Chelsea Barbershop

There’s a tiny old barbershop around the corner from the Chelsea. It must have been there for fifty years and it doesn’t look like it’s changed much in that time, either. The old brown barber chairs are patched with cloth tape, and the linoleum is worn through where the barbers circle the chairs. On the counter are dusty cardboard displays of plastic combs and Hav-A-Hanks. There’s an autographed picture of Rocky Marciano on the wall, though not even Vincent, the sixty-year-old Italian proprietor, remembers him ever coming into the shop.

One day I was in there getting my hair cut, when a hip young man in his twenties, a college student, came walking by the window and did a double take, stopping dead in his tracks. He took an expensive camera out of his shoulder bag and came into the shop, jingling the bell above the door. Everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at him.

Vincent, overweight but with a thick head of curly, salt-and-pepper hair, had the chair closest to the door. “Can I help ya?” he said in his thick Brooklyn accent.

“Would you mind if I took a few shots of the premises?” the young man asked.

“What?!”

“Can I take your picture?”

“Whataya wanna take my picture for?” Vincent asked.

“Because you’re picturesque,” the young man said.

Vincent rolled his eyes and jerked his thumb toward the door. “Get outta heah!”