Wow...
I long to spend half a day "getting my hair done" in an African American hair salon! Cause it takes that long or longer to get service for braiding, twists, weaving, chemical service, hair color or other specialty treatments.
If the shop is poppin' on a Saturday or Friday...forget about it! I miss going to get my hair done period and now that it is "AP"L thick- and as always a mix of type 4a and b and c...lol I really haven't been in the company of black women/men in a black shop since 2007 the year I left the SF bay Area.
I miss the philosophizing the political/social critique, the witty banter, the comments about the soaps, the black cultural signifyin', the music often too loud--tuned to smooth jazz or old school (as in Motown, Stax, James Brown and Chaka Khan to George Benson and Al Jarreau, Prince and MJ En Vogue and Whitney) kids coming in to sell over priced snacks folks going out to pick up soul food or Mickey D. They know that their stylist is triple booked and running way behind and they will be there past lunch or dinner time and those uninspired potato chips are not gonna do it for them.
I miss the whole dang noisy time consuming thing cause it was often a sort of communal experience-- a cloud of truth telling, messy, profane, wisdom dealing witnesses-- to which I no longer have access at this point in rural central PA--where I have no back up no critical mass of folks full of Negritude and testifyin' to the realities of Soul!
