January 10, 2007 - Ed Cuts To The Chase

After reading about Stefan Karpinski's record jaunt through the New York City subway system, the dedicated staff of edhat.com was feeling inspired. So, when Ed asked us to call up every barbershop in the yellow pages to see how much they charge, we saw it as a golden opportunity to do a little record breaking of our own. Just how much time would it take us to call all thirty haircutters listed?

We dialed. We smiled. We asked our question, and then we cut our conversation short. Eighteen minutes and 21 seconds later we were done, having only reached four answering machines. And, that is the record until someone does better.

Of course not all haircuts are the same. Some include a shampoo, blow dry, and style. Others include all you can eat conversations about football, basketball, soccer, and horse racing. The prices vary from $12 at Pepper Tree Barbershop (inside the hotel?) to $40 at Head West and Member's Only. The standard cost of a basic haircut is around $15. If you include a shampoo, prices start at $20 and go higher. Comparing prices on Tuesday to prices the last time we did this survey showed an increase of about $1 - $2 per shop (per head, per shop)

The average price of all haircuts was $20.12. We made up one of our cool maps for you to locate the prices of the barbers near you.

Three Edhat subscribers guessed $20 in yesterday's contest, missing the actual number by the width of a hair. Those subscribers were Gruntled, Lemony, and Cisco2000. The Edhat Dog, who thinks that haircuts are for poodles, was called into action to break the tie. Three tennis balls of different colors were thrown into the Edhat office backyard for her to retrieve. Cisco's ball was the one she returned with. Cisco wins an Edhat t-shirt!

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