The Legend of Jack the Barber

And his loyal clientele

THE HOLIDAY SEASON IS APPROACHING. It’s the time of celebrations, overeating and family traditions. The weirder, the better. One of my seasonal habits is the pre-Christmas haircut, lest the customary maternal admonishments. You’re too thin. You look like a tramp. I love my mother.

Some of us are creatures of habit. We put earworms¹ on repeat. We make the same mistakes and fall for the same people. Over and over again. We ensconce ourselves in a living room of familiarity. Whether it’s vices, habits, routines or traditions and whether we like it or not, patterns govern our lives. There is joy in repetition – that’s why I keep revisiting the same barbershop for the last 10 years.

When my sebaceous mop turns wayward, I hop on the Bakerloo line to Legends Barber Shop in Central London. If logic were my guide, I would not end up there. Location? Not walkable. Convenience? I literally live next to a hair salon. Price? Non-competitive. Needed? Necessary evil. Style? Let’s not talk about that. And yet, I’ve returned to the same barber’s many times a year in the last decade.

Barbers and their establishments come in many shapes and forms: Caribbean, Turkish, hipster, drug-dealing front-stores or high-end outfits. Some claim London is home to the world’s oldest: Truefit & Hill, opened in 1805. You think that’s ancient? In 1308, the City of London recognised the Worshipful Company of Barbers as a livery company² to look after the interests of barbers and surgeons. Yes, 14^th century barbers were jacks of many trades: cuts, trims, shaves, bloodlettings, tooth extractions and the occasional minor surgery. “What’s it gonna be today?” carried more potential for pain back then. The recognisable red-white swirl on poles outside shops signaled: “Blood and bandages involved. It gets messy in here”. These shops were and are social spaces, while barbers were and are great confidants, therapists of sorts.

If the barber-surgeon needed a poster child, that would be Jack. Black shirt to cover his paunch, last button done. The neck is almost absent. Only the bloodied apron is missing. The few missing teeth make his welcoming smile no less joyous or contagious. His cap hints at a possible East End origin and you might expect to hear “See you on Chewsday”. Some barbers just cut your hair. You go in, say hi, sit in silence for 15-20 minutes while they buzz around your head. Transaction complete. The quick old in-and-out. But that’s not Jack.

To greet, he hollers my name with his Polish accent and excitement. “Signore, how are you?” he asks and shakes my hand. The warm grip speaks more than words – he knows exactly who I am, the topic of our last conversation and where we’ve left it at. He points to the chair and then, as if on cue: “Same as usual?” I only have to nod. Habit is comfortable. I can’t possibly imagine what I would say to another barber. Make it shorter? Careful with the sides? Not too much from the front?

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me…

Nina Simone’s Feeling Good is on the radio. Jack’s humming along. When RockFM is on, he sometimes pauses to do air guitar riffs behind me. He bellows my name, extending the “o” beyond his lung capacity and then glances into the mirror. A smile has occupied my face and it mustn’t leave until I step out of the shop. He drapes the white cape over me – a magician preparing his trick. Is he going to make my torso disappear?

Singing is not one of Jack’s trades (even though he scat-sings after Nina). Making me feel comfortable is. Black-and-white photos decorate the walls: Elvis getting a haircut, John Lennon smiling and Muhammad Ali screaming at a knocked-out Sonny Liston. The Legends Hall of Fame. Two wooden chairs next to the entrance where you can wait. A sign spells out the danger: “Personal Items Left At Owner’s Risk”. I have made the mistake of leaving my bag on these chairs several times, before Jack told me off. “Too close to the door”. Somebody could snatch it and he can’t chase them. “Look at my size,” he adds, shaking his head. He knows he can’t float like a butterfly or sting like a bee.

Barber paraphernalia adorns the ledge below the mirror: scissors, clippers, brushes, combs, gels, creams, bottles. It’s a hodgepodge comprehensible solely by its creator. Maybe that’s true of our world too – only the Big Guy up there can make sense of it. I adjust my position. We’re ready to go. But before my keratin clippings cover the floor, there’s the wash.

“The water and the shampoo is on the boss,” Jack reassures me and winks.

I lower my head into the sink, face down. The faucet turns and a whirl of water rushes before my eyes.

“Is the temperature okay for you?” he asks.

I mumble a “yes”. Besides not being confident on bikes, the other childhood skill I never mastered was swimming. I can resist drowning, but I have strong reactions to water covering my face. It’s all too close. I feel unable to breathe and I imagine that’s what waterboarding feels like. Or worse. Warm water trickles on my scalp, while Jack’s pudgy fingers start massaging shampoo into my hair. That’s when my imagination goes wild. Fleet Street is not far off. I know the story of Sweeney Todd wayyyyy too well. The side street is not busy. What if Jack is not just a barber?

Everything is over within a minute. Of course, nothing happens to me. I tilt back into the comfy chair and let Jack dry my hair. His eyes are not glassy or ready for revenge. Phew. It turns out I don’t need a lot to get my adrenaline kicks. How do you get yours?

“So, how’ve you been?” I ask.

“All is the same, Florin. All quiet. Too quiet,” Jack says as he cuts my wet hair. Snip-snap. Snip-snap, around my head, like a mechanical mosquito that orbits, thirsty for blood. The only thing that ever seems to change is Jack’s facial hair. It switches from a fashionable goatee to a freshly shaven chin.

Jack is one of the thousands of people who work in London’s service economy. The routine is exhausting. He commutes daily for a minimum of 2 hours, 6 days per week. To do his job, he stands for up to 10 hours. The standing desk is his default, not a choice. Sundays are nap days and then the week starts again. This repetition has its dangers: drudgery and monotony. Jack is tired. He wants to retire back to Poland in a few years, but the government keeps increasing the pension age. He fights all of this with the only tools that are left to master: presence, listening, asking questions, humour. It’s all part of the toolkit.

True to the diverse tradition of barbers, Jack’s many trades include his avuncular aura. We talk about Russia, Poland and Putin. As Eastern Europeans, we can only shake our heads. The world seems fucked, we agree. Unlike Greek taxi drivers, Jack doesn’t try to explain to you how politics works. Instead, he listens. He probably knows more about my professional life than my dad. I even see him more often than some friends. Occasionally, we talk about growing up in Poland before the fall of the Iron Curtain and his apprenticeship as a barber. His real name is, of course, Jacek.

“I grew up in a country where everyone was a millionaire,” he says. That is, złoty millionaires. Poland experienced hyperinflation in the early 90s and paying 1-2 million złoty for a meal in Warsaw was no big deal. He laughs out loud as he reminisces.

To finish the back, Jack switches to the clippers. The mosquito sound now turns into a bumblebee buzz. He tends to gesticulate a lot when yielding the clippers. Once, they ran out of battery before he finished his story. Someone pops in and asks about an appointment. Jack knows his name. He knows everyone’s name. Tells Richard to come back at 4pm.

Maybe you get why I keep coming back. Jack doesn’t serve craft beer or prosecco with the haircut. There’s no Movember promotion. No “I got you, bro” energy. He doesn’t sell his own beard oil. He even ridicules me every time, asking how long until he can shave my head. “That bald patch is growing faster than the Roman empire.”

The truth is, I feel like I owe him. Hair grows at between 2-3mm per week. Doesn’t sound like much. But as a poor student, you let your hair grow and grow. Week by week, you save money and your curls get more and more unruly. And then you step into a random barbershop painted in fire-engine red, hoping they cut both hair and prices for students. Legends Barber Shop. After the much needed trim, the barber was going to charge me the full amount. Jack, sniffing my student credentials, insisted they apply a student discount. Not sure I could’ve afforded it otherwise. Since, I’ve kept returning. There is, indeed, joy in repetition.

We’re almost done. Jack holds the back mirror for me to give the customary nod and say “Brilliant”. No product at the end. He brushes my neck to remove any itchy hairs. He slaps his hands, clasps them together and bows slightly.

The steampunk Victorian cash register is only for decorative purposes. Not needed, as we just tap these days. I wish there were steampunk payment points. The real transaction happens when we shake hands again. It’s not a business transaction, rather one that involves acquaintance and a degree of friendship. Jack doesn’t say it and maybe he doesn’t even know it, but his presence tells me: It’s okay, I’m here to listen to you complain and take refuge from the crazy world out there.

I step outside and the chill wraps around my head, making me regret the winter haircut. As I said, going to see Jack is neither rational nor convenient. What guides me? In the “West”, by the time we’re 18, chances are that we will have spent 90% of the available in-person time with our parents. We go off to university, travelling, jobs, bigger cities. We strive for better, faster, stronger. We can even count how many times we will see friends in our lifetime (if not co-located). Then, every physical encounter matters. I do the maths for how many times I may still see Jack and the answer involves only 2 digits. One day, I might move out of London, the shop might close or Jack might retire to Poland. These realisations carry their own chills.

What guides me then? Every time I go, I extend the lifetime that I have with Jack by one more haircut. I call it “The Legend of Jack the Barber”.

I hope you liked my overintellectualisation of getting a haircut. If you think someone else might indulge in this, consider sharing it with them.

Other than that, here’s what I’ve been up to on the www (wild wild world, not world wide web).

Analog work on the risograph is amazing. I got to cut out old British gardening magazines to make the prints above. It was a lovely 3h workshop, where I got to understand how the risograph works and how to layer the colours. It’s good to leave the digital world for an evening and muck about with paper. I’d encourage you to find local workshops that involve analog messiness. It makes you feel like a 10-year old again, in the best possible sense.

I re-edited and updated my piece on surreal VW beetles in Mexico City to send to a few publications. Have a gander.

And then there was the Blue Rider dinner. As I wrote before, that’s my new big writing project. I got some friends together, gave them food and wine and presented the current best answer of the narrative. I printed a selection of Kandinsky’s work and everyone got to tell their own story through his paintings. The interactive aspect created an opportunity for everyone to develop a relationship with the works of art. Unlike in a museum, they could touch them, feel them, re-arrange them, turn them upside down and construct their own meaning from the work of art. Loads of fun and it’s probably an activity you can do with any artist’s life and work. Try giving it a go.

And finally, if you’re around in London, try visiting Postcard Teas. Nobody’s paying me to say this. It’s a real gem of a shop to discover tea from China, India and Japan. The art on the packaging is also great. My new favourite is the Lemon Verbeena.

That’s all for this year, folks. See you in 2026, when I hope to have the first versions of The Blue Rider ready. I have a lot of reading to do.

Peace,
Florin