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Is the art of (salon) conversation dead?

In one of these “shoppes,” my slightly more middle-aged partner was getting his hair trimmed the other day. The young barber cutting at the next chair over was talking to his own client about his big night out. He got with some hot chick – wanna see? Then he pulled out his iPhone and the two began looking at hot chick’s pictures, prompting much approving murmuring between barber and client. (Can we assume nudity in those photos? Yes, we can.)

“Someone’s daughter! Someone’s daughter!” I shrieked upon hearing this story.

“At my old barber, we just talked about sports,” said my partner, bewildered.

A generation gap between those over 30 and their stylists isn’t surprising – healthy hands, artistry and long work hours are the stuff of youth – but it can amp up the awkwardness over what to talk about while stuck in the chair. Common ground doesn’t always come easy. A colleague mentioned that he was going to the opera and his young hairdresser said, “I’ve only been to one opera – Phantom of the Opera .”

Stylist-client is an intimate relationship. Getting the hair done (and the head massaged) is one of the few instances of prolonged touch from someone not naked or shoving on the subway. Salons and barber shops are what sociologists call “third places,” those potentially liberating establishments like coffee shops and bookstores that are neither home nor work and are the hubs of successful communities. They’re places where we are forced, for better or worse, to interact with people from different classes and backgrounds. At the salon, it’s a direct and intense interaction – inescapable, in fact, for at least an hour.

Human physical contact in the soothing atmosphere of a good salon sets the stage for all manner of confession (listen hard and you’ll usually hear someone unburdening). So why is it often so hard to find something to talk about? In part, there’s no other equivalent of the relationship: It’s not exactly friendship – there’s an economic transaction underpinning your time together – so the conversation hovers in this liminal zone between delivery-person chit-chat and bestie oversharing.