A Turkish Shave

Turkey is a fantastic place for male grooming. Dudes here have good facial hair, and as a result, there are barbers, or berbers in Turkish, everywhere. For dudes, at least. I'm told that women's hairdressing is equally pervasive and socially pertinent, but they are hidden away off the street level, mostly 'cause of this being a Muslim country and the bizarre female head modesty that goes along with that.

I got my face shaved twice so far. I even got my haircut once, which was pretty amazing, but that's a different story. There's a barber literally outside my door. I just got back from a shave, in fact.

The cost is five Lira, less than four bucks, and even that is probably a tourist price. The dude has a long white pony tail pulled from his nearly bald dome, and a pretty sweet chin/handlebar beard trimmed thin. The best part of his tiny two-chair shop is the pictures of him when he was young and at the height of early 70s Turkish clothing and hair fashion. Said photos unfortunately not pictured above, among the clearly visible tea try and glasses, mini Ataturk bust, ashtray, and foam lathering brush - all potential symbols of Turkey in their own right.

Maggie got to witness and photograph my first face-shaving. Since she's a foreigner, she might've been the first women in the place in decades, who knows.

First the dude whipped up a warm lather in the sink, painted my face for about five minutes with it, then put a new blade in the straight-edge and expertly scraped my face smooth, then lathered me again, and got any stragglers.

Some might understandably be nervous to to have a stranger take a sharp knife to their neck, especially those in earthquake-prone areas. This dude obviously had years of face-shaving experience though. He was quick and sure with his cuts, turning the blade in to his free palm to wipe the foam off as he went. He cleaned the foam out of my ears and rinsed off my face.The whole thing took about 15 minutes with an obligatory tea break.

At the end, I was freshened up with a spray of citrus-alcohol which stung like hell, but left me crisp and well scented. You can literally find these barbers everywhere. There's a lot of demand with the level of facial hair here, and I must say, Turkey has the best mustaches outside of Azerbaijan - for the plus 30 demographic of course. Young kids now just don't appreciate mustaches anywhere it seems.

Maybe I'll get around to describing how awesome my Turkish haircut was. Depends how motivated I get. Depends how lucky you are.