 Welcome to the 21 convention straight razor shave tutorial. I hope to inspire you to this lost manly art. My name is George Bruno, and in the hair industry, I'm called the Sultan of Silver, not because of my own silver hair, but because I used to work with silver-haired women and helping them to not color their hair. And I worked with some of the most beautiful silver, gray, and white-haired women you've ever seen in your life. When I made the move to men's grooming, I kept the nickname, and it was even before I went gray myself and before my beard turned white. But today I'm gonna show you how to give the closest shave that you've ever gotten. We have our client here, Mr. Richard Cooper. We're gonna shave his head, and maybe I'll do some lining up of his beard as well. I always like to drape a client, and I never drape a client like a bullfighter, like I know where you go and get your hair cut, they do this like that, don't do that. I always drape a person from the front, and then come around and attach it. And if I have an opportunity to put them in front of a full-length mirror, as opposed to just a mirror on top of a barber station, when people are sitting in front of full-length mirrors, they sit up straighter, and it helps the stylist or the barber do a better job. We have a more accurate canvas. The first thing you need to know about straight razor shaves and about shaving in general is this. If you have irritated skin or it's hard, that means you didn't prepare the beard enough. You soften the skin with moisture and heat. That's why sometimes we call them hot towel shaves. So if I'm working with a client, I lean them back into barber chair, which we don't have a barber chair here, we just have the conference chair, which is why I'm not gonna be doing a full-face shave if we had a reclining chair. Maybe next year we'll get a barber chair from like one of the local barber shops, give them a shout-out or something like that and have a barber chair on stage. But still the same principles apply. If I am leaning a person back, lather them up and start shaving, and I feel resistance on the straight razor, then I need to put another towel on them and let it sit. And how long do you keep a hot towel on someone's face or head until it gets cool? That way the hair has absorbed the moisture and it gets softer. What I wanna feel when I'm doing a straight razor shave on somebody, I wanna feel like I'm just buttering bread. I don't wanna feel because if I'm feeling that and that feedback that, what is the word? Is it haptic feedback in the phones? If I feel haptic feedback, that vibration, if I'm feeling it, you can bet that the guest in the chair is really feeling it. I want them to be able to fall asleep. So my goal is this, when I'm done shaving somebody, I wanna have to be able, this is my metric right here. When I'm done, I wanna be able to say, okay, it's over. Come on, wake up. A good straight razor shave, whether on the face or the head is gonna be a relaxing thing, not a painful thing. My goal is not to make it a painful experience. As a matter of fact, there's two kinds of shaves that a person can get. Shave A is remove hair from face as fast as possible so the next client can come to the chair. Shave B is remove hair from face and make it feel good. Let it be a guy's spa type experience. Women get their nails done, they get facials. They spend time in the chair, they have a glass of wine. What do men do? They go to hair cuttery. They don't do things for themselves. One of the best ways that you can pamper yourself, and I don't pamper men, I cater to men. I'll pamper women, I'll pamper my woman, but I cater to men. That's a masculine thing. Men can get a straight razor shave on their head or their face and it's the equivalent of a spa experience for a woman. You come out and you're relaxed. So that's what we're gonna do. And I'm gonna go through the experience and gently explain what I'm doing and not just go through the motions. I'll take some of the mysteries out of straight razor shaving for you. Okay, so let's get started. First thing, put on glasses. That's super important. That didn't always have to be that way, but. Now in this day and age, we use things called shavettes. A shavette is a straight razor kind of thing. Now this is not a blade here. There's an insert that goes in there that holds the blade, but it's very similar. It folds. It's got a textured part near the heel. It's got a tang for my pinky. And this textured part is so I can pivot the blade on the face. One of the things that, when I teach people how to do straight razor shaves on themselves, one of the things I teach people to do, a good shave, an effective shave, is due to angle and pressure. The pressure's too hard. You'll cut somebody. If the angle is too steep, you'll cut somebody. We don't wanna cut anybody. That's not a good thing in the barbering, shaving industry, not a good thing. So for yourself, like for many years, when I taught straight razor shaving, as a matter of fact, a week from today, next Monday, I have to be in Medford, New Jersey, teaching a class on straight razor shaving at a barber shop with new barbers. And one of the things I'm gonna teach them is this. You lay the blade on your arm, flat on your arm, and then just lift it up, lift the back end up, the spine of the straight razor, lift it up a little bit, and that's the angle. I'm not gonna say it's a 47-degree angle. Just lay it flat, lift it up a little bit. Now one of the keys to an effective shave is that the skin is stretched. It has to be taught. Do you think if I took a balloon and blew it up a quarter of the way and put shaving cream on it and tried to shave the balloon, that balloon wouldn't stay inflated for very long because the blade would skip on the rubber, on the balloon, it would skip, and then eventually pop the balloon. So when I shave someone's head or face, I need to stretch the skin. How do you do that? You do that in the same way you expand a picture on your phone. You wanna get a close-up on someone's face on your iPad or your phone, you expand the picture. So what I do is I expand and shave in between my thumb and forefinger. That area there, that's kind of tight or more taut, and then I go to the next area. When I get to the point where, in the contours on the face or the head, where I can't spread the skin, what I will do is I will pull down on the skin with my thumb. If it's too slippery or their skin is just where I can't get a good grip on it, I will actually use a Terry cloth towel and put the towel against the skin and pull the skin down. If you try, like for instance, if you go and get your hair cut at the kind of place where they shave the back of your neck after a haircut, it's easier for you to get cut if you keep your head like this. The barber needs to push your head down and stretch the skin out. That way, they can shave the back of your neck. So you're gonna see all these techniques being practiced in the next few minutes. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a blade in an insert. This is a half of a, you know, the double edge razor blades. Well, this is half of a double-ed razor blade. If you can see that, half of a double-edged razor blade. That fits into a little plastic insert. And one of the reasons why we do this is we literally cannot by law put the same razor on two men. Because of the advent of some really funky stuff going on with blood-borne pathogens, I need to put a clean, fresh razor on every person. I can't shave one person, pattern them up, say goodbye, see you in two weeks. Next person sits in the chair and use the same razor on them because it's not sanitary. And like I said, with the advent of the dangerousness of blood-borne pathogens, I don't wanna spread something from one person to another. So in my industry, cleanliness is next to godliness. Period. There's no exceptions. So now that half blade is in this little plastic insert and I'm putting it in what they call the Chevette. Fold it in half and it just looks like a straight razor. Open it up and my thumb goes on the textured part and that way I can control the angle and I can get close and I can go around the corners and nooks and crannies and that type of thing. So I'm gonna put this on the side. Now to be consistent with my whole thing of creating a comfortable shave, we need to put a hot towel on the head. So one of the things I do is I always have a hot towel. It's about the size of a microwave oven. I wet towels, I wring them out, I put some essential oils, couple drops on each towel, roll it up and I put it in the hot towel warmer. So I always have about 20 towels ready at any given time. It got to the point in one place where I worked many years ago where they called me towel man to kind of mock me because I would go through so many towels while shaving somebody, but I always wanted to have the most comfortable shave and I want my people to come back. I don't want you to go home and have to shave again. I've heard those stories where people went out and got a straight razor shave like before a wedding or something and then they were all like red and bleeding and irritated and then they still had nubs, still had like a shadow and they had to do a shave again. I want to avoid all that stuff. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to feel Mr. Cooper's head if the hair, now his hair is a great, right now when was the last time you shaved your head? Wednesday, okay. If it's any longer than what Wednesday has produced here, then I will just take a detailer and take it right down a little bit further. But his hair is such where I can actually do it with a straight razor. But let me just try this for a second. Let me just see. Yeah, you know what this can stand to just be buzzed down a little bit. Now, when it comes to guys with bald heads, guys who opt for a shaved head look, what do you do with the sideburns? With a guy who's got a beard? Do you just cut it off straight like this? Do you fade it up into the skin? Do you make a hook where it just kind of comes to a point? You have to find those things out because this area right here, you can really mess up a guy's image. You remember Shack had sideburns that didn't connect to anything? You remember that? It was just like a sideburn. He didn't have a beard, he just had a sideburn. Nothing up here, nothing, it wasn't a beard and I thought, that's an odd look, but I guess we all know who Shaquille O'Neal was. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna take off as much as I can and this kind of helps me and there's no particular method. It's just kind of like mowing a lawn kind of thing. Very few people, a lot of people say, well, I'm bald. You know who's bald? People who go through chemo. Most people who say they're bald have hair. They just don't have a lot of it in a certain area. Rich has hair up here. There's hair here, although you don't see it and he shaves it, it's just thinner than the hair on the sides. A lot of guys lose hair in an area that my hand could cover like this and with guys who have receding and or thinning hair, it ends up being a kind of a horseshoe shaped area that has hair, but even up here, there's hair. You can come up and feel it if you want, I'm only kidding. And I'm just mowing some of that down, taking some of that shadow off. There's all kinds of ways to, you can shave in front of a sink, you can shave in the shower, but the key is preparation. When I was a shaving man and when I shave under here, I shave in the shower because I'm always in steam. Hair is a funny thing, you know, hair is like cigars. Did you know that the healthiest hair is a 70% moisture content? When you're in the shower for about 10 minutes, hair is very absorbent. That absorption goes up to about 90%. What happens to a hair shaft when it absorbs more hair? It gets softer. That's why I like shaving in the shower as opposed to the sink, because when we shave in front of a sink, goal is remove hair from face or head as fast as possible and you don't get the benefits of steam and heat like you do in the shower. So cigars are perfect at 70% humidity and 70 degrees. Hair is the same. And when it comes to beards, for those of you that have beards, some beards appear to be very dry. And one of the things I like to tell people is put your beard oil on right after the shower. When the moisture content of your beard is at about 90%, you put your beard oil on at that point and what it does, it locks in the moisture so it doesn't escape. So just keep that in mind for those of you that have beards. That's when you put on your beard oil. For guys that don't wear glasses, what I do is I just take a comb and put it on top of their ear, behind their ear as if it was like glasses. Let me see if I have a comb here. Okay, here's a comb. Turn to the side. What I'll do is I'll just go like this. Just to see where I need to shave. What I don't wanna do is shave his beard. I don't wanna bring that. From here down, that's the domain of a beard trim. From here up, that's the domain of a haircut or a head shave. So you're not in abrupt, like straight line across. You kind of like that faded where it just kind of fades up into nothing, right? And to me, that's a more natural look. I like that look. The just sideburn going up and then stopping like where the glasses are. It works for some guys, but the minute you take your glasses off, it just looks like something's incomplete. And even without glasses, his look is great because it just kind of fades up into nothing. It's a great look. I'm just using the detailers just to bring it down as close as I possibly can. Okay, now all the principles that I'm teaching here now apply to face, shaves as well. The difference between the face and the head, the skull is that the skin up here is already kind of taut, but don't let that fool you. A razor can still cut somebody in the skull area. Faces gotta be really stretched. And the older people get, like if I get an old dude who's got like turkey neck, you know, like those necks that just like kind of like jiggle, try stretching that shit out, all right? That is the hardest straight razor shape to do in the whole world. So one of the things I like to do is I just put a couple of drops of essential oil. This one's called Elevate and it stimulates blood flow and I just do this to the scalp and the motion is going up. I'm stimulating blood flow. So gravity is always pulling blood down. I wanna bring the blood back up. I want his scalp to be pink in color when I start shaving it and it helps me. It's easier to shave. It's easier for a blade to ride over moisturized, pink, vital looking skin than dry skin. Try shaving a baseball glove that was left out in the sun like all summer, you know, it's just that blade will skip. I want my blade to just be smooth as can be. Oh, this water is nice and hot. So I'm just gonna lift this up a little bit and let it cool off just a little bit so we don't burn Mr. Cooper. Let that steam go off a little bit there and then I'm gonna wring the water out of it and then the moisture and the heat is actually gonna start softening the hair. This bin that we have the hot water in the towels, that's a great idea. I was thinking of a bowl, but man, this really, really works well. So whoever got this, thank you. I'm just gonna put this on his shoulders. Let me just go like this, perfect. Now it goes on him like this and then I just cross it in the back to make sure there's contact. And I just want, I want there to be contact with the wet moist towel and the hair. And then especially in the back because the back of the head, the nape of the neck is very sensitive. So this is a really good picture if you're gonna take pictures and make a meme. So we're just gonna keep this on here and just let it soften. And I'm gonna get my materials. And like I said, you keep it on until it's cool. So if you're in a hurry, you're gonna really jack up someone's head or jack up your face. I'm kind of teaching you as if you are like a student in a barber academy as well. So when I think that's gonna be the best way. And there's really no difference between teaching a barber how to shave and teaching the average consumer how to shave. One of the reasons why straight razor shaves are close is that when you stretch the skin, when I pull the skin, the hair follicle pops out. The blade goes, wasn't there like a graphic on a razor commercial back in the 70s where it showed like hair popping out and the blade swinging by and cutting it off. But when you pull that skin, the follicle goes boom, like that, you shave it. And then when you let go of that skin, that follicle just goes back down. And that's what we call in the industry a BBS shave, which just means baby bottom smooth. That's kind of like code. It's like a really close shave. I'm gonna do two towels on Mr. Cooper. This one is just starting to get cool. Let me prepare this one here. Just holding a hot towel out tends to cool it off rather quick. You can see the steam coming off of this. If I put this on his head right now, that would not be a good thing. Get off to the side, this comes off. And I'm just gonna pop it back into here. The new hot towel on. Same thing, wrap it around. I want full contact. I don't want smooth, smooth, smooth, smooth and all of a sudden in the back. I don't want that. So that's why I want full contact at all times with the moist hot towel. Super important. I have shaving soap in this cup. It's a rubber mug from the 50s. Why a rubber mug? Because most people shave in areas where it's ceramic and marble and granite, which is our bathrooms. If you drop a ceramic or glass mug, it's gonna shatter all over the place. So they made these in the 50s. It's made of rubber, it would bounce. I have an Italian shaving soap in here. And what I did was I heated up the brush. I let the Badger Hair Brush absorb the bristles. I let them absorb the water, shake it off. And normally I would have a latherizer, which is a lather making machine. Just press a button and the lather comes out. This is the old school way. And a lot of people think that you would apply the lather right to the skin with the brush. It looks good in the movies and it looked good before blood-borne pathogens. This is another thing that I don't want to put on one person's head. And then 30 minutes later, put on another person's head. You wouldn't want that. I mean, if you went to a restaurant and the waitress just wiped off the last person's fork with her apron and just put it in front of you, I don't think you would appreciate that, right? So, but this is actually a brand new brush for this event. So Mr. Cooper will get a brush, brand new brush. And you whip up a lather. Now I believe his head is ready now. I'll just wait a couple seconds more. And the stubble on his head is really absorbing that moisture right now. If this was a guest where I work, what I would do is I would extract the lather from the brush like this and then put that on his head, but we don't need to do that because I'm gonna use the brush directly. So I'm gonna lather him up and that's gonna continue to soften. And what else is it gonna do? It's going to cut through any of the oils. Soap cuts through oils. What is oil? Oil is a barrier to moisture. So I want to remove as much of the oil so the moisture really hits those hair follicles. And I will lather him up a couple times during the process because this will dry. Because actually these lights I can tell are gonna dry it up. And if it's in a barber shop, then if you happen to be near the air conditioning or heating vent, then this dries out really quick. So it's always, the guy who is near the vent never really, he's always fighting the soap drying out too fast. So I'm gonna have to re-wet this a little bit. So remember, angle and pressure and you learn that for yourself with muscle memory. And I went for many years with bare arms. I have hairy arms. So I always have practiced for years and when I teach straight razor shaving I always taught people by using my own arms. There's no particular method. I start about mid forehead and I try to go down about the middle if I can. And this right here, I'm pulling his skin forward right now. It's actually tightening up the skin a little bit. Now when you see commercials of people shaving, you see people taking huge strokes. I don't like to make strokes more than a, like a half inch at the most rather than going like that, which I guess I could. But you put your guest at risk and you put your face at risk if you do that. So for me, stretch the skin and I'm going right down the middle, right down the nape of his neck. Go forward just a little bit. Okay, so now the head is, come on back up. The head is divided into hemispheres. Now I'm just going to create a quadrant. So the head's going to be divided into four sections. And then I just work on each quadrant. And you're not feeling like any pain, anything, are you now? Okay. And the reason why he's not feeling anything is because of preparation. All right, I'll just take that right off. So I'll work on this quadrant here. Remember, you're expanding the picture on your cell phone. I'm expanding and then shaving in between my fingers. And then continuing that. And I am kind of like methodical. I make like a little map as I'm shaving. And when the razor starts to skip, that only means one thing, I need more water. So, because the soap is drying out a little bit. So I just take a little bit of the warm water and kind of reactivate that soap. You have to have dry hands when you're giving someone a shave or when you're giving yourself a shave. If you can't get a good grip on this and I'm dead serious, you could really hurt yourself or hurt someone else. I was working in a barber shop and a girl comes in and says, do you guys shave legs? Dead serious. All the barbers looked at each other like, duh, like, what are you idiots? I'm like, yeah, over here. Like, they were all looking at each other. The answer is yes. So she says, I only need my legs shaved from the knees to the ankles. I said, all right, let's do it. Lathered her up, sexy as heck. Just like a trippy experience that never happened before. And I'm constantly going over where the razor went because my fingers will tell me, you know, you have a lot of nerves in your fingers, they tell me where the whiskers are and where the follicles are. I guess I can take questions too because I can actually talk and shave at the same time. She never came back. Although I did get a picture of it, I have a picture of it somewhere. But I was actually thinking of offering women's shaves. I just like wonder if I like publicly did that, but I'd probably have to get like enthusiastic consent or something for like, and like use a sharpie, like do not go above the sharpie or below the sharpie or whatever. Okay, the rear left quadrant of the head being done now. Good question. You would have to have like super steady hands, super steady hands, but I don't think you can do that proper stretch. I mean, you can stretch your head, but like the expanding the picture on a cell phone thing, you really, really need like another arm to do that. Oh yeah, absolutely. Now some people say, you know, should you shave against the grain or with the grain? The answer is yes, whatever, whatever works for you. Hair grows in different directions. And then here's the thing when you prepare properly, I wanna feel like I'm just wiping the hair off his head with a Popsicle stick. I don't wanna feel anything. I don't wanna have to feel like I'm cutting anything. I just wanna feel like I'm just like buttering bread. That's literally what I wanna do. Well, my father cuts hair. My mother cuts hair. I grew up in the business. So it was kind of like instinctive. One day someone said to me, when did you learn how to use a straight razor? And I said, when did you learn how to walk? They don't remember, like I don't remember a time when I couldn't do this. That's how long I've been doing it. My brother will tell you one of our toys, one of our fun things was just sitting in the barber chair because every person who's a barber that works in a barber shop, you always got a barber chair in the basement or the garage, always just to do family, friends, neighbors and stuff. And I would make myself dizzy spinning around in the barber chair as a little kid, just for fun, kind of weird, huh? Say that again? A knife? Oh, gosh. I've seen pictures of guys like shaving, like pictures from the 1800s of guys like shaving somebody like with an ax. You know, you've seen those funny pictures, but the reality is you gotta be able to pivot. That's more of a novel kind of thing. Like you can buy like big, what I would call like prop straight razors on eBay and Amazon. What's the play with the barber? Sweeney Todd. You can buy Sweeney Todd, you know, straight razors, but they're not really sharp. They're more like props. And there was a time when German steel was the best steel. Japanese, man, 440 carbon, stainless. Japanese have been forging swords and knives for centuries and they're so good at creating sharp things. And they're expensive. Now that's a traditional straight razor, something like this, about $45. A pack of a hundred half blades, nine bucks. There's a hundred shaves right there. And then you just keep cleaning this and putting a new blade in for every shave. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, you know, the razors were, wasn't there a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Barber of Seville episode? Remember they were going up in the barber chairs and you know, Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd would like take a hair out, think like that and drop it on a blade and it would split in half, you know, as it fell. That doesn't happen in real life. Now more, you know where the stories are, usually in like the barber and beauty academies. That's why I'm going to this place in next Monday in Medford, New Jersey. And yeah, you know, some people say, well, you could practice on balloon. That's kind of like a myth. I've seen people say, well, you practice on balloons. It's not the same. I mean, it's kind of fun at first, you know what I mean? The first time a person puts a straight razor in their hand and then they end up popping the balloon and the entire, you know, the entire barber class is like laughing at them for just like busting the balloon right. And it skips. Skin is so much straighter or tighter than a balloon. The only reason why I'm doing this is because the soap dried up. Now, Richard, you use that double blade thing, right, where you just kind of run it across your head. What is that called? Half-time razor. Half-time razor, yeah. I've seen those demonstrations and it just, it works really good. That's really good. Okay, there we go. Would you call straight razor shaving, is it something of a lost art? Yes. Okay. Why do you think that is? In most states, the difference between a beautician, they used to call them beauticians. Now they're cosmetologists or stylists. The difference between a beautician's license and a barber's license is the single difference is the use of a straight razor. If there's a beautician who wants to get her barber license, she actually has to get 600 more hours of training before she can legally put this on someone's face or head. And that's in most states. So you have to have 600 hours. Extra, above and beyond the beautician license. So the place that I'm going to in Medford, New Jersey next week is called the Boardroom Barber Shop. Seven women in there. It's gonna be seven women that I'm teaching how to shave. Who does a better job at shaving? Men or women, I think men. I don't know if it's a strength thing or men do it better, yeah. I mean, the concept of a woman shaving you might seem like attractive or alluring. I just, I don't see it. I personally, and that's got nothing to do with any of the pills. Might be jumping the gun here, but are you gonna use like a some sort of alcohol solvent to close up the pores or what's the- Yeah, I use a rosewater witch hazel that I keep in here. Witch hazel is a natural astringent. That's kind of a neat, that's a good question because it'll tighten up the skin. It's not alcohol based. Alcohol would be, you know, you all know the picture of Macaulay Culkin in the movie Home Alone, putting the aftershave on his face. If I put alcohol on Mr. Cooper's head right now, he'd be doing a Macaulay Culkin. That wouldn't be a good thing because I'm literally opening up his skin right now. Alcohol burns and dries. So we don't wanna do that. Witch hazel is such a great aftershave to use. It's just phenomenal. And I use fairs. And rosewater, let me tell you about rosewater. Rosewater is something that your grandma probably had in her bathroom cabinet when you were a little kid looking through your grandma's medicine cabinet. You probably saw a bottle of rosewater. Rosewater has been used for centuries as a healer on skin. It soothes irritated skin. And it smells a little bit like roses, literally, because it's made from rose petals. So you use a combination of the rosewater and the- Witch hazel, yep. And the fairs witch hazel with rosewater also has a little bit of aloe in it. Aloe is a humectant. Humectant means it draws moisture. So what it does is it'll keep the area moist as well and not dry. I was shaving a guy once, came in. Now I've worked in barber shops and salons. Currently I work in a salon. I have a private men's grooming studio outside of Philadelphia. I don't work in a salon area that would drive me nuts. I work with six women. So when all six women are cutting six women's hair, that's 12 women in a room about half the size, they're all talking. No one's listening to anybody and all the blow dryers are going. So it sounds like you're on the runway of an airport and that would drive me nuts in about 30 minutes. So I have a grooming room and how that happened was that used to be a massage room at the salon. And with the advent of these places like massage envy and hand and stone, which are really neat, you know, it's like a chain of places where you can get massages. That drew a lot of the business away from the salons, the full service salon that did a little bit of spa work. So they had an empty room. And when I saw this, and it was beautiful, I got three windows in it. Natural light is the best for haircuts and shaves because it just illuminates so much better than anything. And it had track lighting in the ceiling. And I turned it into kind of like a little, like a manly area. I got a humidor in there, cooler with beer, root beer. On top of the cooler, I have liquor bottles, shot glasses. So if a guy wants a cigar and a shot, you know, after, nowadays you can't smoke inside of an establishment. So you get the people going crazy about that. You might get me too from that too, right? What's that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yep, exactly. That's not too tight on you, is it, Rich? Okay. So I'm shaving a guy, probably about 65 years old. He brought his wife in. We don't, we're not real crazy. Most barbershops aren't crazy when girlfriends and wives come in. It just, but I end up, because of my YouTube following, a lot of wives and girlfriends watch my content along with their men. So they bring their wife along and she's taking pictures and she had to meet you and she watches your videos more than I do. I'm like, okay, whatever. But she says, that is so relaxing to watch you do that. I said, oh my God, I said it's relaxing for three people. She says three. I said, yeah, it's relaxing for the guy who's getting it done. It's relaxing for the person who watches it and it's relaxing for me. I get into my zone when I'm shaving somebody. It's kind of like, I mean, if I could smoke a pipe and give someone a shave at the same time, that would be just like heaven for me. I was always, like if you Google sailor Jerry smoking, the original sailor Jerry tattoo artist, he would always be smoking a pipe while putting a tattoo on somebody. And I thought, gosh, if I could be like shaving somebody, but while I'm smoking a pipe, that would be perfect. But when it's my normal state, when I'm shaving somebody is I'm not talking, it's quiet. The only sound literally is the blade going across. So there's a hardcore ASMR effect on the person. What is ASMR? That's autonomic sensory meridian response, which is just a long way of saying sounds you can feel. For instance, when you listen to certain music, for my generation, it's Crosby, Stills and Nash. When I hear them sing and they hit certain harmonies, I'm like, ooh, I get like a little shiver, you know? A sound affected my body, okay? There's certain people when they talk, it has a physical effect on you, that's ASMR. And I'm always using my fingers for feedback. I wanna feel just like when you shave your face. Now, of course, I'm not in the salon or a barbershop now and I don't have access to all that would make it like the perfect shave, but the goal is to go back over and remove anything that might feel rough. One of the things that you've noticed me doing is me taking my time, feeling and looking. If you end up going to a chop shop or a place where there's a long wait as opposed to a place that takes appointments, the goal of the walk-in establishment is to get as many people in and out of the chair as possible. I work by appointment only and I give myself time so I can take my time because the last thing you wanna hurry is a straight razor shave. You can't hide your mistakes really well with the white towels, if you know what I mean. It's a good one, that's a good one. That's a good one, right? You find it relaxing? Oh yeah. Now I'm still feeling like a little rough right here. So I'm just gonna dip the brush in the water again and just wet that a little bit right there. I tell students if you do not like people and you don't like getting close to people, do not go in the hair industry. I mean the common joke is I get closer to people than their doctors do. Doctors don't even touch you anymore, do they? Just sit there with a little laptop and they ask you questions about your blood work. Yeah, because they're trying to avoid lawsuits. Yeah, exactly, me too. He touched me, he made me cough. I haven't had a doctor make me cough in like 30 years. Remember that, the old joke, like when you played football every guy had to get a physical and you're standing there like in your underwear and the doctor would say, okay, drop and you drop them then he'd like grab your balls and say cough. Yeah, exactly. I can't remember the last time anyone grabbed my nuts. Hey, a doctor that is. I just want to clarify that. But doctors don't even touch you anymore. Actually, I do have a doctor who within the first five minutes she came up and felt my glands and just like, you know, it's like feeling, and I'm like, holy crap, I said, you actually touched me. I said, shoot. I said, I thought doctors stop touching people because now I had a doctor who was 85 years old and I had a little like lump thing about the size of a pea on my head. He's like, we can take that off for you right now. He just like grabbed like a little bic razor, shaved a little area. Let me numb it up for you. Just like numbed it up, cut it with a scalpel, took a little lumpy thing out, sewed it up because you'll be fine in a day. He goes, the stitches will dissolve. Now, if that happened, you'd have to get referred to a dermatologist or the old school doctors were the best. Well, did you know that barbers were the original doctors? You know that, right? You would go to a barber if you were sick and he would bleed you. They would cut your arm. That's the image of a barber pole is the blood spiraling down the arm and they would let out the evil spirits. And barbers were the original dentists. Barbers were the original surgeons. Crazy, isn't it? Imagine the barbers now being surgeons or dentists. That would be a trip, huh? Do you find that, and I know this happens on my head, do you find, I guess this might be a question for Richard, but do you find that your hair grows at different speeds on different parts of your head or do I just have a weird head? And like I said, there's very few people that are really bald, like truly bald. Yeah, I was just balding. Yeah. That's what I said. I don't know if my hair looks good. I've always had a really thick hair when I was a teenager. I could shave the sides of my head because my hair was so thick. For a while. I think for most men it means that you're like 18 or 20. And that has to do, has more to do with genetics, male pattern, baldness. It has very little or if anything to do with testosterone for those of you that are TRT, you know, study years, the hair on your head has nothing to do with your testosterone. You are 100% right. That is 100% a myth. The only way that you would lose your hair as a result of TRT is that if you are genetically predisposed to it. So if you're genetically predisposed to early hair loss, TRT could possibly speed that up. But I've been on TRT for now going on five years and I still have hair, so I'm good. Yep. Myth dispelled. This is a worm towel? I'm the idiot that's been dousing my head with alcohol after I shaved my head and it is painful to be sure. Witch hazel, man. Witch hazel. Yeah, I'm gonna do that for now. It'll close up the pores and you can get it with some essential oils in it, like depending on, you know, like what your preference is, you can get it with rosemary in it. I get the witch hazel that I'm gonna be using on him I get from Whole Foods. I just have to put up with the Birkenstocks and the freaks in the store. Why don't I go there? Yeah, just real quick. So with respects to shaving your head, most guys don't have perfectly shaved heads. I have a video on my channel where I talk about just shave your head if you're losing your hair. And a lot of the like whiny, bitchy guys are going on about how, oh, you have a perfectly shaved head. So that's why you can do it. But the truth of the matter is I don't. I mean, George is probably looking at the top of my head and you can see like a little mole up there. And if you look at the back of my head, there's a scar from a big mole that I had removed. Doctor sent me to a plastic surgeon to get it cut out. It was almost like a nipple, but it was under the skin. So it didn't really look like a mole. It was just a mole kind of like under the skin. But like, you know, as you're losing your hair, it's one of those things you got to be attentive to. And you just go and take care of it. It costs 300 bucks or something like that. A few stitches I stitched it up. It hurts like hell for about a day or two. Because I mean like the skin on your head is very tight as George pointed out. But as it heals up, it's fine. So you just, you know, I mean, if you want to rock the shaved head look, make sure you take care of a nice smooth head and it's easy to tidy up actually. Absolutely. This is the witch hazel. I'm just going to mist his head. This is going to start to close up the pores. And this is the rose water. So I mean it, you know, it's going to smell like roses. And that wets up a little bit and allows me to kind of feel again. All right, there was another question. You were going to ask me something. What was that? Someone said they had a question for both of us. Was that it? Oh, okay. Excellent. I've got a question from the audience. What's a average cost of straight edge shave? The straight edge shave that I do is $50 at the salon. And I always take an hour to do everything. You can spend as little as $9, $10, $12. So for me, if I'm doing a haircut and a beard trim, everything I do is 50 bucks at the salon. So if I work on a person from like shoulders up, it's like $250 for everything. That's, I'm just removing hair from everywhere. I'm waxing things. It's a full experience. But just like a head shave and a beard trim would be a hundred bucks, that kind of thing. Now, but that's by appointment only. If you go into a walk-in place, like I said, you're not gonna get the attentiveness. It's just not gonna happen. And when there's like a barber chair hair, a barber chair hair, you know what I mean? A whole line, mirrors, whatever, like typical barber shop. People are distracted. And the last thing you want is someone, a distracted person holding something sharp, you know, on your face. So the last thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a little bit of powder and kind of make a matte finish. It's gonna take some of the shine out. And that looks better. I find when I work on Caucasian guys, a more matte head looks well when I work on black and Hispanic guys, a lot of guys will want like an oil coating. And then I'll wipe the oil off of the towel, but it leaves a little bit of a sheen. Black guys and Hispanic guys look better with a little bit of a shinier head. White guys look better with a matte finish. So the races are different just like the genders are different. Different things work. Yeah. Ah! Ah! Yeah. We have the last question from the live stream. How long does the straight shave, razor shave last? How long is it gonna be smooth? What's the typical time that you may need to go back in? A little bit longer than if you do it yourself only because most people can't get the stretch in that I give. Like I know when people shave their heads, they're not stretching their skin. They're just kind of taking the disposable razor or the fusion razor and just running it over. Or if you have like that head blade thing where you're just kind of running it over your head, you're not really stretching it. I'm literally stretching the skin which is making the follicle pop up. So for the day or two, your shave is good. My shave would be good for two to three days if you want like so completely insanely smooth. When it comes to the face, that's the same thing. Frank Sinatra traveled with a barber. He would get a hotel room and then right next to his hotel room, the next hotel room, he would put his barber and they'd wheel in a barber chair and every morning Frank went next door and got a hot towel shave from his barber who traveled with him everywhere he went because it was a way for him to kind of get into the zone. I mean, you can imagine giving Frank Sinatra a straight razor shave. I mean, how cool would that be? But he traveled with his barber, believe it or not. Just like female stars will travel with their stylist. And question for you, Bruno. Yeah. As a younger guy looking for maybe a more experienced person cutting hair but doesn't have access to yourself because of the price, what can one do? Learn the art. I mean, there was a time when this is how all men shaved. Think about it. What I just did is what every fucking man in the world did all the time. I mean, that's why I call it the lost art. It's a lost manly art. All men did this at one time. And this was before the disposable era. Now your blade gets dull, you chuck it out. You took care of your blade. I still have the straight razor that my dad used when he was in barber school in the 50s. You don't throw that shit out. Those kind of implements outlive you. You pass them on. You're basically a steward of those things. You take care of them and you pass them on to another generation. Now, remember, Zippo lighters. I still use a Zippo lighter to light my pipe. But with Bic lighters, when it's done producing a flame, you chuck it. There's nothing to care for. A Zippo, you gotta take care of the flint. You have to fill it up with fuel. You took care of things. Fountain pens, the same thing. Ballpoint pens were nice and convenient, but when they ran out of ink, you chucked them. And it seemed like with the advent of the disposable era, razors, lighters, pens, people became disposable as well. We became experts at disposability. Something stops working, chuck it. And this is another thing. If at first you don't succeed, you keep trying it. Just because you don't get the swing of it the first time doesn't mean you hang up your straight razor. There's people that will go out to art of shaving and buy a German straight razor for $250. Try it once, it's a horrible experience and they stick it in the drawer and never use it again. Go out and buy a Chevette, like what I have here. And practice on your arm. And then when you get that down, then practice on your face. When you get that down, then practice on your neck. Obviously, this is the final frontier. This is where you wanna have the most skill. Face is pretty easy. This is the witch hazel with rose water, yeah. Behold, the lost manly art of the straight razor shave. Thank you gentlemen.