The best hair-cutting girl I know is named Amber. We packed her up for LA about two years ago and she finally moved back to Atlanta back in April. When she left for LA I had managed to get 5 people going to her, she's great. Probably not the same Amber but...
My Amber (ha!) was in San Diego, so probably not the one.
How I found/met her is kinda funny: I was leaving work one Friday evening in DESPERATE need of a haircut. I went to some Fantastic Sam's place and it had this HUGE wait.
Then I went to a SuperCuts about 2 miles away. Walked in, tons of people waiting. But I looked like Lon Chaney's nephew, so I HAD to do something. Anyway, I look around at all the girls/women cutting hair there. They ALL had that Britney/SoCal/bar girl/sorority chick/trendy/wannabe/"Blind Date" or "Joe Millionaire" look to them. Just carbon copies, with long hair, ultra-trendy clothes, bored, snotty looks on their faces, etc. In short, EVERYTHING I can't stand in a woman.
I scan around and there's this short girl standing there, cutting someone's hair. She had on these cool baggy pants, black/white two-toned creepers (like you'd see Brian Setzer wear or something), a sleeveless shirt with a tattoo on her right bicep and a big ring thing through her nose. Her hair was blonde, but had blue sections streaked through it. She was constantly smiling and laughing and talking to the person whose hair she was cutting. She just had this whole aura/vibe about her that struck me instantly. I kept looking at her, for all kinds of reasons.
Kinda like taking the best parts of Fairuza Balk, Joan Jett and Pink (the funky, hard-edged sexiness) and mixing them in with Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Cheri Oteri (giggling, cutie-pie, girl next door with a great personality and funny as can be).
A REALLY rare combination, I've come to learn.
I immediately said to myself "a chick dressed that funky in a place this straight and by-the-book HAS to know what she's doing and be good! And she seems like a nice person."
Sure enough, one of the girls came to me after a while and said "ready?". I just said "no...I think I'd like to wait for her, please" and gestured toward Amber.
The snotty girl just looked at me as if to say "you gotta be kidding...whatever...". It probably crushed her that I wasn't taken with her whole blonde-maned, cleavage-heavy package.
Anyway, nearly half-an-hour later Amber comes up to me and says I hear you kept waiting for me...are you ready?"
Halfway into it, she asks me why I waited. I just told her the truth (the shoes, the hair, the tat, the personality, the fact that seemed to enjoy what she was doing, etc. She just stopped and her eyes got all big and she was like "ohmigosh, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. Thank you!"
We hit it off and she just did a perfect job, right out of the gate. Didn't rush or make me feel like I was on an assembly line. She kept measuring and checking. Got really close with the clipper and just did a really nice, attention-oriented job. AND she was funny as could be and a total sweetheart. If you looked at her on the street, you'd either a) get scared or b) assume she's just some screwed-up chick, trying to piss her parents off.
I learned that night, in a really cool way, that you can never judge a book by its cover (although it was her shoes and overall funkiness that made me want to choose her).
Being funny and sweet and a really good, take-as-much-time-as-she-needs cutter were just side benefits.
Anyway, after about 6 months I go in and as soon as I walk in door, she runs to me and goes "I'm SO glad you came today...ohmigosh!" She then proceeded to tell me that she'd gotten a new job down in downtown San Diego at a really cool hair place and that Sunday was her last day at SuperCuts (she was THRILLED because she felt the same toward all the Barbies in there as they obviously did about her) and that she would be gone (this was a Thursday or Friday, and I'd just gone by - on a whim - to see if she was working and could squeeze me in for a quick trim).
She told me that had I not come in, she wouldn't have known how to let me know and that the girls there wouldn't have helped me track her down.
So anyway, over the following year-and-a-half, I happily made the 30-mile-each-way drive to downtown San Diego to have Amber whack on my hair. She said I was the only customer who followed her down and that she always liked seeing my name in the appointment book because we always had fun and talked and shared the same sense of humor and stuff.
So anyway. That's my Amber. I miss her scissors and her laugh.
Comments
The best hair-cutting girl I know is named Amber. We packed her up for LA about two years ago and she finally moved back to Atlanta back in April. When she left for LA I had managed to get 5 people going to her, she's great. Probably not the same Amber but...
How I found/met her is kinda funny: I was leaving work one Friday evening in DESPERATE need of a haircut. I went to some Fantastic Sam's place and it had this HUGE wait.
Then I went to a SuperCuts about 2 miles away. Walked in, tons of people waiting. But I looked like Lon Chaney's nephew, so I HAD to do something. Anyway, I look around at all the girls/women cutting hair there. They ALL had that Britney/SoCal/bar girl/sorority chick/trendy/wannabe/"Blind Date" or "Joe Millionaire" look to them. Just carbon copies, with long hair, ultra-trendy clothes, bored, snotty looks on their faces, etc. In short, EVERYTHING I can't stand in a woman.
I scan around and there's this short girl standing there, cutting someone's hair. She had on these cool baggy pants, black/white two-toned creepers (like you'd see Brian Setzer wear or something), a sleeveless shirt with a tattoo on her right bicep and a big ring thing through her nose. Her hair was blonde, but had blue sections streaked through it. She was constantly smiling and laughing and talking to the person whose hair she was cutting. She just had this whole aura/vibe about her that struck me instantly. I kept looking at her, for all kinds of reasons.
Kinda like taking the best parts of Fairuza Balk, Joan Jett and Pink (the funky, hard-edged sexiness) and mixing them in with Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Cheri Oteri (giggling, cutie-pie, girl next door with a great personality and funny as can be).
A REALLY rare combination, I've come to learn.
I immediately said to myself "a chick dressed that funky in a place this straight and by-the-book HAS to know what she's doing and be good! And she seems like a nice person."
Sure enough, one of the girls came to me after a while and said "ready?". I just said "no...I think I'd like to wait for her, please" and gestured toward Amber.
The snotty girl just looked at me as if to say "you gotta be kidding...whatever...". It probably crushed her that I wasn't taken with her whole blonde-maned, cleavage-heavy package.
Anyway, nearly half-an-hour later Amber comes up to me and says I hear you kept waiting for me...are you ready?"
Halfway into it, she asks me why I waited. I just told her the truth (the shoes, the hair, the tat, the personality, the fact that seemed to enjoy what she was doing, etc. She just stopped and her eyes got all big and she was like "ohmigosh, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. Thank you!"
We hit it off and she just did a perfect job, right out of the gate. Didn't rush or make me feel like I was on an assembly line. She kept measuring and checking. Got really close with the clipper and just did a really nice, attention-oriented job. AND she was funny as could be and a total sweetheart. If you looked at her on the street, you'd either a) get scared or b) assume she's just some screwed-up chick, trying to piss her parents off.
I learned that night, in a really cool way, that you can never judge a book by its cover (although it was her shoes and overall funkiness that made me want to choose her).
Being funny and sweet and a really good, take-as-much-time-as-she-needs cutter were just side benefits.
Anyway, after about 6 months I go in and as soon as I walk in door, she runs to me and goes "I'm SO glad you came today...ohmigosh!" She then proceeded to tell me that she'd gotten a new job down in downtown San Diego at a really cool hair place and that Sunday was her last day at SuperCuts (she was THRILLED because she felt the same toward all the Barbies in there as they obviously did about her) and that she would be gone (this was a Thursday or Friday, and I'd just gone by - on a whim - to see if she was working and could squeeze me in for a quick trim).
She told me that had I not come in, she wouldn't have known how to let me know and that the girls there wouldn't have helped me track her down.
So anyway, over the following year-and-a-half, I happily made the 30-mile-each-way drive to downtown San Diego to have Amber whack on my hair. She said I was the only customer who followed her down and that she always liked seeing my name in the appointment book because we always had fun and talked and shared the same sense of humor and stuff.
So anyway. That's my Amber. I miss her scissors and her laugh.
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