Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Grooming Jack O'Neill

I have an O'neill wetsuit. A lot of people do. But this weekend while I was hanging out with my friend Penelope, who used to cut hair in Santa Cruz, I found out something about the company's founder that will forever change the way I think about neoprene.



Penelope said that while she was working as a stylist in S.C. she cut the one-eyed wetsuit empresario's signature beard and hair. It was bizarre, she said. He made her start at the midline of his face at the chin and work her way up and around the back of his head to the top, then back down the other side to where she began. It must've been like an around-the-world voyage on a nappy sea of salt and pepper.

"Why?" I asked, after I stopped laughing.

"He was superstitious," she answered. "He said it went back like 50 years to a haircut he had in Thailand. Some kind of ritual thing."

Anyway. I'm not sure why I included this in my blog, besides the fact that any surfers who read this can file it in their memory banks under "useless surf trivia" and blow some fricken minds next time the conversation dies down at a drunken beach bonfire. Isn't that what you SoCal kids do every night?

Music: The Cure - "Speak My Language"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beats putting a bowl over the old cabeza.


Music: Mosquitos — Boombox

Chum said...

That's true. And I tend to shave right to left on those rare occasions when I feel the need to rub a sharp object against my facial flesh.

Candi said...

Without the illustration I might have been lost...thank you. Excellent.