A GOOD BARBER is hard to find. Sometimes when you do find the right guy, one of you ends up moving away. Other times, you decide the person just isn’t that good and so you look for someone new. This is where it gets tricky. When you get your hair cut by the same person every few weeks, you don’t sit there quietly. You strike up a conversation. It starts with small talk about the weather and moves on to sports and then work. And then it gets personal. Pretty soon you know how much your barber drank the night before. Or who he or she is currently seeing. It becomes a relationship. When you break up with your hairdresser, though, there’s no going out for coffee and telling the other party that it’s over. There isn’t even a phone call. You just stop showing up. And who knows, maybe a month passes and the stylist starts to wonder if you are growing your hair long or if you found someone else–someone better. Odds are, you will never see each other again. (My advice is to avoid walking past the old place. But if you must, walk at a brisk pace and never, ever turn your head to look in. I guarantee you’ll make eye contact.) I’ve gone through about ten haircutters in my life, starting with my mother, who favored the bowl look. (“I look like a girl,” I would complain. “No, it looks nice,” she would insist. “It’s like Dorothy Hamill.”) Since then, I’ve found only a few good barbers. One of them was an old Italian named Joe Maggi, whose shop was in Georgetown. Joe had a leathery face, a raspy voice, and hair like a greaser. He claimed to have cut both Robert Kennedy and Bill Clinton’s hair back in the 1960s (but on his wall hung a portrait of Ronald Reagan). The place was permanently cluttered with “men’s” magazines (a staple in many barber shops), a chess board, and a guitar. And the radio was always on. Joe was one of the few people left who listened to AM radio–for music. There wasn’t anything special about the way Joe cut hair, but when it was over, he would lather up some shaving cream and trim around your ears and the back of your neck with a straight-edge. He would even sharpen it on an old leather strap. “You know you can’t do this in New York,” he once said, “because they’re afraid of getting AIDS.” Joe used to say a lot of things except when he was on the phone. In that case he would mumble, “Barber shop . . . I told you not to call me here. I’ll call you later.” (Some speculated he was a bookie.) But best of all was the price: $8, which he rang up on an outdated cash register. In time, Joe’s body got the better of him. He had open heart surgery and lost a kidney. Somewhere in between, his wife passed away. Eventually I moved to another part of town and found someone else out of convenience. I did try to call him last week, but his line had been disconnected. Until recently, my barber was a young guy named Mike. He knew exactly how to cut my hair, though it cost $25. Then again, I never had to tell him what to do. Unfortunately, Mike moved to a new place called the Grooming Lounge. One of my colleagues walked into the Lounge the other day and found out a haircut costs $40. And that’s just for starters. According to their brochure, you can get “The Commander in Chief”–“A business manicure will make his hands look professional while a foot treatment will soothe his ‘barking dogs'”–for $74. And then there’s “The Watergate,” which includes a massage, a business manicure, a haircut, and a complimentary shoeshine–for the unbelievably low price of $155. I realized I could never see Mike again. The Grooming Lounge was too lavish for me. Some of my friends suggested a nearby cuttery called “Viva Puerto Rico.” I thought this was merely a reference to the three barbers’ land of origin. But when I was sitting there for my first cut, a customer walked in and his first words really were, “Viva Puerto Rico!” The place is a modern-looking salon, but these guys are all old school. They argue with each other about the news or anything else on their minds. The other day, the discussion was whether or not traces of arsenic can be found on a corpse. “Only in the hair,” insisted my barber, Ismael. It was good to return to an old barber shop, though nothing compares to Joe’s. Still, Ismael is personable, honest, and affordable–at $17 a pop. Sure, it doesn’t include a pedicure or a massage, but I do get a trim around the edges using a straight-edged blade. What more can you ask for? –Victorino Matus
