Do Bald Men Get Half Price Haircuts

An exploration of America's small-town barbershops as community gathering places where the local men get together to get a shave and a haircut and talk sports, politics, and life in general.

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Who can't remember their first trip to the barbershop? The silvery clip of scissors, the scent of talcum and tonic, the game blaring on the radio, and the lazy rhythms of friendly conversation? If you've been to a great barbershop, you know it. when you walk in, it's like you never left. And when you leave, you can't wait to get back. In his marvelous new volume, "Do Bald Men Get Half-Price Haircuts?," Vince Staten captures the history, the craft, and the humor that have made the barbershop a classic fixture on the American landscape. Come in for a haircut and settle down for a chat -- about the new baseball coach, local politics, the meaning of life. As Staten reminds us, the barbershop's wonders lie above all in the pleasures of talk, and as such it's the social heart of many a small town.

Staten visited more than three hundred barbershops -- most of them in small towns, from Chowchilla, California, to Mount Airy, North Carolina. (And that's a lot of time in a barber chair for a man with almost no hair.) The result is a gabfest of barbershop lore, history, and laughs. Grab a chair and listen to the banter in a family-run Italian shop in Louisville, Kentucky, or the relaxed jokes at an African-American barber's in a quiet neighborhood in Nashville. With a great ear for dialogue and the enthusiasm of a barbershop connoisseur, Staten captures a world, both intimate and universal, that nearly every American man grew up with.

But "Do Bald Men Get Half-Price Haircuts?" isn't just a charming detour through an almost-forgotten corner of American popular culture. Here the reader will find hard answers to the driving questions of the barbering world, such as: What's in thosehair tonics anyway? Why are the stripes on the barber pole red and white? Why not a barbershop" trio?"

Offering up a nostalgic and often hilarious account of American manhood at its best, "Do Bald Men Get Half-Price Haircuts?" invites us into the world of the barbershop, where the barber is the maestro, the customers are the band...and the music they make is sweet, sweet, sweet.