Slasher’s chair
The old-style barber chair at Church & Gerrard
When I was a kid in England, my dad used to take me and my younger brother to a local barber shop to have our hair cut. The name of the barber’s was Gillman’s and the owner was this small, compact, neat older guy, whose name I’ve forgotten (and who has since passed away) but he was always referred to as Slasher. He came by this name, I guess, because he was one of those old-school barbers who simply went at your hair with scissors and electric shaver and before you knew it you had a ’short-back-and-sides’, which was so not the moderate trim you had originally requested.
Slasher Gillman’s son also worked in the shop. At least with Dave we could rest assured that, having studied hair styling in college, he would at least know what type of cut we were asking for. It’s funny now to look back and recall how my brother and I would sit there, holding on to the edge of our seats waiting to see who would finish cutting the current client’s hair first—would one of us get lucky and end up sitting in Dave’s chair, or would it be a long, slow walk to the gallows of Slasher’s chair?
I remember those old, iconic barber’s chairs, which would come with an extra detachable seat resting across the arms for those of us who were too small to make full use of the adult seat.
Well, that was all way back then in England. Today I went for a hair cut at the corner of Church and Gerrard and saw, to my delight, one of those old fashioned barber chairs I would sit in in my childhood! It had the old black leather seat and arms, as well as a hook on the side for the strip the barber would use for sharpening his cutthroat razor. It even had a small ashtray in the arm. Hard to imagine in today’s more health conscious and politically correct era that clients would sit and smoke, and shoot the breeze, while having their hair cut in those bygone days!
The barber at this shop was an older Vietnamese gentleman who knew his stuff and took his time with my hair. He and I talked about the old barber shops, the chairs and where he’d purchased them as second-hand items and how proud he was of them. He even let me take a photo of the chair when he’d finished cutting my hair. For me, it was a trip down Memory Lane and I wanted to post the picture to my blog for posterity.
And as a bonus, he was no Slasher Gillman—I got exactly the cut I asked for!
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