minute, which is also the old Ray's price for most of a sideburn.
• Membership: $139 a month for "unlimited maintenance" and "priority booking," for the man who wants a haircut subscription the way other men want a boat.

There's a 48-hour cancellation policy, and a no-show is charged in full. Ray's no-show policy was that the next guy got your chair, and nobody's credit card got involved.

The Consultation

Let's be fair here, because the guy with the Y was perfectly nice. He's not the problem. He has student loans and probably a roommate and a lease that went up eleven percent in August. He's doing what the room told him to do.

What the room told him to do was ask me eleven questions about my hair.

How did I want to feel when I left? (Shorter.) What was my morning routine like? (Coffee, swearing, the radio.) Had I ever thought about texture? (Not once in sixty years, and I'm not starting under these lights.) He studied my head in the mirror and turned it gently, like he was appraising a vase at an estate sale.

Then he said the line I knew was coming: "So what I'm hearing is, you want something clean but not too clean."

What he was hearing, specifically, was "Same."

The Cut

To be fair to the scissors, the haircut was good. It was a perfectly fine haircut. It was also, to my eye and my wife's, the exact haircut Ray's gave me for nine dollars in 2004. It was the same taper and the same part, on the same stubborn cowlick that has outlived three mayors.

The difference was the choreography around it. There was a warm towel, then a cool towel. Some product came out of a matte black jar that cost more than my first car payment, and he explained it by origin, like coffee. He sprayed a mist over my head and called it a "finishing tonic." Then a handheld mirror came up so I could approve the back of my own head, which I have never seen in person and have no basis to evaluate.

No powder brush. No whisper. No Dum-Dum.

I asked about the lollipop. He said they used to have "artisanal mints" but discontinued them over "sourcing." I believe him. I'd also bet the mints had a consultation.

Checkout

The total for the Signature Cut came to $78. Sales tax isn't charged on haircuts here, so one thing in this town has held the line.

Then the iPad swiveled toward me, and the tip screen started at 25%. It also offered 30% and 35%, and a Custom button in very small print that could have been in another zip code. I tipped, because the kid with the Y didn't set the prices. He just got stuck standing in front of them.

The receipt came by text. It thanked me for "investing in myself." It suggested I rebook in three to four weeks to "maintain the shape." It also gave me a referral code worth $15 off if I could talk a friend into the same experience. I can't think of a single friend I'd do that to.

The Math

Nine dollars in 2004, carried forward with ordinary inflation, comes to something in the mid-teens today. Call it fifteen bucks. Throw in rent on Airport Boulevard, a little more for the barber's trouble, and a Dum-Dum adjusted for sugar prices, and you could talk me up to twenty-five, maybe thirty, without much fight.

So I don't think of the other forty-eight dollars as the price of a haircut. That's the price of the birch sign, the sling chair, the unread whiskey books, the fake record player, the eleven questions, and the cool towel that follows the warm towel. In other words, it's the cost of being made to feel that a haircut is a lifestyle, when all I ever wanted was for it to be over.

The tire shop next door is still there, by the way. It still smells like burning, and it still fixes a flat for twenty bucks without asking how you want to feel when you leave.

I'm thinking about asking if they'll take a little off the sides.