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Razor shaving treat now history
By Kevin Dowler Times Herald Staff Writer

The luxury of a hot towel anda straight razor shave has been cut from service lists at Moose Jaw barber shops.

As with other one time popular services such as felt hat cleaning and the common shoeshine - sitting in a barber chair for a shave is now part of Moose Jaw history.

None of the city barbershops now offers the service.

It wasn’t the barbers’ idea to stop the service. Barbers blame its demise on technology.

“The invention of the home safety blades allowed men to give themselves as good a shave at home as they could get at barbershops,” says Bob Coutts, president of Artistic Beauty College Ltd. “It took all the business away."

City barbers agreed, demand just kept dropping until it wasn’t worth offering the service anymore.

“It’s a thing that is rarely asked for now,” says barber Gord Lucki. “I stopped giving them because they were becoming so rare (that) for the $3 fee it was barely worth my time.”

A straight razor shave began with a first layer of soap lather followed by hot towel placed on the face for about five minutes.

“The towel temperature can be as hot as you could take it,” one barber says.

When the towel is removed the barber adds another layer of freshly whipped shaving soap to the face and goes at the whiskers with the long, thin-handled razor now only common in scenes of old movies.

“The secret was the hot towel,” the barber suggests, “It softens up the skin and makes the whiskers stand out from the skin. Using a hot towel at home will give the same results and also save wear and tear on your blades.”

Many of today’s barber shops aren’t even set up for shaves. A sink is needed right next to the chair which many of the new barber shops don’t have anymore.

Most barbers say it’s been as long as five years since they gave a shave.

“We get asked about once a year for a shave,” the barber at Folks Barber Shop says.
Another blow to the straight razor shave was the first wave of the AIDS scare, says one barber who wished to remain unnamed.

“After the AIDS scare my shave customers dropped by half,” he adds.

Low equipment quality led another to stop offering shaves.

“The demand was no longer there and you can’t get a hold of decent equipment anymore,” the Central Barbershop barber says. “The last one (hand razor) I saw for sale was $35 and it was junk.’
New barbers aren’t even required to learn shaving skills to pass their journeyman test, Coutts says.

In fact, a person wishing become a journeyman barber can’t learn it in the province anymore.
But in the heyday of barbershops, shaves were as common as Brylcream.

In Regina, Coutts says, his uncle worked in a barbershop on Grand Avenue that had 70 chairs which would be full every morning.

“It was the most convenient way to have a shave in those days,” he adds. The barbers would work two chairs at a time.
“Each customer would have his own cup. A barber would sit one customer down and start him on the hot towel then while the towel warmed up the face he would shave the customer in the other chair who would be finishing his hot towel treatment.

“When done shaving the customer he would start another customer’s hot towel in that chair, turn around and take off his other chair’s hot towel and begin that shave. It would have been something to see,” Coutts suggests.

But for now, the throw away razor and cans of pressurized froth rule the whiskered faces of North America.

Today, finding a barber that still gives shaves is worth the effort of the almost exotic luxury that the once common shave and a hair cut has become.