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So there's a downtown barbershop in Des Moines, it's called the Executive Forum, been in operation 15 years. Owner's a nice guy called Scott, and I've had a great shoeshine there before care of Sabino. There's a little display window that shows a Monsieur Charles shavette, so I booked a pre-work shave for Friday morning.
The prep was normal, very relaxing hot towels, and some nameless, nonfoaming cream was rubbed on. An injector blade was used in a shavette type handle. I noticed there was no slickness, the cream seemed more like a paste and figured it was one of those fancy new things shaveblog talks about sometimes.
Immediately there's a scraping on my face, I can feel the angle is all wrong, the blade feels perpendicular to my face, and I can _tell_ no hair is coming off (from long experience with blunt bic disposables )
He dabs on a bit of water that temporarily helps with slickness. The whole experience was so godawful that I'll just skip to the end. I endured it patiently though I felt like running away screaming and mentally was chalking it up to one of those days in life that you just accept turned out rubbishy.
At the end my upper lip was raw. The middle had hair that was uncut, the sides were somewhat trimmed (left side more trimmed than right). Visible stubble on the cheeks, he hadn't even tried there -- that is to say he didn't cover all the cheek. Under jaw -- totally unshaven (he just gave up halfway through, I think). Chin: raw, but shaved, far from BBS, but at least evenly shaved. Lower lip -- haha, he didn't even go there.
Now, I didn't notice this during the shave because I was mentally sedating myself through this torture (the hot towels made it easy), though I did notice that he stopped halfway.
Walking away, $20 lighter, I felt my stubble and almost stumbled in surprise. Back at the office I was so embarrassed by a check in the mirror I sat at my desk the whole day and luckily my only meeting was cancelled by someone else before I did it
I did a bit of a net lookup and it turns out the shop was owned by a Don Wagner for most of its 15 years, and Scott's probably had it for a lot fewer. In retrospect, and to be kind, perhaps he saw he wasn't getting anywhere with my face, and for liability issues decided to quit while he was ahead. While talking to him before the shave from hell, he said he uses a Mach-3 and shave foam (no brush) himself and offered to show me a straight someone had gifted him, as well as the straight that came with the shop when he bought it.
Here's the predicament though: I said I'd come in for a haircut later next week -- but I don't want to show up clean shaven and get into a pissing contest. Either I never go back there (nice people and place, just incompetent at shaving) or just go back acting like nothing happened (and now I cannot be sure how good the haircuts are either, though the shoeshine is superb).
So there's a downtown barbershop in Des Moines, it's called the Executive Forum, been in operation 15 years. Owner's a nice guy called Scott, and I've had a great shoeshine there before care of Sabino. There's a little display window that shows a Monsieur Charles shavette, so I booked a pre-work shave for Friday morning.
The prep was normal, very relaxing hot towels, and some nameless, nonfoaming cream was rubbed on. An injector blade was used in a shavette type handle. I noticed there was no slickness, the cream seemed more like a paste and figured it was one of those fancy new things shaveblog talks about sometimes.
Immediately there's a scraping on my face, I can feel the angle is all wrong, the blade feels perpendicular to my face, and I can _tell_ no hair is coming off (from long experience with blunt bic disposables )
He dabs on a bit of water that temporarily helps with slickness. The whole experience was so godawful that I'll just skip to the end. I endured it patiently though I felt like running away screaming and mentally was chalking it up to one of those days in life that you just accept turned out rubbishy.
At the end my upper lip was raw. The middle had hair that was uncut, the sides were somewhat trimmed (left side more trimmed than right). Visible stubble on the cheeks, he hadn't even tried there -- that is to say he didn't cover all the cheek. Under jaw -- totally unshaven (he just gave up halfway through, I think). Chin: raw, but shaved, far from BBS, but at least evenly shaved. Lower lip -- haha, he didn't even go there.
Now, I didn't notice this during the shave because I was mentally sedating myself through this torture (the hot towels made it easy), though I did notice that he stopped halfway.
Walking away, $20 lighter, I felt my stubble and almost stumbled in surprise. Back at the office I was so embarrassed by a check in the mirror I sat at my desk the whole day and luckily my only meeting was cancelled by someone else before I did it
I did a bit of a net lookup and it turns out the shop was owned by a Don Wagner for most of its 15 years, and Scott's probably had it for a lot fewer. In retrospect, and to be kind, perhaps he saw he wasn't getting anywhere with my face, and for liability issues decided to quit while he was ahead. While talking to him before the shave from hell, he said he uses a Mach-3 and shave foam (no brush) himself and offered to show me a straight someone had gifted him, as well as the straight that came with the shop when he bought it.
Here's the predicament though: I said I'd come in for a haircut later next week -- but I don't want to show up clean shaven and get into a pissing contest. Either I never go back there (nice people and place, just incompetent at shaving) or just go back acting like nothing happened (and now I cannot be sure how good the haircuts are either, though the shoeshine is superb).