Mike “Pugsley” Cashen grooms a customer at his Main Street barbershop. (Photo by Carrie Jones Ross)
Pleva said the downside to the beard is that it gets hot in the summer, but it’s worth the convenience of a no-maintenance mug. “My girlfriend likes my beard and feels it would be weird if I ever shaved.”
Scenario Five: Keep ‘Em Coming
My personal childhood nemesis Craig Mittelstaedt recently posted some rather handsome new photos of himself on Facebook, donning a rich, full beard. “I now have a fairly thick beard that I’ve let grow for the past two months. I’ve gotten a lot of unsolicited comments from ladies; friends, co-workers, customers, telling me how much they like it. I didn’t really plan to keep it. But the favorable compliments have encouraged me to not shave.” Mittelstaedt said his new photos netted him 15 female Facebook likes in five days, and five from men. He “I always wanted one but I would give up after a week,” he said. “It was hot or itchy. Tough getting past the awkward middle, growing in stage. I suppose like going from short hair to long hair. Or bangs to no bangs. There’s that part in the middle where it just doesn’t look so good … Last night I got several compliments from co-workers at a dinner party. They were mostly in their twenties to thirties. Also got a compliment from the woman at my dentist today who is probably in her fifties.” Mittelstaedt uses a light texture cream to keep the wild whiskers in place, and plans to follow up with a barber to better shape and trim it. “In the city, there’s a hipster element to it. A lot of them have beards … Beards used to make you think of lumberjacks or rednecks. That’s not the first thing that pops into people’s minds anymore. There is more of an artistic, edgy, rock n roll image to them now.” When asked to describe his own personal look he is cultivating with the beard, Mittelstaedt was nearly stumped. “Hmmm. Not sure. I suppose it would be more of a classic look with a little element of rocker in there to keep it from being boring and too mainstream. Never really had to describe my ‘look’ before. No way to do that without sounding pompous.”
Scenario Six: The Rainmaker
Mike “Pugsley” Cashen, owner of uptown Kingston’s Pugsley’s Traditional Barber Shop talked about what he sees every day at his temple of masculinity.
“Dudes don’t really rock too weird of beards,” said Pugsley. “[The majority of beards I do] is kind of shaping goatees whether they’re pointed or long and boxy. I think the goatee variations are the biggest things. If someone is coming in and doing a crazy mustache, they are doing it for the time being, or shock value, but they’re not planning on keeping it. You have guys having personal competitions with themselves to see how long they can get it. You kind of play games with yourself, ya know? I have grown my hair to super uncomfortable lengths just to see how long I can get it.”
Pugsley talked on the “no-shave Movember thing,” where men grew facial hair all last month to raise awareness of testicular and prostate cancer. “I can’t grow a beard,” lamented Pugsley. “Genetics. I can grow two separate goatees, mustaches, but nothing connects in the middle. It’s ridiculous. I can grow my gnarly chops.”
When posed with the question, “Why?” Pugsley replied thoughtfully, “just to get a rise or personal ya-yas,” he said. “Every day you don’t cut your hair or beard you made it one more day. [Goveia] came in three and a half years ago and we cut his beard and mustache and it’s still there, and that was three and a half years ago. You wonder, ‘What would you look like if you shaved it off?’ You can change somebody’s look, and change the way their face looks, If you cut [Goveia’s] mustache off, it would be traumatic to see how he looks without it.”
Pugsley agreed with his contemporaries that facial hair creates facial forgiveness. “Dudes try to hide a double chin or mask a part of their face they don’t like. I have customers who say they have no upper lip and so they have a mustache and I wouldn’t know any different because I have only ever known them with a mustache.” Pugsley said facial hair comes and goes, except sideburns. “I think that mustaches can only be worn by a certain age group to be taken seriously; unless it’s a thin one to complement a ‘chin strap’ or those skinny little beards that guys are still wearing for whatever reason. Beards as a whole are definitely in now though. Sideburns, I think, are the only thing that doesn’t come or go. You can always get away with those, no matter what.”
Pugsley said he has seen on more than one occasion police officers who enter his place en masse, all growing mustaches to see how far they can push their chief. “If you draw a cartoon cop, he’s got a mustache.”
