Got a great birthday present...a professional shave

There's an independent barber downtown that does a good shave for a reasonable price but for my birthday, my lady bought me a Royal Shave from The Art of Shaving. A wonderfully decedent experience. I wanted to post this in the beginner forum because my shave today reminded me how much I learned about straight razor shaving my own face by having a professional shave me. I highly recommend it if you're getting started in wet shaving. I highly recommend it if you never intend to shave with a straight!

Sure, a real man shaves with a straight razor...but a gentleman is shaved with a straight razor. For those without a man servant, its nice to pretend for a day.

I've never had an opportunity to get a straight shave, but it sounds/seems it would be an old time experience worthy of our grandfathers and ancestors and something to be much desired.

Envious,

Howard

I hadthe same shave and it was amazing if I could I would get one every day . But cause my last name is not trump I will learn to do it on my own and that makes me enjoy the process so much more. I learned a lot about the whole process from having it done, and got a set of really cool chops from it.

Unfortuntately, in modern times for every positive barber shave story there are probably 4 that are negative. A bad shave also has the potential to drive a person interested in the art away for good. I'm glad that it went well for you, but for most a "professional" shave is more likely to make us SR shavers glad that we do it ourselves.

I posted Mark Twain's experience with a barber's shave in another thread recently but it doesn't hurt to report it here. About Barbers - Mark Twain

While there may be barbers around today that will give a good shave the odds are probably better that they will be as Mark Twain describes. I am not discouraging anyone form the experience just saying that you should not have high hopes. I had a barber give me a shave a few months ago. He used my razor. While it wasn't as Mr. twain describes it was far from a good shave.