Shear memories
When Spokane Valley resident Janet Boehme travels, she doesn’t collect souvenirs. No T-shirts and trinkets for her. Instead, wherever she is, she looks around for some kind of beauty shop.
That’s because she collects haircuts.
“It is my mission,” she said, “to get haircuts all around the world.”
Her quest began back in 1997, when she and her husband, Chuck, took a bicycling tour through Europe. The tour ended in Paris, and Boehme said, “My hair looked awful after being under a helmet for several weeks.”
As they walked along the Champs-Elysées, she spotted a salon. “I thought how fun it would be to have my hair cut on such a famous, fashionable street.”
Unfortunately, Janet spoke no French and the stylist spoke no English, so the $50 ‘do turned out disastrous. “It was too ‘big’ for me, and I didn’t mind donning my bike helmet to flatten it a little,” she said with a laugh. But that experience piqued her curiosity. What would it be like to get haircuts in other exotic places?
In the years since then, she’s gotten many answers.
From England to Mexico, from The Netherlands to Glacier Bay, she finds a local shop, walks in without an appointment, and asks for a cut. The language barrier never seems to be a problem. “I just use my fingers in a scissor formation to let them know where I want it cut,” she said, “and hope for the best.”
And sometimes she gets the best, like in Budapest. “I walked by a shop on a very attractive, pedestrian-only street,” she remembered. Inside, the business was decorated in black and white geometric designs with red accents. American rock music blared from loudspeakers, and “stylish women with cute haircuts” gave her a perfect trim.
But she hasn’t always been so fortunate. “The haircut in Nadi, Fiji, was my worst,” she said. The shop — a small area with a sink and one salon chair – was in the back room of a clothing store. That in itself could’ve signaled a problem, but Boehme had an even greater worry.
“Most women in Fiji have thick black hair with natural curls,” she pointed out. “I have thin, fine, blond hair.” But the stylist assured her she knew how to cut any kind of hair, because she’d been trained in New Zealand.
“She cut and blow-dried it in a very old-fashioned bouffant style,” Boehme said. “The haircut looked like I had a bowl on my head.”
Boehme’s most unusual experience took place in Chang Mai, Thailand, in a shop where no one spoke English. She explained, “The girl gave me a shampoo and a good scalp massage and started cutting, but she seemed nervous and unsure of herself.”
The stylist cut only the sides, so Boehme used her finger/scissor pantomime to indicate she’d like some off the back as well. But that didn’t happen. Abruptly, the young woman dropped her scissors, grabbed her purse, and rushed out the door.
Boehme, still sitting in the salon chair with the plastic apron around her shoulders, couldn’t imagine what had happened. She assumed the worst. “I was afraid I had offended her,” she said. Fortunately, another hairdresser finished the cut, and Boehme paid her the equivalent of $3.25.
Moments later, she walked down the street and met her husband at a restaurant bar for dinner. As they found their table, she told him about the unusual hairdresser. Then she grabbed his arm and pointed. There, pouring beer at the bar, was the stylist from the salon.
“I believe she wasn’t a hairdresser at all,” Boehme said in retrospect. “She was probably just practicing and hanging out with her hairdresser friend, and I was an opportunity to try her skills. She probably left the salon because she needed to get to her real job.”
That’s one haircut Boehme won’t soon forget. And, it’s a prime example of why she collects these memories rather than souvenirs. Haircuts to her are definitely more valuable than T-shirts and trinkets. They give her a feel for the people and the culture. And if it’s a bad cut?
“No big deal,” she said with a shrug. “It’s just hair. It’ll grow out again.”