Living on the Edge

Finding relaxation with a straight razor at my throat.

by Trey Popp

Michael T. Regan THE MIRROR AND THE RAZOR BLADE: The Art of Shaving's John Simonton lures another convert to the straight edge lifestyle. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Music was trickling out of a radio and a leather cushion propped up my street-sore feet, but it wasn't until John Simonton touched a razor blade to my Adam's apple that I truly could relax. February's chill was two panes of glass away. Sensation was returning to my nose. A week's worth of whiskers was still itching my face like poison sumac, but the chin thicket was about to go. For the first time in a decade, I was about to get a shave.

It was going to cost approximately 200 times more than my last one. The Art of Shaving, whose Walnut Street storefront faces Le Bec-Fin, is not your ordinary barber shop. Its walls are lined with display cases whose glass windows are so spotless you might be afraid to touch them without a pair of white silk gloves. Inside, lit like precious stones in a museum display, are razors whose Mach 3 cartridges snap into handles made of exotic woods, ivory and sterling silver. Badger-hair shaving brushes command prices that will make you wonder if financing plans are available. There isn't a red-and-white-striped pole in sight.

The straight-edge specialists I used to frequent in India didn't sport twirling poles either, but considering what they charged for their services, such adornment was a cost better avoided. The going price for a smooth face ten years ago ranged from two American dimes to a quarter. After getting past high-strung nerves and an overdeveloped fainting reflex my first time in the chair, I was hooked. Why hunt for imported disposable cartridges when a man with 30 or 40 years of experience would shave me for a song? I threw away my lathering gel.

Straight-edge razors used to be part of American barbering, as well, but they've been on the wane since 1904, when U.S. patent number 775134 was awarded to a man named King Gillette. Partly by persuading the government to buy one of his new safety razors for every soldier sent off to the first world war, Gillette pioneered a business model based on two things that have defined our economy ever since: speed and waste. A Gillette could get the job done in a minute or two, and instead of washing and drying it you could just throw the blade away. By the time the GIs came home, they'd gone through 32 million disposable cartridges.

But the art has not entirely vanished. The low price of labor has kept it alive in some parts of the developing world, and it may even be staging a comeback in the States. Before donning a pinstripe suit and vest to man the chair at The Art, John had been wielding a straight-edge for six or seven years, having honed his skills on family members. "If you're popping balloons," he said of one classic training exercise, "you should just give it up."

"The problem is time. You can do two haircuts in the time it takes to do one shave, so barbers just kind of stopped."

In a service economy trying to turn American men into metrosexuals with a potent appetite for pampering, that decades-long pause has given the barber shave a new allure. The Art of Shaving started in New York 12 years ago, and has spun the "barber spa" concept into about 30 locations across the country. Even the "traditional" treatment stretches to about half an hour — my Indian jobs usually took about 10 minutes — and resembles a facial almost as much as a plain old shave. "Once they get over their anxiety the first time," John told me, "some guys practically fall asleep in the chair. My only worry is that they'll wake up with a jump."

Under John's care, that began with a steaming, lemon-scented towel draped across my face. Had someone tried to do this to me on the Ganges plain in July, I would have called the police, but with daytime temperatures hovering at the freezing point, it was another story. And after a brief massage with a dash of pre-shave oil, it got even better. At The Art, shaving cream is dispensed from a machine that warms the lather on the way out.

What with badger hair making mink look cheap, John sidestepped the shaving brush and used his hands instead. Semi-sensitive skin established, he took one pass with the grain and a second across it, rather than against it.

As I lay semi-supine in the reclining chair, with my feet stretched out before me, I suddenly remembered what I had been missing all these years. What separates a skilled barber from a hack is how he uses his free fingers to pull your skin this way and that, exposing the whiskers to be clipped, and in this area John was unsurpassed. Forget about the cold clean towel with which he refreshed me at the end, or the hydrating rose-water spray, or the aftershave balm that fetches 30-odd dollars behind the counter, or even the fact that my cheek emerged as smooth as a piano key. All those tiny finger pressures were what had sold me on the barber shave to begin with. The whole process was in large part a massage. What cost 20 cents in Rajasthan fetches $35 here, but the essential point is blessedly the same: What a good barber can do with a straight-edge is make you almost forget about the blade altogether.

All the more reason to be glad it's making a comeback.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)