This response is written by a college student who, after some personal reflection on this subject, has written his opinion - as a member of the younger generation - about the barber shop vs. beauty salon debate.
After about a month of repeated visits to the site and two haircuts in between, I think I have found the almost ideal hybrid between a salon and a barber shop. For many years it used to be an excepted tradition in the family, my dad and I would make monthly pilgrimages to a barber shop together. During that time, my dad would usually be the one describing what he wanted done with my hair. As of about age 12 or 13, I felt like it was time for me to take control of that part of my life. Since then, I have wandered in and out of various haircutting places, from chain haircutteries to single chair barber shops, without finding the exact atmosphere that I like.
I am now in my third year of college in a small Midwestern town of about 35,000 people in west central Illinois. As you can imagine, with a town of this size there are various incarnations of places to get your haircut. For the first year and a half of my college career I went to the same single chair barber shop. The barber was nice and everything but eventually I felt like I needed a change. So, I felt daring and tried a multiple chair beauty salon and the atmosphere in there of chatty small-town gossip without the individual attention aspect of the single-chair barber shop turned me off in a hurry. Fine, so let's try another hybrid, the single chair beauty salon. The place seemed simply too cramped and claustrophobic and the typical beauty salon smells were a little too strong for my taste. But, I had found the right combination of service and expertise in haircutting to suit my taste.
Finally, yesterday I felt the need for a haircut after only three weeks of growth for the last one because of various conditions, including the rising spring warmth which made my thick wavy hair a bit too unmanageable. In looking around once again I found this "full-service day spa and salon" with a staff of about six or seven people (including a couple of male hairstylists neither of whom I tried yesterday) and what looked from the outside of the shop as another different sort of atmosphere. I couldn't tell what that twist was from the outside but I was definitely intrigued.
As soon as I entered the salon for my haircut I noticed something very different yet comforting about this place. After I met my new stylist, she took me to a very private room with only her chair and a mirror in the room and a door which we entered through. After she sat me down in her chair and we discussed how I wanted it cut, she walked me over to another room where the shampoo sink was. From the shampoo through the whole cut, the thought that kept flashing through my mind is "I feel like I am in a barber shop-style setting." I was so relaxed in that chair and she treated me as though my relatively simple haircut meant something to her and having me there meant more than whatever my total bill came to.
I believe that this type of shop may be the next step in attracting more men to a beauty salon type of establishment without leaving the uniqueness of the American barber shop behind. There are some things that you can never replace about a barbershop, namely the stereotypical father type figure of a good friendly barber and the uniqueness of a barber shop shave. However, if barbers are worried about staying viable in the minds of society, maybe they may want to consider hiring women stylists and mixing the genders of the clientele and the services offered a little more. Unfortunately, this would require overhauling existing licensing law and somehow triggering a historic reevaluation of how society views these two types of establishments as completely different. In any case, I believe that what more and more men want these days is a hybrid combination of the privacy and intimacy of the average barber shop combined with the expertise and sensitivity of most high quality hairstylists and the simple convenience of a spur-of-the-moment walk-in haircut.
Thanks Matt, for writing this very interesting and thoughtful article for Buzztown. Your last sentence summarizes your requirements for a barber shop or salon very well, and I believe that many men would agree that these are also the criteria which they are looking for:
While the single-chair barber shop in your town may not satisfy all of these requirements for you, I think that many Buzztowners believe that many of the shops listed on this site meet all of these requirements perfectly. I know for a fact that there are shops listed on Buzztown that meet all of these criteria (including very high quality haircuts given by perfectionist barbers) and with one added criteria - excellent value for money.
Matt has touched on some interesting topics here, and I am very interested to hear the opinions of other readers on this issue, especially younger Buzztown readers.
If you would like to reply to this message, please give some broad indication of your age group.
Josh,
Buzztown.
What do you think? Any opinions from barbers? Email your comments to Buzztown today!
If you have difficulty emailing a message to Buzztown
through the above link, please
send the message through your normal email program to [email protected]
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page