Bazzer Boom

15th Nov 2013

Barber shops are popping up left, right and centre in Cork city as the Rebel county finally displays visible signs of economic recovery. During the recession a ‘haircut’ became more synonymous with the nation’s pay packets than personal grooming and many of us turned to cutting our own locks or deciding that the dishevelled and unkempt look was conveniently cool.

Now that we’re returning to the traditional bazzer in our droves we are realising that it’s much more than a simple snip job and all about the interaction between you and the man or woman with the blades - especially when it comes to the banter.  
 

A sign in Baldy barbers in Blackpool says:  'God made a few perfect heads and He gave the rest hair'

There’s no bigger factor than the nationality of your barber to dictate the range of topics you can discuss while you’re getting your lawn mowed.

We now have a selection of barbers in Cork that would make the United Nations proud and all of them are up for the chat and craic as much as our home-grown noggin trimmers. Turks like to talk more about the Champions League and less about the same package holiday to Kusadasi you and his last ten customers have been on.

Tunisian barbers will talk frankly about returning home for the Arab Spring – their stories make you feel extra lucky to be sitting in a barber shop in Cork with little else on your mind other than Ciaran Sheehan’s departure for Oz or whether Conor Lehane will be fit for Sunday.

Such dramatic well-rehearsed anecdotes make you feel like you were there yourself and you walk out feeling your hair might have been trimmed by a low flying RPG rather than a buzzing ‘blade three’.

European barbers tend to be a little moany. A few barbers from the Mediterranean we’ve come across like to talk about Ireland’s sunshine deficit and how, if there were jobs back home, they’d be straight into their mankinis and off home in a shot to oil themselves up and sit on a beach.

- Ah but sure, what about the heatwave in July though boy? T’was great wasn’t it?
- Si, but in my country, all the time it is-ah sunny.

Someone needs to point out to them why their repeat-customer count is low. Wishing you were somewhere other than Cork earns you no friends in the Rebel County.

Local barbers, like cab drivers, are experts in many topics. A-fella-who-was-into-me-there-last-week-told-me-a-good-one will usually add a sprinkle of confirmation bias to their opinions on anything.

Unlike taxi journeys through where communication is generally one-way-traffic, the barbers of Cork happily absorb information, anecdotes, opinions and rumours out of customers – storing them up for the next customer who floats the same subject.

Favourite topics for male barbers include: which buildings nearby are supposedly in NAMA, alleged new leaks in the Jack Lynch tunnel, a story about a plane that nearly crashed at Cork airport but “mysteriously” wasn’t reported in the news, rumours of Roy Keane house-hunting in Blarney and talk of Sir Henry’s being rebuilt.
 

For a bit of craic you can test a barber’s memory on your second visit by floating a previously discussed topic and seeing if you get your own story gets quoted back to you with a sprinkle of Chinese whispers – thus acquiring the title of the-fella-who-was-into-me-there-last-week-told-me-a-good-one.

Unlike male barbers, female hairdressers don’t have that natural man-to-man instinct that tells them immediately whether you’re a GAA man, a rugby fan or Premiership devotee so they have to start with lower hanging fruit when it comes to kicking off the conversation for your bazzer. That doesn’t make your haircut any less entertaining however:

1. Half day today, love?
2. Were y’out at the weekend, love?
3. Any holidays booked, love?

The answer doesn’t really matter – the conversation always ends up on holidays.

At hairdressing school it seems like students are given free flights to Torremolinos or Santa Ponza for life and they always seem to travel in groups of at least 400 – all female hairdressers. Some foreign tourist board must be funding it in exchange for a fifteen minute sales-pitch from Herself while you you’re held in the red chair at ‘knife’ point.
 

On a half day today, love?

If she’s under-25 her holiday will have proceeded as follows: arrived blotto off the flight from Cork; got lobster-sunburned on the way from the airport to the pub; got to the pub and immediately climbed up on a table and danced on it for two weeks; then came home.

And she can’t wait to do it all again next year.

Maybe our hairdressers’ upbeat confidence, like our slow but very noticeable return to both the new and old barbers of Cork, is a good sign: with the departure of the Troika it seems the blitzing bazzer on the nation’s finances has finally finished. What we initially thought would be a quick trim has turned out to be a wet shave.

And though it’s not what we wanted and looking in the mirror makes us grimace, we know it’ll all grow back again soon.
 

Were you ever sent out to the famous bike shop in Ballyphehane by your auld fella “for a haircut” only to arrive home with him rolling around the floor laughing because he told you to ask at the counter for a ‘short, back and sides’? Fupin' langer.