Shave And A Haircut….

…Will set you back considerably more than two bits these days. But the Washington Post reports that the shave is making a comeback. As in being shaved by a barber.

Shave and a haircut: 920 bits.

It may cost a lot more than the two bits of old, but the traditional barbershop shave is making a comeback. Even as the service disappears from old-style barbershops, a new generation of Washington area chins is discovering the indulgent pleasures of the hot-towel, warm-lather professional shave at upscale salons, men's spas and specialty retail shops.

And some licensed haircutters are discovering that those long-ago shaving lessons from barber college weren't such a waste of time after all.

"In most states, you're still required to do a shave for the barbering test, and in most cases, that's the last time a barber picked up a razor in his career," said Carl Cwiok, a master barber at the Art of Shaving shop at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City. "That's been changing in the last three or four years. But it can be hard for us to find guys who have experience."

Cwiok is in charge of recruiting razor-ready barbers for the Pentagon City shop and other outlets of the Miami-based Art of Shaving chain, which has 25 "barbershop spas" across the country and plans to open two more in the Washington area in the coming months. Those stores will join a growing number of area venues that offer hot lather shaves for $35 to $45. A shave-and-haircut package at the Grooming Lounge downtown runs $115 (the aforementioned 920 bits) and takes about 90 minutes.

Robert Heinlein was fond of mentioning the Paradox of the Barber, which is generally attributed to Bertram Russell, as far as I have been able to ascertain. That paradox runs thusly:

In a village, the barber shaves everyone who does not shave himself, but no one else.

The question that prompts the paradox is this:

Who shaves the barber?

Think you have a clever answer to that one? Follow the link. The question actually cannot be answered.