What this country needs is a good five-dollar haircut.

Of course, for five dollars, it doesn't have to be all that good. Just so long as it doesn't look like it was done with a weed-whacker.

One of my favorite wine shops in Richmond opened a second location about a month ago, in a brand-new shopping center. Two doors down from it, a chain barbershop opened two weeks ago, and they've got a grand-opening sale: haircuts, $4.99. Since I was past due for a haircut - well past due, the uncharitable among us might say - I figured it was worth a shot, and the price was right. And it looks fine, given what they had to work with.

I haven't always been willing to walk in off the street and trust my hair to a complete stranger. I hate breaking in new people to cut my hair, just as I hate going to a doctor or dentist for the first time. Back in Charlottesville, I followed one woman who cut my hair from one salon to another to another, and I arranged my haircuts around her maternity leaves, just to avoid dealing with someone new. Even when I left Charlottesville for Durham and Richmond, I'd time my return visits to coincide with when I'd need a haircut, and make appointments during those visits. Alas, after 20 years of cutting my hair (and that of others, I suppose), she seems to have gotten out of the hair-cutting business, so I was forced to make other arrangements here. And it appears I've survived.