.

So I tried a new barbershop this week, an old-school Italian place in our downtown. The kind of place where grown-ups get $15 haircuts, elderly Italian customers are never charged and are told to give their regards to Don somebody (I didn't catch the last name), and no dance music is heard unless you enjoy dancing to Connie Francis and Mario Lanza.

For years I've been going to salons, mainly because I like the shampoo and head massage beforehand. I love it, in fact. So much so that I've endured what have been in retrospect way overpriced haircuts, merely to get someone (okay, it's usually a hot girl) to vigorously shampoo my head and knead my scalp and temples with her fingers and, on a few blessed occasions, fingernails.

But no more. It's barbershops, and old man barbers, from now. Enough is enough. Time to get real.

So I'm eyeing the two well-used Campbell Lather King hot shaving lather machines on the counter as (we'll call him) Tino is cutting my hair.

"Tino, you do straight razor shaves?" I ask.

"Sure I do," he replies, "but I don't think your face is up to that kind of shave. Lemme see something," and with that, he presses two of his fat sausage fingers against my cheek and removes them. A red mark remains for a second or two.

"Your skin is too sensitive for a shave like that," Tino informs me.

"So what do you recommend I shave with, then?"

Tino thinks for a moment as he continues cutting my hair. I had asked him for just a clean-up, no real shortening, just a general tidying, but he is clearly giving me a full-on haircut and I will look like a small child on the first day of school when I attend CES the following day.

"You should use a very dull razor," Tino begins. "A Bic disposable, single-edge, for sensitive skin. And you should run a cork across the blade to dull it first. Don't use shaving cream. Not on your face. Use Noxzema cold cream."

I say nothing.

"Hey kid, don't feel bad -- I can't take a straight razor, neither. I got sensitive skin too. I'm even worse than you. I can only shave with a dull Bic --"

And here it comes:

"-- on DRY SKIN."

It takes me a moment to take it all in. I ask Tino if shaving on dry skin is, in fact, worse for sensitive skin than using cream, or even just warm water on the whiskers.

"Naw. I use cream, I break out in a rash. Gotta shave dry. That's the only thing that works for me."

So here I am, days later, trying to make sense of all this. I can't dismiss Tino -- not only does the man know what he's doing since he's been doing it for decades, but he could probably have me "shaved permanently".

Really, I don't think he's an ignoramus. I think he's privy to wisdom that's wholly outside the shavegeek dogmatic hash marks. Who knows more about what works best shaving -- a bunch of tittering shavegeeks on a forum, or a professional barber who's been shaving guys for generations? Never argue with a pro. You'll lose every time.

Except I don't want to believe that mu skin is really so sensitive that I should be using cork-dulled Bic disposables (which aren't bad razors, actually, if you don't go and intentionally dull them witha cork -- in a pinch, the Sensitive single-blade jobs, and especially the Bic Metals, can give a damn good shave if the rest of your prep is fine). And Noxzema cold cream?

I have to think about this.