What Do Women Really Want? When It Comes to Hairdos, Her Books Help

Free-spirit hair stylist Linda Lanphar, 36, of Huntington Beach doesn’t exactly wear your average hairdo. But she knows what kind of styles the average woman wants and that’s why her annual income is at six figures. Now, instead of setting hair styles, she takes pictures of them.

“I was dreaming one night,” she reflected, “about the books hairdressers use as guides to style their customers’ hair and the styles were so bizarre the average woman wouldn’t wear them to a Halloween party.”

So after 16 years as a hairdresser, Lanphar decided new books with new pictures of new styles for average woman were needed and started camping out at shopping centers and supermarkets to find women wearing styles other women would wear. “I’d just go up to them and ask if they would model for me,” she said. “They all loved the idea of being in a book.”

She made appointments with them and their beauticians, who would recreate the style, followed by a photographic session. “I credited the stylist in the book and everyone was happy, including me because I didn’t have to pay anyone. Being in the book was reward enough for them.”

Her casual meeting with women at such places as the South Coast Plaza shopping center sometimes caused concern. “One woman’s husband brought a policeman to the appointment,” said Lanphar. “The husband thought we were going to shoot pornographic pictures.”

So far, 600 people have posed for the six books she has completed and sold to salons throughout the country, especially in the Midwest where they are most popular. “Actually a lot of the people who posed for the books are friends of mine,” she admitted.

Lanphar felt the book was a great moneymaking idea “but I really didn’t know what to do at the beginning so I started calling publishers and they all laughed at me. So I borrowed some money from my parents and published the book myself.”

Even then, “We had to take the first finished book and sell it from salon to salon to raise money for the next one,” said the Anaheim High School graduate. “I pieced the book together in my garage because I couldn’t afford a studio. I was so broke.”

It was her experience as a hairdresser, which includes schooling in England, New York and Chicago, that gave her the foundation to develop styling books for the average woman.

“You learn a lot from women when you set their hair,” she said.

If passengers on the Caribbean cruise ship are lucky, Christopher Bell, 26, of Costa Mesa will bring along his four “buddies” to give the travelers some idea of why he’s on the ship in the first place.

Actually the “buddies” are dummies he designed and built to use in his lip sync act of the 1970s group, the Jackson Five. His rendition won him first prize--the Caribbean cruise--at a Fountain Valley nightclub.

“Christopher,” the professional name he uses, is a regular on the lip sync nightclub circuit in Orange and Los Angeles counties, sometimes competing five nights a week for prizes. He said the cruise was his biggest award.

“It’s not a secure job but I’m happy,” he said.

The once-popular Japanese Village and Deer Park in Buena Park had a tight-knit group of about 1,000 mostly Oriental employees before it shut down in 1974. So it seemed right, some of those workers felt, to hold a reunion. Darlene Yoshikawa, 36, of Huntington Beach who worked at the themed amusement park, said the recent event took a year of preparation. But it was all worth it, she said, since 312 of her former co-workers attended the $25-a-person event. “We all hugged each other,” she said. “It was heartwarming.”

To give you an idea of her great-grandparents’ life style, said great-granddaughter Kim Hutchinson, 25, “Their car (1962 Dodge) is in mint condition. All they do is drive it to church, the store and back.”

Well, Ruth Bacon, 88, and hubby James T. Bacon, 92, are also such homebodies, the family thought it would be fitting to have a home-style dinner for them for their 70th wedding anniversary. And since the Bacon family once owned the land in Buena Park that Knotts Berry Farm now sits on, they’re all going there for dinner.

“That way no one has to do any work,” said son James P. Bacon, 68, who said he expects about 23 of the immediate family in Orange and Los Angeles counties to attend the Sept. 14 celebration.

The senior Bacons are still active in the house they built by hand in 1936. In fact, Ruth is studying a Department of Motor Vehicles pamphlet. She has an appointment for her license renewal.

Oftentimes professionals have a difficult time proving they are, even public relations people. But Saddleback College District’s, Donna Hatchett, 41, of Fullerton feels things are looking better her and other community college public relations pros, especially in Orange County.

“We have so much competition in Orange County,” said Hatchett, new president of the state Community College Public Relations Organization, “that it makes us better here.”

Accountant James S. Rigby of Brea turned 40 so it only seemed right that 40 picketers (all were friends) march in front of his Brea firm carrying signs of the damnable advanced age, a setup cleverly arranged by his wife, Susan Rigby.

“He was very surprised,” she giggled. But wait until Sunday.

That’s her 40th birthday.

Acknowledgments--Garden Grove High School senior Mike Morales awarded $100 by Garden Grove Elks Lodge to help defray costs of attending the recent International Sports Exchange track meet in Taipei, Taiwan. Morales throws the discus and holds the school record.