What does a barber pole mean to you?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, just to be clear, this is what I mean by “barber pole”.

When I see a barber pole, I expect it to be attached to a barber shop. A barber shop, as I understand it, is a place where primarily male customers go for an efficient, low-cost grooming experience. I do not need an appointment to get a haircut at a barber shop. I can tell the barber, “Number 2, all the way around” and feel confident that he will happily give me that haircut, just as he has done for men for years. A barber shop should have copies of sports, automobile, and a few news magazines laying around.

But yesterday, for the second time in my life, I walked up to an establishment prominently displaying a barber pole, only to find that it was some kind of… salon. They expected me to have an appointment. They were selling all kinds of products that frightened and confused me. There were no back issues of Sports Illustrated. I can only guess that my haircut would have run significantly more than the $20 I had in my wallet. The matron at the front desk said I could wait, if I wanted to, but it would be at least an hour. There was a single person in the lobby waiting to go ahead of me. An hour?

OK, so normally I buzz my hair myself. But when I want to make sure I get a particulary good haircut, or when I don’t feel like making a mess in the bathroom, I go to a barber. Am I the only one who expects that, if you display a barber pole, you’re an actual barber? Is my vision of the barber shop totally out of line? What does the barber pole mean to you?

Or, just tell us a barber shop anecdote. Here’s mine: in the 90’s, when ER was hot and the George Clooney haircut was the fad, a young lad went to my barber, who was about 700 years old, and said, “Gimme a Clooney.” Barber replied, “George or Rosemary?” That still kills me.

2

I assume it means they do bloodletting and simple amputations. Fleams and saws on the wall. Perhaps a bowl of leeches on the counter.

3

Here, barber poles mean hair salons as well as barber shops. So they just mean, “I can get my hair cut there” to me.

However, I already have a preferred hair salon, so I usually ignore them. FWIW The one I go to doesn’t display a barber pole and is actually relatively cheap for a Japanese salon.

When I was younger, my father would take me to his honest-to-goodness real barber. He always gave me candy and I was always absolutely fascinated by the giant vacuum hose that was attached to the counter for easy stray hair removal. I’ve never been to another barber or salon that had one of those.

4

I agree with the OP 100% and have had the same thing happen. I waltz into a shop with a barber pole out front that was devoid of customers and was asked if I had an appointment :dubious:. I suppose the stylish woman working there and the lack of any mounted animal head/smutty photos/old timers should have tipped me off. It annoyed me enough to half-seriously consider writing my state representative to propose a change in the law regulating what businesses could display a barber pole outside their establishment.

For the record, a place like Great Clips qualifies as more of a barber shop than a salon in my eyes, though I’m aware that they do provide salon services. No, I do not have a concrete definition of what a barber shop is, but I can certainly determine what is not a barber shop, and any place you can’t just drop in for a regular haircut is no barber shop.

5

The barber shop where 4 generations of the men in my family had their haircut is still standing. Mr. Balboa was founded by Curly Moses and his son Wayne in 1959, and is now being run by Wayne’s widow Linda. We always joked that you could get any haircut you wanted from Wayne, as long as it was short on top, short on the sides, and short in the back! :wink:

You can see it here.

I love that place- in the virtual tour under “Balboa Links” you can almost see my parents’ house across the street and down (the same house my dad grew up in), and their first apartment was above the beauty shop that is still next door to the barber shop. :cool:

Oh… so, um, yeah, to me a barber pole means a barber shop… :smack:

6

In my book, a salon shouldn’t have a barber pole, but I admit there are barber shops that provide salon-type services . . . and overcharge for a “#2 all around.”

7

Yeah, I’m with the OP that a barber pole at least ought to mean a barber shop. And barber shops don’t take no appointments and they have real barber chairs: the kind you struggle to not fall asleep in the second your butt hits the cushion. You get to skip up ahead if the next guy “only lets Charlie cut his hair”, because I’m a “take the next barber” kind of guy. I shouldn’t even have to tell the barber what size clippers to use, unless I’m unusually fussy or something. Just say hi, sit down, he cuts my hair, and I say fine or a little shorter, please. And he trims my sideburns and around my ears and my neck with a straight razor that he hones on a leather strop after applying that hot lather that cools off real fast. Oh, and even though I don’t use hair stuff, they put some kind of hair stuff in anyway, and that’s part of the whole experience as far as I’m concerned.

8

A barber pole means to me that I’m probably watching an old film and this scene involves a barber. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in real life.

9

I have a friend with a barber license and several with cosmetology licenses

The one with a barber license runs a fancy hair salon of sorts. You would never know he was a barber. He is gay and happy and colors and perms hair for a fortune.

Well talking with him and the girls (cosmetologists) at length I discovered that a barber license is harder to get and requires more schooling. He does not have a barber pole on his building, but at this point if I see a barber pole I want to be assured that at least one person inside has a barber license not some Cosmo license.

So yes even though it is usually the cosmetologist that does all the fancy fuss and shit for the stars and commoners. It is the barber that had more schooling and has the right to use a barber pole. IMHO of course.

10

Barber pole means barber shop with only guys working there, and the magazines, and the comfy chairs. My 24-year-old son only goes to the barber…I don’t think he’s ever been to a salon-type place except perhaps once to Great Clips when we were a newly divorced family and I didn’t feel comfortable taking him to the barber shop. Once he was old enough to go in on his own…it was the guys down at the barber shop who cut his hair just right, and he once said it made him feel more like a man! Silly boy…

11

I don’t know, I don’t think taking appointments necessarily makes a place upscale. I used to make appointments when I went to a non-franchise barber-pole barber, because he got busy on Saturdays.

Eventually he retired and I lost most of my hair, so now Great Clips is good enough, and I don’t think they take appointments. They’re open longer hours, so I don’t need one.

12

(deleted, because I was really posting to another thread…don’t know how that happened)

13

<gasp> Can this be true? Is that what the world is coming to? A world with no barber shops is not a world for me! :wink:

Seriously, I have such grand memories as a little girl in the early 60’s going to the barber shop on Saturday morning with my dad. The smells, the sounds, the banter of men, old magazines and newspapers.

My hub and stepson still go to a barber but it’s not a cool as my dad’s barber shop. They have a <shock>girl cutting hair now. No smelly hair stuff now but I think they still have the same magazines from the 60’s.

Here’s a bit of trivia, didja know that the stripes on the barber pole only rotate when the barber is open?

14

It means it’s a place where boys get their hair cut. The barber my brother when to as a little boy (called Armand the Butcher by all the little boys in his kindergarten class - they were in awe and fear of them) is just about the only place I’ve ever seen a real barber pole.

15

Alas, in this degenerate day and age, this is no longer necessarily the case. The barbershop that I go to (where I ask for “a #1 all over”) keeps its pole rotating at all times :frowning:

16

And I’ve seen just as many barber poles that do not rotate at all. Degenerate is right.

17

The barber I’ve gone to for twenty years had a barber pole outside his shop. His shop was burned out a few years ago, so he moved in with a local salon. His barber pole is now outside the salon. Yes, he take appointments, but otherwise is an old-fashioned barber - just located inside a salon.

18

I’ve had a really hard time finding a barber near our new house. I want the kind of place I used to go on a Saturday morning every month, with a row of chairs along the wall where neighborhood guys catch up with each other & the barbers all know everyone, and with that great barber shop smell the minute you walk in the door. Guys are there with their sons, so the Maxim mags are sort of buried by the piles of *Sports Illustrated *and Nascar magazines on the end tables (20 years ago they were Playboys, but we’ve moved on, I guess). Even better, and rarer, is a place where I can also get my shoes shined while I’m waiting or getting a cut.

All I’ve been able to find locally are salons, which drive me crazy. Even near my office all I can find is a salon. I don’t want to make an appointment, I don’t want to have to elaborately describe what I want, and above all, I don’t want to automatically be whisked off to the shampoo station before I get a cut. My hair is clean, I wash it every morning. It doesn’t need to be washed again. I don’t want to have to fish another tip out just for the shampoo lady. I don’t want to have to walk through the place with dripping hair and a towel around my neck to get to the chair, to the stylist who doesn’t know how I like my hair to look because she didn’t see me walk in and now my hair is wet and messy.

I just want a barber shop. Is that too much to ask?

19

To me, it means that there’s probably some old Italian guy in there cutting hair. You can always trust an old Italian barber.

My favorite barber shop memory was the “three old Italian guys” shop. The youngest looking barber there was 70. I’d often get the really old looking guy with shaky hands. It’s the end of the cut, he’s got out the straight razor, jiggling up and down threateningly as he goes for my neck… swip perfect shave!

Ahhh… good times.

20

We’ve got a few “real” barber shops in our area. One of the comments on the Yahoo! Local Profile says: “The best haircut anywhere!!! Great laughs, and sometimes fresh cookies. Doesn’t speak French.”