Brand Loyalty

“The relationship between a man and his barber…that’s sacred.” – Barack Obama
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When my family and I first crossed the Pacific on a raft made of chopsticks Boeing 747 in 1992, we settled in an upper-middle class suburb in south San Jose. Five years passed without much note. Other than learning English (and speaking it better than my American-born peers), being whipped into playing piano and violin like a good little Asian boy, and becoming overweight thanks to a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup and avoidance of physical activity, nothing of significance really happened during my years in the ‘burbs. Life was quiet, slow, and full of sunshine (most it wasted on me, since I spent my life in front of the TV, playing remarkably bad video games). I was a happy boy.

One day during the summer of ‘97, my mother unexpectedly announced that after I finished fifth grade at Williams Elementary, we would be picking up and relocating about an hour north in some town called Palo Alto.

“Wait. Wait. Wait. WHAT? We’re doing WHAT? Are you KIDDING? No wait don’t say it. I mean, WHAT????”

“Calm down! Your father and I think you’ll really like it. It’s a nicer area, there are no track houses like here, there are really good schools, and there’s too much new development happening here. San Jose is growing too quickly for us. We want a smaller, quieter community.”

“THIS WILL RUIN ME. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS? YOU ARE STRIPPING ME OF ALL MY FRIENDS. YOU ARE TEARING ME FROM THE ONLY PEOPLE WITH WHOM I CAN IDENTIFY, BECAUSE LORD KNOWS I CAN’T CONNECT POINT A TO POINT B WITH ANYBODY IN THIS FAMILY. I WILL RUN AWAY AND HATE YOU TWO FOREVER AND EVER. I WILL DO REGRETTABLE THINGS TO MYSELF, AND YOU WILL BE ALL OVER THE HEADLINES FOR BEING IRRESPONSIBLE PARENTS AFTER THEY FIND MY HALF-ROTTEN, CROW-EATEN BODY IN A DUMPSTER. DON’T YOU DARE PICK UP AND LEAVE. AND WHAT ABOUT MELODY? WHAT, ARE YOU GOING TO DRIVE HER DOWN TO SAN JOSE EVERY SINGLE DAY TO FINISH HER SENIOR YEAR AT LELAND HIGH?…OH MY GOD, THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE DOING, ISN’T IT? YOU’RE REALLY GOING TO WASTE RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF GAS DRIVING HER BACK AND FORTH AN HOUR EVERY DAY JUST SO SHE CAN FINISH HER LAST YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL DOWN THERE WHILE I AM LEFT ALONE TO FEND FOR MYSELF IN THAT PODUNK TOWN WHERE I WILL KNOW NOBODY AND HAVE NO ASIAN FRIENDS? SO INSTEAD OF JUST KILLING ME, YOU’RE ALSO SET ON KILLING MOTHER EARTH TOO? BAAAHHHH THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!”

“Our house will be five minutes from Stanford University.”

“Well what the hell are we waiting for? Come on, help me pick up the couch.”

It was ten minutes of sheer terror followed by seven years of new friends, a new taste for Jewish humor, and new big dreams burned to pieces by one rejection letter. (But whatever, I hold no resentment at all to Anna Marie Porras, director of admissions at Stanford in 2005. None whatsoever. I don’t even know why I remember that name. Go Bears whose Axe you know it et cetera et cetera.)

Certainly, I have since adopted Palo Alto as my actual hometown, and on good days, I might even be proud of presenting her as so. Some of my best friends are still the ones with whom I attended middle and high schools. Unfortunately, I have to admit that Palo Alto won’t be one of the things I’ll be missing that much when I move to The District in a couple of months. It just doesn’t have much to offer a guy of my age.

There is one thing – person, rather – I will dearly miss: my barber.

Since my first week in Palo Alto, I have been going to the same barber, Jimmy, at Elegance Hair Salon in downtown Mountain View. I don’t get haircuts in Berkeley because I just don’t trust any of the barbers here to know my hair like Jimmy does. He knows my hair so well that I can go in, not say a word, and he just goes to work: back extra short, no sideburns. Ten to fifteen minutes, twelve buckaroos plus a single for tip - it’s been the same way for twelve years. Hell, he literally watched me grow up from a short sixth grader to the guy I am today.

The funny thing is that, despite my extreme loyalty to him, we don’t really know each other. We don’t really ever talk, and honestly, I prefer it that way. I only recently started striking up some conversation with him during haircuts, and that’s only because I feel bad for never having established any sort of relationship with him. I know he has a couple of kids, one of whom is college-aged, and that he lives near his workplace. He knows I went to Berkeley, studied something science-y, and that I’m moving to D.C. He still hates that I NEVER call to make appointments. The end.

That is the full extent of our relationship. Yet it is something so priceless that I am having separation anxiety about this divorce. Granted, my haircuts were never showcase masterpieces (come on, it’s $12), but I was comfortable and I trusted him. Like Barack says, what goes on between a man and his barber is sacred. Hell, Obama even makes his barber do house calls for him.

The way I see it, I have two options: shop for new barber in D.C. and TRY to overcome my fear of having a new guy touch my hair with blades, or just be a dirty, smelly hippie for the entire duration of my residence there. I am legitimately torn.

P.S. I am as torn about my haircutting options as I am between In-N-Out versus Five Guys, known to some as “The In-N-Out of the East Coast.” For you NorCal’ers, Five Guys is coming to the Bay Area (one at 43810 Christy St. in Fremont, another at 125 Crescent Dr. in Pleasant Hill, just south of Walnut Creek). Try it. It’s GOOD.