And Alberto's is still cranking them out!
Have to ask Faded, what barbershop did you get that flattop, and also was it once with a flattop or much longer? And what city is that shop in. Readers from all over the country including myself are always curious to keep in mind good shops when hearing about them.
It was Alberto's barbershop in Chula Vista (south of San Diego). The shop has a sign on the window saying "We specialize in flattops" and they mean it - I saw at least two others getting flattened while I waited. I had been wearing a crewcut for years by then so it wasn't a radical change (I actually had to let my hair grow for an extra week or two beforehand to make sure there would be enough hair to fill in the corners of the flattop!).
I showed the barber the photo below of Johnny U with a beveled flattop and said I wanted that cut, rounded off in the back, with the sides at #2 tapered down to zero along the edge. The guy was methodical and a perfectionist. He blow-dried my hair so it stood straight up, took a first swipe with clippers-over-comb across the front, then free-handed a stripe down the middle front-to-back, so from the top it looked like I had a 'T' buzzed into my hair. He then clipper-over-combed the hair on either side, and used a #5 guide to round off the corners slightly and a shorter guide to fully round off the back before clipper-over-combing the sides into a nice bevel. He did at least two more rounds of blow-drying and rebuzzing to make sure everything was perfectly level and not a hair was out of place. The shop was full of waiting customers whom I was facing, and I could see that some of the longer-haired ones were looking on raptly with what seemed to be a mix of fascination and dread!
When he was done my hair really looked just like JU's hair in the photo, with not one hair out of place. Even though my hair strongly wants to lie down, it was cut so well that with just a dab of Krew Comb, I was able to keep it standing up and looking perfectly flat for about four weeks afterwards, which is very rare for a flattop.
I've tried other shops since but have never had one do as good a job at a flattop. I think that the biggest problem is that most barbers will not take the time to blow-dry the hair into position and recut it multiple times to ensure that every last hair has been cut to stand up at the exact same length regardless of how much it gets moved around. Instead, after cutting the top once, many barbers will carefully comb the hair so it looks like it's perfectly flat - but that obviously requires equally careful combing, often multiple times in a day, to recreate the desired effect after the haircut! Since the quarantine started, I've been trying to teach myself to cut my own hair. While I've still got a ways to go to perfect my blending and fading techniques, and to get the sides perfectly even, I've found I can do a better job than most barbers I've been to at getting the top perfectly flat simply by taking the time to repeat the process several times - that actually seems to be one of the easiest parts of the haircut to do, but most barbers simply don't take the time to get it right!
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