Barber
Junior
Junior talks about life as a barber in Bristol, and how men are becoming as fussy as women.
Transcript
Hello, my name’s Junior. I’m a barber y’know? I’ve been doing this about eleven years now.
Why I decided to take up barbering first ‘cause my old man see, he’s a barber himself you see, so it’s like… second nature.
The way you cut hair nowadays has changed since back then ‘cause I mean there’s more styles, more designs and, I dunno, I tend to find people are more fussy nowadays, you know what I mean? It’s more of a thing where men have to look… look good nowadays you know, it’s just like women now, we’re fussy like women now so we got to look good.
On the whole the barbers shop is a communal kind of place where people come together and talk and meet friends they probably haven’t seen for a long time, and… discussions about politics, clothes, cars, [???], girls [customers laugh]… It’s a very community-based shop where we can all… get along. [Sound of customers talking: “Yeah, keep it soul”]
I mean what inspired me was giving somebody a sense of identity you know I mean through their haircuts you know so be it, you know fashion, whatever.
Barbers do have a special place in the community. I mean, like I said you know people come in the barber’s shop you know, come for a chit-chatter, sometimes people don’t come in to get their hair cut, they just want to come in for a chit-chatter, you know talk about things what’s going on and so on, you know but, I mean you know people tend to shed their problems on whoever is doing their haircut at the time. It’s a sense of trust, they can trust that person.
