Have you actually had a barber shave you?

There seems to be a lot of people on the board with rather negative opinions of the barber shop shave.

So I'm asking the question of those who have voiced an opinion to vote in the poll.

Try to be honest.

I'm not trying to catch anyone out. I'd just like to know whether this a witch hunt.

Cheers

Mat

I've often thought about it, but never have. Unless I hear of a place that uses a straight razor along with all the required prep, then I probably never will.

One guy on here went to a barber for a shave and ended up getting shaved with and electric razor.

Not good.

I have had a few. They were all serviceable shaves, but nothing special. I certainly could have done better myself. I do enjoy laying back in the chair and relaxing while someone else does the work. The last time I went was probably the best overall experience. I told him not to worry too much about baby's butt smooth. My face was happier that way.

My next attempt is going to bring in my own cream/aftershave. The recent shaves have been Osage rub/hot towel pre shave, Campbells Lather from a machine and a clubman splash to finish it off. As previously stated, it's a serviceable shave. A few choices in the product department would really boost my enjoyment, but full shaves aren't overly common in the shop.

Great survey. I can do better myself but I enjoy the experience. Reclined in the barber chair, hot towel, hot lather, some stinging smelly goods, lilac for a nickle extra.

Never had a shave from the barber. I honestly besides AOS even know one that would do a shave. Even in Philadelphia the good ol fashion shops are hard to find.

Never thought about it actually, seeing as how shaving up until just recently wasen't anything i considered to be pleasent at all in the first place. If you haven't experienced how a real shave should really be like, you might just end up not caring until/if you do. Now if i hear about a place that offers a shave with a real straight, then i might consider popping by, otherwise i'm sticking to using my own.

I've had a mixed experience. I got a great shave from a really old barber some time back in the early '90s -- he used a mug soap, hot towel prep, and all sorts of fragrances and chemistry that was all a mystery to me back then -- his shop was straight out of the '30s and he had clearly knew his job. The shave was so smooth I didn't need to shave the next day. More recently (about 6 months ago) I had a shave from a young barber who just used the goop from his machine. He did do a hot towel prep, but did not really seem to know what he was doing with the straight razor (I remember the old barber almost digging out the whiskers, this guy just sort of scraped over them). He only did one pass, and had to use about half a vial of styptic powder on my wounded face. The shave was so rough I had to shave again when I got home...

I went to Disneyland Paris four years ago and had a barber's shave in their own old'fashioned barber's shop. He was an Italian chap so our communication was limited, but the whole experience was very enjoyable. I'm probably going again in January so will report back my findings! Hopefully he won't have changed to a Mach 3. France is not too obsessive about perfect hygiene thank goodness, so maybe I'll still get an authentic shaving experience.

PS Next time I'm in Cornwall I'll certainly look up Mat!

Oooops! I voted before reading the OP stating for those to vote who have voiced an opinion on the matter. I've never had a barber shave, and I've never voiced an opinion about it.

It's something I've thought about from time to time, but it hasn't happened yet.

Taormina, Sicily was a great shave. The picture is in my signature.

krawlx said:

Oooops! I voted before reading the OP stating for those to vote who have voiced an opinion on the matter. I've never had a barber shave, and I've never voiced an opinion about it.

Click to expand...

+1 I made this mistake as well.
I have never had a barber shop shave but I have been trying to find a barber that will for a long time. I would love to try it out.

Syrian chap, ten minutes walk from here. He gives me a shave when I go in for my haircut, so once a month. The best part of it is the time spent reclined in the chair letting someone else lather, brush, shave, etc.

He used to run a few barbers in Damascus, where folk would come in for a daily shave. Others would come in for their shaves and do business there whilst they waited.

He uses a disposable straight (half DE blade), and it is reassuring to see the blade changed infront of my own two eyes.

He also does Leo's hair. A really talented dude. Old school. A great find.

Interesting so far.

50% have formed an opinion based on others experiences.

Let's see how this pans out

Cheers

Mat

PZBarber said:

Interesting so far.

50% have formed an opinion based on others experiences.

Let's see how this pans out

Cheers

Mat

Click to expand...

If you go through the posts you will see a few of us read wrong so the numbers should be a bit different.

I've never had a barber shave - but I am not jumping on the negative bandwagon. If I could find a good barber to do one I'd at least give it a try.

There is a guy at King Barber in Richardson, TX who I plan on trying out. He does straight shaves (w/disposable blades - I guess a Shavette-type handle), plus, he'll give you instruction on using a straight if you bring yours in. FWIW, the web site is here http://www.kingbarber.com/. He's also got a nice page on what to look for in a barber shop re: cleanliness http://www.kingbarber.com/top-ten.html.

I wish there was a couple more options: "Not yet, but want to" and "Not yet, want to, but a little discouraged by negative posts". I definately want to try it sometime, but I don't want to pay for a cartridge or electric shave. Unfortunately, that's going to narrow down my options, since fewer and fewer barber shops these days even offer shaves anymore. Hell, I have to leave the US if I want to get a shave with brush-applied lather (unless I bring my own brush to yet even rarer barbers here).

Someday I'll get a shave done--perhaps I'll be lucky enough to stop by your shop one Saturday if I should ever get to visit my ancestral homeland, Mat. But it does suck that the barber shop shave is such a dying art.

I love the concept so much that I periodically give in and try another place.

Each time my face has a combination of rough patches mixed with horrendously razor burned stretches that take days to heal and leave me with a flurry of ingrown hairs.

Still the prospect of that platonic shave ideal beckons.


My experiences are not novel - in the Innocent's Abroad, Mark Twain writes on his cherished fantasies of opulent old world shaving palaces and the reality of the experience. Here are a couple of excerpts:

While in France:

Then we hunted for a barber-shop. From earliest infancy it had been a cherished ambition of mine to be shaved some day in a palatial barber-shop in Paris. I wished to recline at full length in a cushioned invalid chair, with pictures about me and sumptuous furniture; with frescoed walls and gilded arches above me and vistas of Corinthian columns stretching far before me; with perfumes of Araby to intoxicate my senses and the slumbrous drone of distant noises to soothe me to sleep. At the end of an hour I would wake up regretfully and find my face as smooth and as soft as an infant's. Departing, I would lift my hands above that barber's head and say, "Heaven bless you, my son!"

So we searched high and low, for a matter of two hours, but never a barber-shop could we see. We saw only wig-making establishments, with shocks of dead and repulsive hair bound upon the heads of painted waxen brigands who stared out from glass boxes upon the passer-by with their stony eyes and scared him with the ghostly white of their countenances. We shunned these signs for a time, but finally we concluded that the wig-makers must of necessity be the barbers as well, since we could find no single legitimate representative of the fraternity. We entered and asked, and found that it was even so.

I said I wanted to be shaved. The barber inquired where my room was. I said never mind where my room was, I wanted to be shaved--there, on the spot. The doctor said he would be shaved also. Then there was an excitement among those two barbers! There was a wild consultation, and afterwards a hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors from obscure places and a ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a little mean, shabby back room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs and placed us in them with our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss vanished into thin air!

I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-making villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with a strong English expletive and said, "Foreigner, beware!" Then this outlaw strapped his razor on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six fearful seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from my face and lifted me out of the chair. I stormed and raved, and the other boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not strong and thick. Let us draw the curtain over this harrowing scene.

Suffice it that I submitted and went through with the cruel infliction of a shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my cheeks now and then, but I survived. Then the incipient assassin held a basin of water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and into my bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of washing away the soap and blood. He dried my features with a towel and was going to comb my hair, but I asked to be excused. I said, with withering irony, that it was sufficient to be skinned--I declined to be scalped.

I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face, and never, never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian barber-shops anymore. The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no barber shops worthy of the name in Paris--and no barbers, either, for that matter. The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and napkins and implements of torture to your residence and deliberately skins you in your private apartments. Ah, I have suffered, suffered, suffered, here in Paris, but never mind--the time is coming when I shall have a dark and bloody revenge. Someday a Parisian barber will come to my room to skin me, and from that day forth that barber will never be heard of more.

While in Italy:

I have had another shave. I was writing in our front room this afternoon and trying hard to keep my attention on my work and refrain from looking out upon the canal. I was resisting the soft influences of the climate as well as I could, and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be indolent and happy. The boys sent for a barber. They asked me if I would be shaved. I reminded them of my tortures in Genoa, Milan, Como; of my declaration that I would suffer no more on Italian soil. I said "Not any for me, if you please."

I wrote on. The barber began on the doctor. I heard him say:

"Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left the ship."

He said again, presently:

"Why Dan, a man could go to sleep with this man shaving him."

Dan took the chair. Then he said:

"Why this is Titian. This is one of the old masters."

I wrote on. Directly Dan said:

"Doctor, it is perfect luxury. The ship's barber isn't any thing to him."

My rough beard wee distressing me beyond measure. The barber was rolling up his apparatus. The temptation was too strong. I said:

"Hold on, please. Shave me also."

I sat down in the chair and closed my eyes. The barber soaped my face, and then took his razor and gave me a rake that well nigh threw me into convulsions. I jumped out of the chair: Dan and the doctor were both wiping blood off their faces and laughing.

I said it was a mean, disgraceful fraud.

They said that the misery of this shave had gone so far beyond any thing they had ever experienced before, that they could not bear the idea of losing such a chance of hearing a cordial opinion from me on the subject.

It was shameful. But there was no help for it. The skinning was begun and had to be finished. The tears flowed with every rake, and so did the fervent execrations. The barber grew confused, and brought blood every time. I think the boys enjoyed it better than any thing they have seen or heard since they left home.

Pig Cat said:

I went to Disneyland Paris four years ago and had a barber's shave in their own old'fashioned barber's shop. He was an Italian chap so our communication was limited, but the whole experience was very enjoyable. I'm probably going again in January so will report back my findings! Hopefully he won't have changed to a Mach 3. France is not too obsessive about perfect hygiene thank goodness, so maybe I'll still get an authentic shaving experience.

PS Next time I'm in Cornwall I'll certainly look up Mat!

Click to expand...

I had a shave at the same place 6 years ago. It's still the best shave I have ever had.
Just booked another trip to Disneyland Paris for November - can't wait!

I've had one str8 shave & it was ok I guess. He did a semi decent prep with lather from a LatherKing & hot towels but his razor seemed a little dull to me. Like shaving with a butter knife but it was my first & only time so I don't have anything to compare it to. It was almost to the point of being painful. Afterwards it was a cool, wet towel followed by a good splash of Old Spice.