Full, unedited review at: http://fathungrypanda.blogspot.com/2015/05/arrow-haircuts.html
I saw my first barber in 1974. He was a bearish man named Lauren--a gruff, gravelly-voiced barber with white stubble-beard and white Cubavera shirt, who always joked that he'd cut my ear off and feed it to his cat if I wasn't still while I was in his chair. Of course, the threat kept me in line, and I was always rewarded with a Dum Dum sucker for my obediance. His shop was in the basement of the strip mall my father started his law practice in. It had three steel barber chairs...though Lauren was the only barber in residence. Tools sat in glass jars of blue Barbasol, and clippers rested under the UV glow on the shelf. The air was always heavy with pipe and cigar smoke, and there was always one or the other sitting in an ashtray, its ember patiently glowing as it waited for him to take a puff. Next to them, he'd rigged an AM car stereo to take power from the wall and play over speakers. To this day, when I hear the old CBS radio news sounder, I can flash back to that shop. When I have a Dum Dum sucker, I always think of him.
Lauren wasn't a "designer" or a "stylist." He was an old school barber, cut from the cloth of the men from the Greatest Generation--Hemingway with shears and a cat with allegedly curious eating habits.
When I went to Arrow for the first time, I was awash in nostalgia. It looked like the barber shop that I remembered from my youth. As I first looked about, I almost expected to see Lauren spin around in one of the chairs, putting his newspaper down and pipe in the ashtray as he asked me if I was going to be good, or if his cat was going to get a bonus in its evening Tender Vittles. The floors were stone, the walls finished with raw wood and metal sheeting. A faint hint of talc laced the air. A man offered me a beer...or bottle of water if I wasn't feeling like alcohol.
I know myself well enough to handle styling decisions confidently. I have a long face, almost rectangular. I need something to break it up at the top or bottom, and over the years, I had a certain cut that worked for me. I even carry pictures of it in my phone, to show to stylists. Sadly, my most recent visit to Arrow has left me with a Kid-and-Play style "eraserhead" hairdo that only Arsenio Hall might envy.
Now I'm sure you're thinking "but the stylist had to look at the pictures before he started." Arrow has high ratings here. Everyone on Yelp raves about them. I can tell you that he begrudgingly took my phone...after even asking in shock "you've got something you want me to look at?" I can tell you that he swiped through a few. I can tell you that as he was starting to buzz the top of my head, when I asked if he was leaving enough hair for the outward taper, he assured me that he was on point with the pictures.
He put clippers to my head and started shearing. I asked which guard he was using. When I asked for a shorter guard, he almost took offense to it, like the act of taking the #2 off and replacing it with a #1/2 for the back and sides was like asking Jose Ebert to wash a client's hair.
Granted, as he was cutting, he talked to his "bro" who came in to rebook an appointment. He talked to Aaron, the gentleman who checks people in. He pretty much talked to everyone BUT me. Once my glasses were off, I could just as well have been a practice head at a barbering school. Of course once I had my glasses back, when he was completely done (I guess barbers don't stop in the middle of a job to see if the client approves anymore. Even Lauren stopped threatening me with), and he saw that I was unhappy that I looked like an extra from the last House Party sequel, then he started talking.
"What do you want me to do?"
Dude-bro-Steve, you can't glue the hair back on. Honestly, what was my response? What should it have been? "Hey, no, it's okay! You spent so much time intercting with everyone else in that shop BUT my you didn't even to see what I thought about the job you were doing? Now, I'm looking at 4-6 weeks of regrowing before we could possibly salvage this. Thanks, bro!"
I told him that it looked nothing like the pictures. So he defensively demanded to see my phone. After I showed him the third image, he shrugged it off in a condescending tone. "Hey, man, you're getting a freeeeeeeeeee haircut."
I'd rather have had a good haircut. I'd rather have had a stylist who paid some attention to me, instead of thinking that giving me "generic-dude-bro-white-guy-cut-#3" would garner him a fast and easy tip.
So I walked out with a bad haircut....and a certificate to come back for another one--marked "re-do" on the certificate.
Sadly, Arrow is becoming a victim of their success. "Walk-ins welcome" is now code for "make an appointment." The free water is gone, only beer now. read more