#I am thinking we are possibly nearing the end of rally-o though ... I doubt we will trial again and I feel like we're both not as enthused

[pawsitivevibe]

Local grouchy old lady is still a rockstar in rally class.

[joshuazev]

On the switch:

I was coming back from Washington Heights after getting a haircut today and I was making my familiar walk from St. Nicholas to the A Train station on 184th.  It didn’t feel like a blast from the past because I had taken that route so many times, but instead, it felt like complete synergy.  In life, people always recommend taking the road less traveled, but completely out of context and in this particular situation, nothing felt better than taking the road well traveled.  If the weather was a little bit different I would have made some stops to the barbecue grill to see my guy Paco and buy a couple skewers and because I’m the type of person who, when I get hungry, wants to eat every type of food that I enjoy that’s in the relative vicinity.  Visions of heading down St. Nicholas and getting a cubano sandwich.  Visions of walking to 175th and Broadway to stop at El Conde to get some habichuela roja, arroz, and a pollo entero.  When the mind is big it salivates and it can feel insatiable, but when you try to actually satisfy the desire to eat anything and everything…it always bites you in your ass.  Luckily for my stomach and sadly for my mind, I didn’t make one stop to any of those food locales.  I think my mind was in a pretty funny space, though.  More context.  You see, when I was younger, my sister had braids.  These weren’t corn rows or anything like that because my sister had a lot of hair and it was really long, but I can remember the pictures and the time like it was yesterday…she had these awesome long braids.  Growing up, I didn’t think that was ever a possibility for me.  She just had long hair, that’s how it was.  She could do stuff like that.  I would never grow my hair long enough for it to be like hers, but then again, I didn’t want those long braids anyway; I just wanted a couple.  As I grew older, I thought it would be cool to join the club and get some braids of my own but I didn’t know how that was going to happen.  I was in the habit of getting haircuts and, honestly, keeping it short was so comfortable.  The longer your hair gets the more days you catch yourself being like, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this mop on my head?” or, at least, that’s what it had been like for me in the past.  In college, there were a couple of times when, in hindsight, my hair was long enough to do something, but getting it cut was always the easiest option.  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t inspired by Allen Iverson, too.  He has always been my favorite basketball player, ever since I was a little kid.  He brought street fashion to the forefront and I think he also brought the attention to how one could style your hair, as well.  

There got to be a point where I think I had convinced myself that it wasn’t going to be a reality.  Braids were a pipe dream and I was going to stay in my lane because that was a big part of it, too.  I’d say one of the biggest factors that went into me not changing my style up and getting braids was that I thought I wasn’t allowed to.  I’m no stranger to the talks.  Shit, I had conversations with many people about it and I got a garden variety of different answers, but maybe the response I was listening to the most was the one in my own head.  Some people said I should try it.  Some people said I shouldn’t.  Others that I should stay away because it wouldn’t look good and then would try to scare me away by talking about all the things I would have to do to maintain it.  Others said I shouldn’t because I was stealing culture.  It was cultural appropriation or in this case cultural misappropriation.  I mean, how many white guys do you know with braids?  Is it because they don’t have the right hair to do it or is it because they also felt like going through with it would be almost a trespassing across lines one shouldn’t cross.  At the end of the day, I knew what my intentions were.  Then there were other inspirations like this dude named Quincy who, honestly—I don’t even know what he does.  He’s the son of Al B. Sure and is the adopted son of Puff Daddy.  I think he makes music?   Whatever.  The point is, he took a style that was probably pretty popular around the way and made it even more so and one day I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and saw the style and told myself, “Maybe it’s time to start rethinking getting braids.”  That first full year in the Heights it was like a constant reminder of the Instagram feed.  Everybody had that style, which is, for people that don’t know what I’m talking about, essentially a one length cut to the rim of your head and then two braids that circle around and meet up in the back and are tied together by a rubber band.  Then it became an issue of everybody having it and not wanting be too trendy.  You can see that this is a rather stupid cycle of the mind.  That surfaced a lot this year.  My mind talking me out of things that I either wanted to do or was having trouble going through with.  That brain of ours is a tricky one and doubt, fear, and anxiety are constantly evolving beasts that work together very well.

Like my roommate Nate says to me all the time like a rallying cry that needs to be said every day in order to be understood: LIVE YOUR LIFE!  Usually this is in reference to a stupid question or a situation in which I’m looking for his opinion or thoughts.  I can see where he’s coming from though.  When it comes down to it, I need to be the one to make a decision.  I need to be the one to step forward and carry on.  I can’t keep wanting to move in the right direction and ask if it’s OK to do so.  Live your life.  Live your life.  LIVE YOUR LIFE!  So today, armed with a whole lot of nervousness and a lot of excitement, and a whole lot of thinking, “I’ve told damn near everybody that I’m going to do this…no time like the present,” I got on the A train and took it uptown.  Downtown Brooklyn.  Passed.  Downtown Manhattan.  Whoosh.  Whoosh.  Whoosh.  Midtown.  Subway sounds.  The A was moving along doing its dance and skip.  The Heights.  145th.  168th.  Finally, I got to the 181st St. stop that I had gotten off at so many times and went on my merry way.  Merry way might be misleading, though.  Yes, Christmas was a few days ago, but the moment I stepped out of the station I got a full blast of what my phone said was a “feels like 8 degrees” temperature.  The type of biting, windy cold that doesn’t allow you to have your hands out of your pockets at all unless you wanna get a taste of what frostbite might be like.  I couldn’t wear a hat either because if this braid thing was going to happen I wasn’t going to be able to wear it on the way back.  “These things better be worth the chill,” I was thinking to myself.  A couple of straights and one right later I saw the storefront that read simply, “BARBERSHOP” but my barber, who I was supposed to meet at 2 o clock—it was 1:58, wasn’t there.  The shop was as lively as I expected it to be on the weekend before New Years Eve.  The chairs were filled, the Spanish was spoken and the music was blaring.  I texted my barber and told him I was there and he replied pretty quickly to tell me that he would be there in 15 minutes.  Ten minutes went by.  Twenty.  Thirty.  A check-in text was sent.  No reply.  At forty minutes I started to get nervous because he wasn’t there and I didn’t know how far away he was, how long his cut would take, and how I had an appointment with the woman for the braiding at 3:30.  By 2:30-3 o’clock I was in full doubt mode, thinking it wasn’t going to work out, getting ready to tell the woman to cancel my appointment.  I was panicking and pessimistic, but a little after three o’clock my guy Tom came in as casual as could be, without any ill feeling or remorse for being an hour late, shook my hand, smiled, exchanged a “how are you?” and we were good to go.  Just like that.  Being a prisoner of my mind almost got me caught up once again.  After a brief exchange between him and Chass, the woman, Chass parted my hair to make it easier visually to see where he was going to cut and gel was applied in the middle to form a nice bun and keep it out of the way.  After speaking about the NBA, why the Yankees wouldn’t win (despite now having Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton), acting and Tom’s family and after getting the beard groomed, the front shaped, and a face massage, the cut was over.  All the curliness and waviness that I had been spoiled with over the last half a year or so was on the ground, disconnected.

I always wonder if my face reads like a book or if I just read into things, in general.  Another client brought Tom some white wine and he offered me a trago, a shot, which ended up being two shots.  Shortly after Chass must have seen I was finished and beckoned me over for the procedure.  She and I couldn’t help but exchange laughs.  I was laughing because I was awkward and nervous and had no idea what I was getting myself into and she must have been laughing because she could see all of the worry on my face.  I think she was also laughing because she didn’t know how it was going to turn out or how I was going to look.  Shit, she and I both.  When I tell you that when she finished I needed to blink a couple of times, I’m not lying.  I was telling her during the process that I had no idea what it was going to look like, just that I hoped it looked good.  I didn’t doubt her talent or her ability.  I just didn’t know if my hair was going to be a good match.  She finished and I was as pleased as I could have been.  I had the two braids.  The fear now was only the internal battle I knew I would have to face when walking outside.  I would need to continue to support myself and tell myself that it didn’t matter if other people liked it or didn’t, as long as I did.  Chass was happy with it too and told me she’d give me some recommendations on other things I could do with my hair if I wanted to pull the braids out.  I don’t think I would have been as comfortable with it all if she didn’t have the attitude she had.  So supportive and positive.  The walk back to the train was an easy one.  I silently said my goodbyes to my old neighborhood and looked ahead with optimism, which was further strengthened after a woman who sat down next to me said that she liked my hairstyle.  The best moment on the train occurred when I had moved to another subway car (I wanted to get close to the end because of the proximity to the Nostrand exit).  There was an Italian couple who was on their way to the airport, but what they didn’t know was that they were on the wrong A train.  This was a Lefferts bound one and what they needed was a Far Rockaway train.  About three people tried to explain to them that they weren’t going to be able to connect and would need to get off at Rockaway Blvd. and wait for the other one.  Someone told me that they had already tried explaining in Spanish thinking it could be easily translatable but it wasn’t.  When I think about it, no matter how many gestures you give or broken down english directions that’s a hard thing to explain to someone if you don’t speak the same language.  People started to see what we were trying to do and it got more funny and ridiculous because the more every new person tried to explain the more we all thought that that would confuse the couple even more.  Finally, I got to a station that had internet service and I did what I thought other people would have done if they couldn’t speak Italian.  I got on Google translate and explained the situation and showed it to them at the next stop.  They looked at it, understood, looked at the map behind them that so many others had pointed to, looked back at me and nodded in approval.  When I got off I told them, “Buona fortuna” and the man replied, “Grazie, ragazzo” and I shook hands with both of them.  I can only hope, several hours later, that they made the correct switch and that they got on their plane on time and are having a safe flight to wherever they are going.  

Se tutto va bene.