We all have those weeks when we look into the mirror and barely recognize the face staring back.
The ashen skin lined with fatigue. The deadened eyes wrought with restlessness. The gray hairs curling out of your nose that weren’t there 24 hours earlier.
Ah yes, vanity is humbling.
Thank goodness that down in the Village we now have a new barber named Cam Haefner, who promises to align our cowlicks, even our necklines, and feather our brows at his new shop, Dead Ends.
But the 34-year-old from Manchester won’t just spit-shine a dull ego with a sharp cut and hot blade. Haefner can revitalize a sour mood and leave a client feeling like a rock star on the way out the door.
“You can feel somebody’s core temperature change when they get a good haircut and some conversation,” says Haefner, who started cutting hair in high school in Peabody, Mass., giving inexpensive cuts to members of the football team.
He isn’t wrong.
A fresh cut, a phoneless half hour, and some easy banter can take a lousy day and flip one’s disposition in the right direction.
A week ago, I was driving down Broadway, marinating in my own minutiae, wondering what it would take to even out my mood. I couldn’t quite get out from under it.
Then, almost on cue, I looked in the rearview mirror and recoiled with horror at the face staring back. As I turned onto Main Street, I spotted the Dead Ends barber pole spinning outside.
“There’s the only pill I need,” I thought. “Cam will fix me right.”
And he did.
When Haefner got serious about cutting hair, he set up shop in Salem, Mass., and honed his craft at Badabing Barber Shop and Shave Parlor. His greatest influence was his mother, a stylist herself, who initially didn’t want Cam to become a barber because she knew it wasn’t a particularly lucrative profession.
“You do it because you love it and you have a passion to make people feel and look the best they can,” said Haefner, who cuts both men’s and women’s hair.
Then he fell in love with his future wife, Kayla, moved to the Queen City, and roughed through the daily commute to Salem, a ride so miserable that Lewis and Clark might have turned the expedition around.
This summer, however, Haefner found himself at Pembroke’s annual Old Home Day celebration, and it was during the parade that he saw his future unfolding right before his eyes.
Scott, the former owner of Big House Barber Shop, had moved south, and the storefront was available.
Cam pounced.
“I had to take the spot,” he said. “Otherwise, I would have regretted it every day for years.”
Facts, Cam.
With the decision made, he got to work designing his shop with comfort in mind.
“It’s an extension of my living room,” he says of the space, which features two barber chairs, a large couch, an assortment of interesting oddities adorning the walls, and lighting that somehow makes the room feel both bright and relaxed.
“It’s a place to come for comfort and some good conversation with friends, old and new.”
And that’s what struck me most.
Dead Ends isn’t just about hair.
Sure, Haefner can clean up a neckline and take a decade off the face staring back at you in the mirror. But what he’s really selling is a temporary escape from whatever negative perception is gnawing at you on any given day.
The best barbers have always understood that.
By the time I walked out of Dead Ends, my hair looked tight, bright and ready for the night.
More importantly, so did the day.
Rob Azevedo can be reached at onemanmanch@gmail.com.