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Trust

This quest started with a call from The Editor.

“You need a shave,” he said. My first thought: “How can you critique my grooming habits, you shaggy, shambling son of a …” Then I listened to what he was saying. Actually listened.

(Editor’s note: this was a first in our relationship.)

“Got an e-mail from an architect named Clarke Gernon,” he told me. “He asked a simple question: Where can a guy go to get a shave in this town? Your job is to find out.”

He wanted me to get an old-school shave at a barbershop. The kind where the barber lays you back in the chair, slathers your face with shaving cream then scrapes a straight razor up and down your face to snick away your whiskers, leaving nary a nick nor burn.

I pondered the assignment. In this multi-blade era of Schick and Bic and high-tech Gillette, can a man even find someone who still knows how to wield a straight razor? OK, I said, I’ll play Don Quixote and dream the impossible dream no matter how hopeless, no matter how far, to find the unfindable.

After all, The Editor was right. I did need a shave. I ran my fingers over my stubble in that clichéd move of the thoughtful. Besides, I was scheduled to head back East to visit my mother and could stand to be less shaggy.

I thought back to my only barbershop shave. In the earliest days of the ’80s, I took a semester off from college to work on a congressional campaign in a district that sprawled from San Antonio across much of South Texas. One night, without warning or an overnight bag, I found myself spending the night in a distant town. Driving back to headquarters the next morning and feeling scruffier than usual, I was inspired to indulgence by a twirling barber pole. I was in Hondo, a shady spot known for its roadside sign: This is God’s Country, Don’t Drive Through it Like Hell.

The shop was all throwback: massive barber chairs that swiveled and tilted, grooved chrome, big foot rest. A big mirror ran the length of one wall, and combs soaked in tall jars of blue disinfectant. The shave left my cheeks smooth but otherwise was not that memorable: the lather came from a can, and the barber used the ubiquitous disposable plastic razor.

If old-fashioned hot shaves were hard to come by in an old-fashioned town nearly 30 years ago, they’d surely be even rarer now. I figured this 21st century quest would mean relentless cold calls. I’d probably have to scour Baton Rouge first, and then wider circles before I’d find a barber old enough—or old-fashioned enough—to possess the skills and patience to execute straight-razor shaves.

The Grooming Parlor422 Europe Street(225) 383-2008thegroomingparlor.comBy appointment onlyHot towel shave: $20The GQ (shampoo, haircut and hot towel shave): $43Open Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Luther’s Bocage Barber ShopBocage Village7636 Old Hammond Highway(225) 926-3903Hot shave with towels (safety razor only): $10Open Thursday through Saturday. Ask for Gerald.

Four Way Barber Shop850 Eddie Robinson Sr. Drive(225) 387-9584Shave with hot lather: $10Open Tuesday through Saturday

There was a time I would have let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages. But these are modern times: I used Google. Scanning screen after screen listing every barber in the area, I remembered Wayne’s, a real barbershop on Government Street where I got my first haircut after moving to Baton Rouge more than 20 years ago.

Owner Wayne Daigle, one of the city’s most experienced and well-known barbers, gave me what I had expected: bad news. He didn’t do shaves and didn’t know who else did. “There just is not much of a demand for it anymore,” Daigle said. The barber colleges don’t teach shaving, and the state barber board doesn’t really test for it, he said.

Advances in shaving technology—multi-blade razors, built-in lube strips, laser-honed blades— killed the market for barbershop shaves. Why pay someone 10 or 20 bucks when you can give yourself a close shave?

Daigle did offer a clue: one of his colleagues on the local barber union board owned a barber shop and spa near downtown, and he might offer shaves.

So he gave me the number for Nissan Ballard at the Grooming Parlor and—just two calls into what I feared would be a quixotic quest—I had an appointment (which is required) for a $20 hot shave.

Turns out Ballard doesn’t merely give shaves—he believes in the art of the shave.

Hot towels, steam, oils, balms, gels. The just-right salves to prepare the face, relax the beard and soothe the skin after the razor’s pass.

I will admit to harboring some trepidation as Ballard laid me back in his sturdy chair. Hard for a man of my (or later) generation to let another man (a stranger at that) go at his throat with a straight razor. That twinge of fear, that slight sphincter squeeze faded as he held the first hot towel against my face. The first of three.

Before the second towel, Ballard massaged in a balm scented with essential oils to soften the beard and open the pores. By now, I had fully given in to the experience and let myself be cradled in the lap of this luxury. Under the influence of this magical goo, I felt the muscles in my face and forehead melt into sweet submission.

Steam, scented with lemongrass, pumped from a spouted device mounted on the counter, wafted over my face as Ballard worked. Eyes closed, I sank deeper. Here came the second towel. Not too hot. Not too cold.

More good-smelling lotion and a third towel, and Ballard’s real work began. He worked a shaving lotion—no spray cans of cream here—into my cheeks and neck, and then he lifted his straight razor.

His is a modern version of the old straight razor, adapted to modern concepts of hygiene: it holds a disposable blade, so each customer gets sanitized steel. The horsehair shaving brush has also been shelved in this hygienic era.

I worried that my six days of growth might make his job harder. Just the opposite, he said—the older hairs are softer and easier to cut. A freshly stubbled face is the most difficult to make smooth.

Ballard worked in a cloud of steam to keep the whiskers and skin soft. He worked in short strokes. He pulled skin here, turned my chin there, always careful to outline my goatee, edge around the moustache, and shape the blues patch beneath my lower lip.

No nicks. No cuts. No errors. But plenty of smooth. Ballard finished with a coat of an astringent lotion that stung in a few clusters as it closed my pores and killed any bacteria the passage of the blade had stirred up on my face. The tingle was a pleasant coda to the whole experience.

And it was an experience. I have to believe that I’m like most men my age: shaving is a chore. I aim to make it fast, make it smooth, make it cut-free—but with emphasis on fast.

Not for Nissan Ballard. It’s an art that he feels called to pursue. He’s 34, of a generation long separated from the razor strap or even the safety razor with disposable blades. He does remember, as a child raised in Uptown New Orleans, seeing customers with their faces swathed in towels preparing for shaves, and he recalls seeing Italian barbers laying those men back and giving them shaves.

Let me be more correct: shaving is only part of Ballard’s art, the art of barbering. He’s been cutting hair more than half his life. First as a teen in the hall of his mother’s Uptown home. Then in dorms as a Southern University student and a percussionist in the Human Jukebox when students and band members flocked to him for cuts and trims.

He marks two milestones in his education: earning his sociology degree in ’98 and his barbering license in ’99. The second may be the more important. Ballard kept learning well after framing both diplomas. He saw the art of shaving dying out, and so he set out to help save it.

He found inspiration in an upscale barbershop in Houston with old-school offerings like shaves and shoe shines. Ballard decided to bring those updated, old-fashioned services back to Baton Rouge and add them to the line of barbering he already offered.

The Internet proved to be a wealth of information. Ballard found a book called The Art of Shaving, and YouTube videos provided him shaving instruction. He tinkered with and modified his techniques until three years ago he hit upon the perfect regimen of hot towels, scented steam and salves.

Now, after almost three years on Europe Street in Beauregard Town, Ballard has a steady stream of customers who come for a pampering few men still take the time to enjoy. The complete shave experience is the kind of luxury a man can easily give himself over to. Where most guys might shy away from a facial, a manicure or (God forbid) a pedicure, indulging in the tender mercies of a barber for a shave is something worth relishing still.