Anonymous asked: Where are affordable places to get a haircut?

The most affordable place to get a haircut is at the hands of a girl you know. There is a danger in this. No, the danger is not a bad haircut. The haircut will be fine, and even if it’s not, well, bad haircuts pass with time. The danger is in the intimacy of haircutting. I think it was Pablo Neruda who wrote “Spoon over spoon / cuts spoon’s hair,” or some business like that. Point is: if you let a girl cut your hair, she is going to fall in love with you. You’re just trying to save a twenty or three and you wind up crushing a goddamn human lady. Don’t do this. Haircutting is like sex work. There needs to be put in an place a professional distance and an implicit trust that both parties will maintain a respectful stance towards each other’s hearts.

I have never solicited a prostitute. I have never even been to a strip club. But I tip a haircutter with the same kind of superstitious glee that is prompted by the skin trade. Forty percent? I don’t know. Whatever number of dollars is needed to obscure that feeling I feel during a shampoo.

The Public at Geary and Taylor does very good work and will run you, a man, $26. The prices for women, if I can recall, are far less reasonable. Allegedly there is a quality Supercuts in Noe Valley, but I’ve yet to test those waters. There is a racist Mongolian in South-of-Market who will talk to you in unclear codes about what goes on in Oakland, and who charges under $20 for reasonable work, but there’s a stink of the arbitrary around him and the whole thing feels like navy sex. There is a time for navy sex, certainly (such as when one is at sea), but a haircut should be about the pleasures of the harbor.