Thread: What is WRONG with You Guys????

Well..

I guess I started shaving like this because I really thought it was cool and that not everybody does it!! Then I fell in love with the HERITAGE and HISTORY of straight shaving.

"There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are simple things, and because it takes a man's life to know them, the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave".-E. Hemingway

I told a friend this morning that I was going to be buying a straight razor. His response:

"You're insane."

I showed him a few of the razors I had been looking at. His response:

"Dude. It's a razor."

Haha...that kinda made me laugh. I don't know a ton about razors yet, but I know any quality cutlery doesn't come cheap, and I'm not about to chintze out on something I'm scraping my face with...

I'm not exactly sure what mystical force pulled me into the world of straight shaving... I think shaving with muck3 just never felt right to me. Then one day I stumbled upon these forums and quickly became obsessed with learning this art.

One thing that really made me take the plunge was that I am still young enough to skip shaving for a few days (because I don't grow beard fast enough and my job is a job, not a career) and this factor has given me a more forgiving learning curve.

Plus, honestly, I feel like a bad ass standing in front of the mirror holding a lethal weapon to my face.

Definitely a macho thing with me.

But really, who cares what other people think???



And to add to what Jimmy said above...straights let people who live in a dangerous area feel safe in the bathroom. I mean, somebody breaks in and barges in on you in the bathroom to rob you...and you're standing there holding one MEAN-LOOKING straight razor! I love it.

Well, I'm just now trying to get into it. It's hard to explain much of a reasoning, I was watching a History Channel show on "sharpest blades" and they talked briefly about straight razors, and something just snapped, and I was like "gotta get one", so what'd I do? went right out and got a Zeepk kit on Ebay. Now on this site they say that's garbage, so I'm still hunting for plan b (my Case pocket knife is sharper...).

Background? I'm 22... I like old lost-art sort of things. I'm into old cars (something about being able to fiddle with 3 SU carburettors and get em tuned just so...), picked up pipe smoking a while back (never smoked cigarretts, don't ever plan to, some cigars are good.. pipes are awesome), I enjoy a good scotch (emphasis on "good"). I started shaving around 13 with a Norelco.... around 18 I got tired of paying $30/month for blades for that thing, so switched to a Gillete sensor, and remember at the time really thinking that shaving was a much more enjoyable thing than it was with the electric...
I guess one thing is that I've always dreamed of having a pocket knife "razor sharp". Usually I can easily shave arm hair etc, but never face hair... finally decided to just get a razor. And hoping maybe with a little practice I can learn to sharpen my pocket knives similarly

bbshriver, The Topher has the plain B you need in the newbie form. His starter sets are all any shaver could want. better hurry though.

Don

yup, I subscribed to the thread, and am planning a stake-out when he's going to officially offer them for sale.
Some part of me is saying I've totally lost my marbles to consider spending $150 for shaving stuff... for some reason that part of me rarely wins though??

a C note and a half is cheep. If you bail out you could get your money back and make another new shaver happy. I spent far more than that on less.

Don

"cheap" being a relative term here... ~$10 is the most i've ever spent on a razor (until this Zeepk thing)

To be completely honest the macho thing plays a big part in it... I like to revel in my masculinity.

I think it dovetails nicely into a lot of other aspects of my life. For reasons that I cannot really explain, I am drawn to many anachronistic things. I grind my own flour, make bread with a sourdough starter that is more tan 150 years old, I love pocket watches, I think spats and gaiters are cool. My farm tractor was built before WWII broke out. I am a sucker for flathead engines. I collect WWII and earlier battlerifles and am especially fond of black power cartridge guns, I'm a sucker for anything art deco and art nouveau... I cant explain, I just give in.