Barbershop Confidential: Capitol Barber Shop

When, like Bostonist, you keep your hair very very short, it is easy to “let yourself go,” at least inasmuch as coworkers and friends start calling you “shaggy” even though your mane is nowhere near the average for clean-cut Bostonians. This was the condition we found ourselves in last week when we stumbled upon the Capitol Barber Shop, a quaint-looking little affair across from the State House on Bowdoin Street.

After a terrible experience at the only other low-end barbershop we knew of near work, Bostonist was resigned to a week of scruffiness (we just don’t have time to get a trim on weekday evenings) when we spied the two old-school chairs of the Capitol Barber Shop. In fact, the whole place looks old-school: freshly painted in a muted sort of orangy beige that immediately looks ancient, with a similarly timeless maroon trim and gold lettering on the plate glass front window, it looks from outside like the sort of place where one might find copies of Playboy available for waiting patrons. And when we went in and sat down to wait our turn, there was a copy of Playboy, although we opted for the Sporting News (we just aren’t wild at the prospect of being seen by coworkers while perusing soft-core porn).

At 10:00 in the morning there was one guy getting his hair cut and another guy waiting ahead of us (no Playboy for him either; he was reading Sports Illustrated). An unlikely barber was working in an unhurried manner: he was fortyish and paunchy with long, sickly-looking grey hair that hung limply to his shoulders. He looked somehow like a Renaissance painting of an Italian dignitary, but with a track suit and white t-shirt. Our first instinct was to be suspicious of this long-haired and unkempt barber, as we tend to distrust thin chefs, but we stuck it out. Even before we got our turn in the chair, he started to win us over.

Bostonist likes nothing more than well-spoken people in jobs that don’t require that quality, and the Renaissance barber was just that. He chatted about the weather with the man whose hair he was cutting, but with an easy eloquence we don’t usually encounter in the lawyers we see every day. When another customer came in and commented on how busy the shop seemed, the Renaissance barber explained that he had even hired another barber to help out, but today, the new guy’s first day, he had failed to show up. The Renaissance barber guessed that his employee was delayed by flooding, then made a rather tragic gesture to the cloudy skies and said, “Ah, the fates are against me.”

When it was Bostonist’s turn, we gave the usual instruction (number two all over, taper it on the sides, line it up in the front and the back), and the Renaissance barber set to work. As he did the first pass with the clippers, we noticed that he kept stopping to scrape at our head with a comb. It felt kinda good, so we didn’t say anything, but after a moment, he gently explained that he was clearing out dead skin, “for the health of your scalp.” You might think that having a stranger pick at your dandruff with a plastic comb would be disconcerting, but his chair-side manner was impeccable.

His haircutting was also top notch. Bostonist will admit that we were a bit irritated at waiting over half an hour in the middle of a weekday morning, but when it was our turn, we were glad for the attention to detail. In addition to the repeated, therapeutic strafing, he used the comb to lift up our hair and make sure it got an even treatment from the clippers. He did the taper freehand (amateurs will use two different clipper lengths to create steps, then smooth out the border) and it came out perfect. He made the sideburns even without need for a single correction or retouch. In short, he was a champ, and although he had chatted with an earlier customer, he correctly intuited that Bostonist is the quiet haircut type.

While he were getting our haircut, the newly hired barber rushed in breathlessly, begging forgiveness, explaining that he’d been up all night moving stuff around in his father’s basement and trying to get it pumped out. The Renaissance barber was utterly calm and forgiving of his young, eager employee, who soon set to work on an elderly gentleman who seemed to have barely enough hair to cut. After a brief pause, the new hire came over to the Renaissance barber and said quietly, “I’m really sorry about this morning. It won’t happen again.” The boss said, “Don’t think twice about it. I know this was an anomaly.” The employee, seeming genuinely moved: “I really appreciate this.” Call Bostonist sentimental, but we found it rather moving. We also liked that the new hire then engaged the old guy whose hair he was cutting in a heated but friendly debate about the merits of the Cape Wind project and of municipally owned utilities (the barber was strongly in favor, the customer not so much).

In the end, Bostonist was highly pleased with the Capitol Barber Shop. The atmosphere was old-timey and welcoming, the service was skilled and friendly, and for $14, it was well worth it. Were it not for our ongoing quest to explore the barber shops of the Boston area, we might make this place our regular spot for workdays.

Read earlier installments of Barbershop Confidential here, here, and here.