Monday, November 07, 2011

India 7


Despite the proliferation of options in the consumer wonderland of the U.S., I'm not totally sure I would know where to go if I wanted someone else to shave my chin-whiskers for me. I guess some old-fashioned barber shop might still do this?

Pictured above is actually one of the fancier barber shops we happened upon, what with the modest but serviceable space and the two actual barber-shop chairs. It seems that all one needs to be a barber in Delhi is ownership of a straight-back chair, a mirror, a pair of scissors, and a spot on the sidewalk. Which is fine - on a policy note (fret not: no foreign policy relevance), why should barbers have to be licensed by the government? The risk of a bad haircut seems like the kind of thing the private sector would pretty quickly take care of. Perhaps a relic of the days like the above when being a barber involved holding a straight blade to someone's throat?

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