Rudy's Barber Shop

Don't get me wrong, from the title it should be clear that I like Rudy's a lot. Where else can you listen to the new Shins album, read Playboy (for the articles of course...) and wait for a cut from someone who probably has more tattoos than you? Nowhere I can think of... About a year ago I moved to Phinney Ridge and though it would be a good deed to check out our local Rudy's as opposed to getting my cut near the University like I used to. Bad call on my part. The woman who cut my hair was a stereotypical stylist: all of a sudden my normal shampoo and conditioner was of course not good enough and she figured she could get me to buy literally the most expensive stuff they sell. During the entire haircut conversation she was trying to plug her business that she had off to the side teaching people how to make their bucks on the internet. Of course that I was a CS grad I would be interested. Even though I had told her about my plans to go to the pub with some friends in small talk she tried to convince me to ditch and go to her little free introductory informational meeting about said business. The kicker was that she even gave me her card after I had paid and told me she hoped to see me that night. I left with the bitter feeling that I had sat through some infomercial that I didn't care about and more importantly the haircut wasn't even that great! I'm sure that the other stylists are fine at Rudy's on Phinney but I haven't been back to find out; the Udistrict isn't that far away... more

As you can see from my photos, I'm not the most fashion-forward guy in Seattle. But when my team at the office asked for a little incentive for hitting an upcoming deadline, somehow I found myself signed up for a platinum dye job. So sure enough, they hit the date, and all of a sudden I need to figure out just what's required to turn my brown-turning-gray hair into a shocking white mop. I don't know too many men who dye their hair, but almost every woman I know has done it at least once, and many make it a regular thing. When I asked them if I could do it myself, the unanimous feedback was NO WAY! So, not eager to find myself in the hands of a fancy-pants salon, I did what any self-respecting Seattlite would do and called Rudy's. Their Fremont store was booked for the day so they sent me over to their Phinney Ridge location, and that turned out to be a lucky break. Turns out they have a great color specialist at the Phinney store - her name is Stefanie, if I remember correctly - and she did an amazing job, first by helping me understand how the whole process would work, then by picking a dye color that would prevent me from looking dead (or like Billy Idol), and finally by patiently working with me for the TWO HOURS it took to actually get the job done. I keep my hair pretty short, so the dye job is mostly grown out already. But for a while there the teachers at my son's school we're calling out "hey, it's Brad Pitt" every time I walked in the door to drop him off, and that alone was worth the $100... more