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Barbershops

Futwick

One of the Regulars
Messages
154
Location
Detroit
Long ago, barbers were something like doctors, dentists and salonists--they performed minor surgery, pulled teeth and trimmed your hair and mustache and beard. They were actually called barber surgeons. The barber trade is ancient, going back easily 5000 years. Origninally, barber surgeons were paid more than regular surgeons until the later enlisted aboard warships. As the medical profession evolved and diversified, barber surgeons became plain ol' barbers. Not that this was not a good profession. In some past cultures, barbers were considered noblemen. The first barbering school in America was founded by A. B. Moler in Chicago in 1893. It was immediately successful. Many men of common background became barbers because it was a way to enter a better rank in society, a way to become a professional without the need to attend big universities for big money. Not that barber schools are or ever were cheap--they're not--AND a barbering license is required and those aren't that cheap either. But it didn't require a lot of book-learnin' and research and writing papers. It was just a good, honest profession for a man who preferred working with his hands. Barbershops quickly abounded across America. They became places for men to congregate and talk everything from business to sports without their wives nagging them. Card games and chess games were common at the local barbershop. The word barber comes from the Latin barba or beard. It shares the same root as Berber and barbarian. The former were notorious pirates and the later were unkempt and uncouth. Even bard is not supposed to be related, a bard (poet singer) in Scotland was lowly regarded as a troublemaker and vagabond and so is a type of barbarian.


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Futwick

One of the Regulars
Messages
154
Location
Detroit
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Barbershops are extremely important to the African-American community. It was one of the first true respectably professions to open up for black men who quickly established their own shops since they were not allowed in shops with white clientele. By the early 18th century, barbershops, were the centers of the various black communities whether free or slave. Black men not only congregated at the barbershop, they did almost everything there. Even medical advice was sought for at the barbershop rather than doctor's offices and hospitals. Many black barbers held night jobs such as playing in bands and what not and so the bands would practice at the barbershop. W.C. Handy learned to read music and play the trumpet by peeking through the window of the local barbershop and studying the trumpet charts tacked up on the walls when the bands were practicing. The man crediting with starting jazz--Buddy Bolden--spent most of his time in the barbershop when he wasn't gigging. One of his bassists was a barber during the day and the Bolden band practiced in his shop. Even Bo Diddly's style of guitar strumming was expressed as "shave and a haircut, two bits."

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The barber pole comes from the Middle Ages when barbers practiced "bloodletting." Whenever someone got cut or gashed or sliced, the wound stood to infect unless the victim was taken to the barber. The barber would seat patient before a pole and have him grip it tightly while he applied leeches to the wound. The gripping action would force more blood to the wound causing it to bleed more. The leeches prevented the blood from clotting because they have an anti-clotting agent in their saliva. The blood would run down the pole and be caught in a collecting bbowl. So the "bowl" at the top of the barber pole symbolizes the bowl that held the leeches, the "bowl" at the bottom represented the bowl that caught the blood. The red spiral stripe is the blood that ran down the pole. In America, a blue stripe was added for patriotic effect.

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Edward Hopper's rendering of a barbershop.

Tom Waits' "Barbershop". I often play the bass for this in live situations. I have no idea what the hell it has to do with Pinocchio. Morons.
[video=youtube;wC4ae0H4ua4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC4ae0H4ua4[/video]
 

Shangas

I'll Lock Up
Messages
6,116
Location
Melbourne, Australia
There's a barbershop (complete with pole and old-timey chairs) down the road from my house.

There's conflicting stories about the origins of the barber-pole, but Futwick got it almost right.

The two "bowls" are for leeches, and for the blood. Correct.

The pole is used for gripping, to increase blood-flow. Correct.

It was also used to hang out bandages. Clean, white bandages, and red, blood-soaked bandages which had been washed. They'd be hung on the pole and left outside the shop to dry. The wind swirled them around the pole, creating the red and white stripes.

The blue stripe is strictly an American addition. How it came about varies, depending on who you talk to. Stories that I've read said that the blue stripe stood for blue veins. How correct this happens to be, is completely up for debate. But that's what I've read.

Bleeding a patient (a common task carried out by barbers back in the old days) was done for the same reasons as colonic irrigations (eugh). It was supposed to remove "badness" from the body.

Bleeding goes back CENTURIES (literally) all the way to Ancient Greece, and the Medical Theory of Humorism.

Humorism said that the body was composed of four fluids - Black Bile, Yellow Bile, Phlegm, and Blood. Their harmony, or imbalance, as the case may be, determined health or illness. Restoring health if a person was afflicted, was a matter of drawing the humors back into balance. Usually, this was done through bloodletting.

Bloodletting doesn't do ANYTHING for the body. In fact you can die from it if it's done carelessly. But that was the prevailing theory of the day. And this persisted well into the 1800s. I don't recall exactly when it died out, but even during the Regency, people were still doing it.
 

Jack Patch

Familiar Face
Messages
52
Location
Chicago
Bleeding and leeches aside, try finding an old fashion barber shop today. There are a few in the city but mostly Fantastic Sams and the like are taking over.
 

Futwick

One of the Regulars
Messages
154
Location
Detroit
I still have a few old fashioned barbershops in my area--one has the turn poles that glow after dark. That used to be the only types of shops there were when I was a kid. I forgot to mention the barbershop quartet. This tradition originated among African-American men. The style actually came from the fields but once the first black barbershops were established, the barbers themselves often sang for customers. If you listen to old songs that came from blacks in America, you'll hear the strains of barbershop quartet harmonies. One sea shanty called "Roll the Woodpile Down" actually originated among black sailors (whose presence throughout America's history has been terribly downplayed, not surprisingly). The "wood pile" by the way, refers to the ship. When they sing, "That brown girl o' mine's on the Georgia line" it breaks into barbershop quartet harmony. After all, shanties are work songs. In Scott Joplin's opera "Treemonisha" he has field hands coming back from a hard day's work singing something called "We Will Rest A While" which is sung in barbershop quartet harmony.

[video=youtube;zDIsBWXwqtU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDIsBWXwqtU[/video]

[video=youtube;xrmE958ka90]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrmE958ka90[/video]
 

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,808
Location
Cobourg
Bleeding will bring down a fever and help cure certain diseases. A related treatment was cupping. In this treatment the doctor or barber used small glass cups the size of a half a golf ball. He would pour a little alcohol in the cup and light it on fire. When it burned out he applied the cup to the patient's back. As it cooled a vacuum formed and drew a clear fluid out through the skin. 2, 3 or 4 cups were used.

I knew an old Hungarian woman who told me cupping and bleeding were common treatments in the old country during her childhood, in the twenties and thirties.
 

Futwick

One of the Regulars
Messages
154
Location
Detroit
Cupping is still done in China. And leeches are still used today whenever a severed body part is reattached. Maggots are also used to eat off necrotized flesh from wounds. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
 

Bugguy

Practically Family
Messages
556
Location
Nashville, TN
Bleeding and leeches aside, try finding an old fashion barber shop today. There are a few in the city but mostly Fantastic Sams and the like are taking over.

We have a chain in Nashville called "Uncles". For all intents, they are a men's barbershop. The "barbers" are primarily cosmetologists ? who cut, style, and shave. It's not a sports bar-type shop and much better than the local quick clips or hair salons.

Interestingly, it wasn't till last year that the state licensing board allowed cosmetologists to shave with a straight razor. Prior to that the licensed barbers had the exclusive right to a straight razor and others needed to use a safety razor.

Growing up, I always asked for a "regular with a part" In Chicago, the barbers union required that the shops be closed on Sundays and Mondays. Same thing with auto dealers; they had to close on Sundays. I guess it was licensed anti-competitiveness???

BTW... Uncles is doing very well! Most clients come by appointment.
 

Benzadmiral

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,815
Location
The Swamp
We still have a few locations that look like the old-time barbershops. There's one on Magazine Street in the Uptown section, a couple on the West Bank, etc.
 

Harry Gooch

One of the Regulars
Messages
176
Location
The North
Though I really like the ambience, I find a lot of what are labelled as "traditional" barbershops nowadays are filled with tattooed, pierced, lumberjack-bearded hipsters who only know how to do one cut and that with buzzers. I've been going to a salon for years as the barber there knows how to do any length of hair.
 

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