Explaining some of the more odd rituals to those who haven’t ventured to the city is an interesting process. Not because for the exception of the ritual in the experience, but for what it signifies the absence of: exercising one’s ability to choose from the myriad, and instead settling for the repetitive and possibly banal.
The coffee cart is one: the ubiquitous corner cart, an amazing bit of engineering and commerce. I’ve only ‘had’ one, for a few months, and I marveled each morning at the speed and regularity of it all.
[For those who haven’t seen it, they are wheeled carts — trailers, really, except the are barely larger than a person — that appear on the streets around 5AM, offering coffee, bagels and donuts. Customers are regulars, and fiercely loyal. Most get the same thing each morning, and by the time your turn has queued you up, your selections are ready. There is a pile of money on the counter, and you make your own change, exchange some pleasant words with ‘your guy’ and move along. They sell out by 10AM or so, to be replaced by the lunch carts. Even with the proliferation of Starbucks, they hold on, by dint of economy, being by far the cheapest coffee in the city, and loyalty of customers]
The routine is embraced as a way of breaking off a small slice of the day and fixing it. With plenty more to worry about, and hating the inevitability of morning and the tardiness it brings, why bother with choice?
So we have any number of fixed events. I don’t have a coffee cart anyone more, but I have had my hair cut by the same stylist every three weeks (four if busy) since I have moved here. Tipped both to the good deal, and the certainty it was one of those ‘New York experiences’ I struck out for Astor Place Haircutters the first time I needed a haircut.
Located, obviously, on Astor Place, it used to be a smallish storefront with 8 or so chairs on the street level. I went in, having heard a number of superlatives from friends, but stood somewhat confused at the averageness of the scene. All the chairs were full, and I stood, daft, trying to figure out the procedure. Someone jerked a thumb at a stair, and I descended to what was, and is, the largest hair cutting emporium I have ever seen — and now is the entirety, the ground level given over to chain store hegemony.
Commandeering what appears to be the basement of the entire building that sits on the corner of Broadway and Astor Place (though there is evidence of a sub basement, which I am always tempted to sneak in), there are easily 50 chairs, each ‘owned’ by a particular stylist, with all the attendant personalization that one might find in a high school locker. Some are papered with celebrities photos that might imply possible cuts, possible customers, or possible cheesecake. Some are expert in particulars (the gentlemen near my chair seems to do a great deal of old school East Village dyeing), some I can’t tell what they do.
It’s a big, quiet room. In the city, I think can only think of a few: Grand Central Station, Katz’s, and Astor Place. Elementally New York places all. And each manages to provide a warm and comfortable envelope of privacy. Perhaps it is physical, but the disparity and obvious disjunction between privacy and the lived reality — Katz’s and the harsh light, Grand Central and the rushing crowds, or Astor and its almost nonstop bustle — make it something else, a cone of privacy that rings true to our notion of the anonymous big city. The faith that you can be anyone here seems fleetingly possible, mostly because you are no one at these places. The triumph of socialism in the form of anonymity.
My stylist has one of the simpler layouts, her name in press-on letters on the mirror, maybe a Russian language daily on the side, and then the bare minimum of implements. Her clientele seem to reflect this: mostly men, straight forward haircuts. That’s how I would characterize mine, since I haven’t had to describe it in seven years, because the our sessions usually proceed as follows:
I walk in, sit down, she drapes the bib on me and says, clipped, but cheerful, with a lingering Russian accent: “Like usual?” I sometimes say “Yes”, but as often just nod. She cuts my hair in silence, flashes a mirror at the end, and closes by saying “See you next time”.
It sounds more brusque than it is. After the first couple of years of this, I assumed that perhaps she simply liked to work in silence. I certainly do, and even as hair cutting is a vaguely social activity, it’s still a job, and some people don’t like to talk at their job. After September 11, we had the most awkward of greetings, certainly one of relief and joy at being able to return to this routine, but she intimated how unsettling it was, wondering if some clients simply stopped coming, moved, or far worse.
Somewhere around this time, I started to feel bad about our rectitude, worrying perhaps that it was me enforcing an unwanted silence. After all, this woman worried about my health and didn’t even know my name. Rather than expose my poor manners, I decide to take a roundabout route one day.
I asked her if she would know my haircut if I weren’t sitting there. It struck me once that given the welter of people she might service “Like usual?” could encompass a hell of a lot. She said of course she would, and I asked how many regular customers she had — 200 or 300 it turns out (making her unknowing after September 11 all the more challenging). I felt like I had made some headway in the way of civility, so I offered, slightly shamefaced, my name, appending that I felt bad after all these years of not introducing myself. She paused, and said in a friendly, but very particular, way “Oh, I’m not so good with names.”
That sealed it. I returned to my comfortable silence, and have barely spoken to her since. We chat if she has a pending vacation, or if she figures there will be a scheduling problem for other reasons. But we have settled comfortably back into the “Like usual?” routine, and I’ve looked forward to every hair cut since.
Wednesday Lore*. Like usual?
Explaining some of the more odd rituals to those who haven’t ventured to the city is an interesting process. Not because for the exception of the ritual in the experience, but for what it signifies the absence of: exercising one’s ability to choose from the myriad, and instead settling for the repetitive and possibly banal.
The coffee cart is one: the ubiquitous corner cart, an amazing bit of engineering and commerce. I’ve only ‘had’ one, for a few months, and I marveled each morning at the speed and regularity of it all.
[For those who haven’t seen it, they are wheeled carts — trailers, really, except the are barely larger than a person — that appear on the streets around 5AM, offering coffee, bagels and donuts. Customers are regulars, and fiercely loyal. Most get the same thing each morning, and by the time your turn has queued you up, your selections are ready. There is a pile of money on the counter, and you make your own change, exchange some pleasant words with ‘your guy’ and move along. They sell out by 10AM or so, to be replaced by the lunch carts. Even with the proliferation of Starbucks, they hold on, by dint of economy, being by far the cheapest coffee in the city, and loyalty of customers]
The routine is embraced as a way of breaking off a small slice of the day and fixing it. With plenty more to worry about, and hating the inevitability of morning and the tardiness it brings, why bother with choice?
So we have any number of fixed events. I don’t have a coffee cart anyone more, but I have had my hair cut by the same stylist every three weeks (four if busy) since I have moved here. Tipped both to the good deal, and the certainty it was one of those ‘New York experiences’ I struck out for Astor Place Haircutters the first time I needed a haircut.
Located, obviously, on Astor Place, it used to be a smallish storefront with 8 or so chairs on the street level. I went in, having heard a number of superlatives from friends, but stood somewhat confused at the averageness of the scene. All the chairs were full, and I stood, daft, trying to figure out the procedure. Someone jerked a thumb at a stair, and I descended to what was, and is, the largest hair cutting emporium I have ever seen — and now is the entirety, the ground level given over to chain store hegemony.
Commandeering what appears to be the basement of the entire building that sits on the corner of Broadway and Astor Place (though there is evidence of a sub basement, which I am always tempted to sneak in), there are easily 50 chairs, each ‘owned’ by a particular stylist, with all the attendant personalization that one might find in a high school locker. Some are papered with celebrities photos that might imply possible cuts, possible customers, or possible cheesecake. Some are expert in particulars (the gentlemen near my chair seems to do a great deal of old school East Village dyeing), some I can’t tell what they do.
It’s a big, quiet room. In the city, I think can only think of a few: Grand Central Station, Katz’s, and Astor Place. Elementally New York places all. And each manages to provide a warm and comfortable envelope of privacy. Perhaps it is physical, but the disparity and obvious disjunction between privacy and the lived reality — Katz’s and the harsh light, Grand Central and the rushing crowds, or Astor and its almost nonstop bustle — make it something else, a cone of privacy that rings true to our notion of the anonymous big city. The faith that you can be anyone here seems fleetingly possible, mostly because you are no one at these places. The triumph of socialism in the form of anonymity.
My stylist has one of the simpler layouts, her name in press-on letters on the mirror, maybe a Russian language daily on the side, and then the bare minimum of implements. Her clientele seem to reflect this: mostly men, straight forward haircuts. That’s how I would characterize mine, since I haven’t had to describe it in seven years, because the our sessions usually proceed as follows:
I walk in, sit down, she drapes the bib on me and says, clipped, but cheerful, with a lingering Russian accent: “Like usual?” I sometimes say “Yes”, but as often just nod. She cuts my hair in silence, flashes a mirror at the end, and closes by saying “See you next time”.
It sounds more brusque than it is. After the first couple of years of this, I assumed that perhaps she simply liked to work in silence. I certainly do, and even as hair cutting is a vaguely social activity, it’s still a job, and some people don’t like to talk at their job. After September 11, we had the most awkward of greetings, certainly one of relief and joy at being able to return to this routine, but she intimated how unsettling it was, wondering if some clients simply stopped coming, moved, or far worse.
Somewhere around this time, I started to feel bad about our rectitude, worrying perhaps that it was me enforcing an unwanted silence. After all, this woman worried about my health and didn’t even know my name. Rather than expose my poor manners, I decide to take a roundabout route one day.
I asked her if she would know my haircut if I weren’t sitting there. It struck me once that given the welter of people she might service “Like usual?” could encompass a hell of a lot. She said of course she would, and I asked how many regular customers she had — 200 or 300 it turns out (making her unknowing after September 11 all the more challenging). I felt like I had made some headway in the way of civility, so I offered, slightly shamefaced, my name, appending that I felt bad after all these years of not introducing myself. She paused, and said in a friendly, but very particular, way “Oh, I’m not so good with names.”
That sealed it. I returned to my comfortable silence, and have barely spoken to her since. We chat if she has a pending vacation, or if she figures there will be a scheduling problem for other reasons. But we have settled comfortably back into the “Like usual?” routine, and I’ve looked forward to every hair cut since.
* Details at the beginning of this post.