Shave and a Haircut--28 Bucks

Keith Brown has cultivated a taste for old-fashioned “guy things”--a good cigar, a close-cropped military-style haircut and a barber-shop shave.

Once a month, early on a Saturday, the 30-year-old Fountain Valley resident heads out to Milucky’s Salon & Men’s Parlor in Huntington Beach and settles into the barber’s chair just to feel the numbing heat of steamed towels and the gentle scrape of a straight-edged razor on his face.

“It’s a feel-good indulgence that I love. I do it for the luxury of it,” Brown says.

He’s one of a dwindling number of men who still go to a barber for a shave. What was once a common sight--guys sitting around in barber chairs with foamy faces--has become a rarity, a nostalgic scene worthy of Norman Rockwell.

Today’s shaves cost about as much as a haircut and take just as much time. Most men don’t want to pay for something they can do themselves that lasts only a day.

Then there are guys like Brown, for whom having one’s mug slathered, moisturized, steamed and powdered has become a pleasurable ritual.

Barbers who shave their customers are few and hard to find, but Brown has found one who shares his appreciation for all things masculine: Jack Milucky, who has been erasing five o’clock shadows for 35 of his 65 years.

With his red beard and ruddy complexion, Milucky looks more like a sea captain than a barber. He has turned his men’s parlor into a kind of ship’s cabin complete with polished wood, a collection of nautical brass plates and a bare-bosomed maidenhead.

Women, who go about having manicures and getting their hair done in an adjacent salon, seldom venture inside the parlor. It’s a bastion of male brotherhood, a place where, in Milucky’s words, “old burned-out, potbellied barbers” ply their trade.

Brown began making a monthly pilgrimage to Milucky’s two years ago, when he got his first barber-shop shave for his wedding day. His wife, Angela, accompanies him, but she disappears for a manicure while Brown undergoes his “pampering.”

The ritual begins when Milucky lathers up his brush with shaving soap and, with broad strokes, covers Brown’s face with foam. Then he wraps Brown’s face with steaming towels so that only his nose pokes through the cloth.

Milucky repeats this step four or five times to soften the whiskers. For Brown, the heat of the towels is as soothing as a massage.

“I’d practically fall asleep except that I’m usually talking to Jack,” he says.

Wielding a straight-edged razor, Milucky chisels away at the foam with a steady hand, holding Brown’s skin taut between his fingers to scrape away the whiskers.

“I work against the grain. You can’t get a close shave otherwise,” Milucky says.

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The shave is followed by more towels and a moisturizer. Then, to tighten the pores and waken both the skin and often the snoozing customer, Milucky pats on the Aqua Velva or another of his assorted after-shaves.

“I could use something stronger and he’d jump right out of the chair,” Milucky says. “It depends how mad I am at the client.”

As a final touch, the barber snaps a towel inches from Brown’s skin to blow air on his cold face. Then he lightly dusts the skin with powder. Brown emerges from the chair with his skin looking like slightly floured bread dough.

“Time for a cheek test!” says Angela, and rubs her cheek against his. “His skin is so soft.”

For Brown, getting a shave has proven therapeutic.

“It sets me off in a good mood in the morning,” he says. Brown, who works as a computer software designer, paid $28 for the combination haircut and shave; a shave alone costs $18. It’s a price few guys want to pay anymore, which is the main reason most barbers quit giving shaves.

Perhaps because he has a fondness for old things, Milucky has yet to hang up his strop, a band of leather used for sharpening the razor. He likes to show visitors his 50-year-old strop and his collection of old razors, including his portable World War II model.

“Barbers used to shave 20 people a day. They’d pick up a touch for it,” Milucky says.

Shaving a man is not like riding a bike. You can’t just pick it up after a prolonged absence, he says. It requires practice, lest the hand slip and the blade draw blood. Even the best barbers occasionally nick their customers.

“I act like it didn’t happen,” admits Milucky, who says he quickly stems the bleeding.

A visit to the barber’s chair at one time involved a great deal of blood. Barbers practiced surgery for six centuries in Europe. Indeed, Ambroise Pare not only became one of the great pioneers of surgery in the 17th century, he could also give his patients a decent haircut and a shave.

People went to their local barber-surgeon when they were sick and he would cut them, a practice known as bloodletting that was thought to drain diseases and other evils from the body.

Monks practiced bloodletting regularly, and in 1163 the pope issued a decree that forbade them to perform the procedure upon each other. Monks had to be clean-shaven, so barbers were already common figures in monasteries, and because barbers were already handy with a sharp instrument, the bloodletting duties fell to them.

The red-white-and-blue-striped barber pole has its origin in barbers’ bloody past.

“They’d wipe up the blood and hang [the rags] outside the shop to dry. People saw the bloody rags and knew it was a barber’s shop,” Milucky says.

Blood has played a significant role in modern barbering history as well, but for a much different reason. Fear of AIDS prompted many barbers to stop shaving. They worried about drawing blood with HIV.

Those few barbers who persevere with their strops and razors typically do so because they have older customers who can’t shave themselves.

“The younger guys don’t want to take the time and money for a shave,” says Vonpaul Edmundson, a barber for 35 years who still shaves four or five customers regularly at his 19th Hole barber salon in Orange.

“Shaving has become so much simpler with safety razors. That’s what killed shaving,” Edmundson says. “The difference is, most younger guys have never had a shave like this, with a straight razor, hot steamed towels and hot lather.”

A good shave takes 30 to 45 minutes, instead of the five minutes guys spend to shave themselves, he says.

“These older guys know how good a shave feels,” he says.

As a former member of the state Board of Barbering and Cosmetology, Edmundson fought to keep shaving as a requirement of the barbering license exam.

“It’s the only thing that distinguishes barbers from cosmetologists,” he says. “Even though shaving is a dying art, I’m going down fighting.”