ADVENTURES IN FRUGALITY -- MY FIVE DOLLAR HAIRCUT

    Last week I got a coupon in the mail for a five-dollar haircut. For years I’ve been getting my hair cut at a pricey salon in an upscale suburb. It takes forever to drive there and it costs a small fortune, but I always walk out feeling like a million bucks.
    One thing about going to an expensive, inconveniently-located salon is that I always put it off until the condition of my coif is so dire that I start avoiding mirrors. That’s where I was when the coupon arrived. What’s the difference, I wondered, between an five-dollar haircut and an eighty-dollar haircut? Why not find out?
    I learned the first difference between a pricey salon and a bargain hair cuttery when I phoned for an appointment. “There are no appointments,” I was told. “You just walk in.”
    Ten minutes later I strolled through the door of a small storefront at the local strip mall. It was clean and functional. No frills. No receptionist either. One of the two women cutting hair paused to take my name. I sat down in the tiny waiting area in a chair with a view of the parking lot. The upscale salon also fronts a parking lot, but you’d never know -- the windows are frosted.  Instead of watching shoppers jockeying for parking spaces, you lounge on comfy chairs in a spacious waiting area, garbed in the salon’s elegant pink smock, while gentle music plays and salon staff plies you with iced tea and delicious fruity drinks. It’s all about removing you from the stress of everyday life to a place of ease and pampering. While sipping, you can peruse a menu of available spa treatments, in case you’d like to spend the rest of your day (and bankroll) getting plucked and waxed and massaged and manicured.
    At Cheap Cuts, there’s no menu. You can get your hair cut. Period. On a first come, first served basis.
    My fellow customers at the upscale salon were always beautifully turned-out, every one of them more glossy, made-up and polished than I was. Hell, the salon’s staff were all more glamorous than me! (And that includes the men.) I’m reasonably attractive, but pretty low maintenance. My straight blond hair has always been my best feature and the expensive cut my one indulgence to vanity. I never felt  as if I truly belonged among the gaggle of gorgeous gals there to spend a fortune to look fabulous.
    At Cheap Cuts, I fit right in. Waiting with me were a jeans-clad middle-aged woman reading a romance novel and an elderly gent with so little hair that I wondered why he bothered. (Maybe he just needed a good excuse to get out of the house.) I chatted with him and gazed around the small shop. Instead of the salon’s ace team of receptionists, manicurists, hair washers and stylists, the two hair cutters here apparently did everything, from answering the phone to sweeping the floor between cuts.
    When my turn came, I asked Carmen, an upbeat woman in her twenties, for a blunt cut. As she snipped away we fell into a conversation identical to the one I enjoy with my usual haircutter. Carmen confided that she usually worked in an upscale salon in the city. “But business is bad,” she said. “Fewer women can afford to come in. So I work at this shop part time. Business is great here!”
    “Does that mean I’m paying five bucks for a cut that would cost eighty dollars downtown?”
    “It’s the same cut,” she assured me.
    Indeed, the finished cut looked fabulous. I was thrilled. Feeling like a big spender, I gave her a 100% tip. For the rest of the day when anyone complimented my cut, I boasted, “It only cost $5!”
    What does this mean for the future of high end beauty shops in this tough economy? There will always be women who’ll pay top dollar for the joy of going to a salon where they’re pampered and fussed over and removed from reality for a few precious hours.
    But I’m happy to spend five dollars to look like a million bucks.
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