Barbers

The century-old, out-of-tune piano is gone. So are the twin barber chairs and time-worn seats where customers at Jim & Tom's Barber Shop once sat to shoot the breeze and leaf through men's magazines like some blue-collar scene from Mayberry. The hand-painted barber pole still stands with its descending red stripe. So do the massive wall mirrors where so many men sternly appraised their new $6 haircut with head turned this way and that.

The barbershop pole -- a piece of Main Street Americana with its spiraling red, white and blue stripes -- has fallen victim to a sign ordinance in San Clemente that prohibits moving, revolving or flashing signs. The owners of three barbershops in the city have been told to turn off their poles or face a $100 fine. Jim Smith, a city code enforcement officer, said he sent letters to the shops after he received complaints about the barber poles.

Who is one of the longest-operating barbers in California? Who once cut Al Jolson's hair? Who had his barbershop rammed by an arsonist? Who has been trying to make me stylish for 37 years without success? ("You're not getting any younger. It's time to comb it forward. The Nero look!") His name is Luigi Venti, 79, of Venti's Elite Barbers in Tarzana.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have jailed 22 barbers for giving men Leonardo DiCaprio-style haircuts that are deemed offensive to Islam because the long bangs interfere with the ability to bow and say prayers. The hairstyle, referred to among young men in Kabul as "the Titanic," mimics that of DiCaprio in the blockbuster movie.

A Studio City teen-ager who Ventura Boulevard barbers said often complained about getting bad haircuts was charged Friday with torching and vandalizing three hair salons, including starting a fire that spread through an Encino mini-mall last week and caused $3.5 million in damage. Jacob Mandel, 18, pleaded not guilty in Van Nuys Municipal Court to four counts of arson, one count of attempted arson and four counts of vandalism.

At 71, Charles Mitchell was a cornerstone of a tiny, dilapidated commercial strip in the heart of Watts. He had been the neighborhood barber since the 1950s. Some of his earliest patrons would bring their grandchildren to his faded storefront on South Wilmington Avenue, where Mitchell quietly fretted over escalating crime and violence. "If you were destitute," one Los Angeles Police Department officer said Thursday, "he'd give you a haircut for free."

Some day soon, the last barber will lock up the last barbershop, hand the keys to Fantastic Sam, donate his barber pole to the Smithsonian and ride off into the sunset of nostalgia, joining the town crier and the doctor who makes house calls, right? Wrong. Not when Shaq leads the Lakers to victory with nary a hair on his head, Tom Cruise debuts a new buzz cut at the Oscars, and long-locked John Corbett is the one stealing Carrie's heart with his newly shorn look on "Sex and the City."

Others have bounced on pogo sticks, married each other dozens of times and even eaten bicycles to make the book. Wynn Walter used his barber's shears to prove he is a cut above. The 34-year-old Santa Clarita resident snipped his way into the Guinness Book of Records on Sunday by setting the world's record for giving the most haircuts in 24 hours. He trimmed, styled--and shaved bare in one case--the heads of 133 men and boys who volunteered to be a part of history.

Like the swimsuits for which they are named, the Bikini Barbershop is back. Closed since Nov. 7, the attention-grabbing salon reopened Tuesday at a new location, 1673 Irvine Ave., where it will continue its gimmick: women in bathing suits cut hair. "It's a novelty," said customer Ralph Starkweather of Irvine, who got a $13 haircut on opening day.