What Can You Do?

Hair looks dumb.  Down to San Li Tun.  It is a ritual.  I go to see the Parisian gentleman, Laurent Falconer.  He’s a wonderful guy.  Before it was his salon it was 'Eric of Paris.'  And he was a lovely guy.  Before that it was someone who’s name I’ve forgotten.  He had been recommended by a woman I knew who had a shop in Paris.  It was a good handoff that has lasted, and evolved, over a decade.  The original gent was a half-empty just, gruff, angular sort of way that the rest of the world allows for in the French.  I have had this lineage of Frenchmen do my hair in Beijing for most of the last ten years.

The first guy had me go to his apartment in the Upper East Side.  He wanted to let me know that some of the Chinese people he worked with were unconcerned about money and would suggest that Mssr. I’veforgottenhisname could charge anything he liked.  I remember thinking that this was interesting, but that different from most Chinese I knew wealthy or otherwise, and that regardless, he was barking up the wrong tree if he thought that approach, of costs-be-damned was going to work with me.  

Eric was a story teller.  He’d play late 70's pop, that I absolutely hated, things like Supertramp.  And he’d sing along: “I vas up before ze dawn . . .”  But I didn’t mind, because he had remarkable stories of living a coke-fuelled fast-life in the clubs of lower Manhattan in the early 70’s that would migrate suddenly to parties at his chateau outside of Marseilles and by the time he was trimming my eyebrow he’d be sighing about his son who’d somehow turned out to be a conservative.  This all made the time pass quickly and, of course, he left me looking better than when I came in.  

Laurent also tells stories.  His English more rudimentary.  He is patient when I try to resuscitate my French from below the rubble of Chinese and Spanish overlays. We both hate Trump.  We both think Beijing is cool.  We both lament what has happened to the San Li Tun area.  Pfft.  What can you do?

And though the place has his name, which sounds evocative, it would appear that he is, alas, working-for-the-man.  The salon itself belongs to someone else.  And so I am torn when Laurent accompanies me to the register with that look.  A person who works at a salon, I’d be inclined to tip.  But someone who owns one, well, that’s different, right?  This time the gal behind the counter told me they were raising their prices.  Hmm.  I still tipped Laurent.  But I’m not sure if I can do that on my next visit. 

Tuesday 8/14/18