R.I.P. Beard 2008-2010

Today at roughly 4pm PST, the mighty beard hath been slain. It was a decent beard, long, braidable and true. Some said it looked fierce, others thought it looked like pubes, but I think most agreed that it was a meaningful albeit eccentric way of measuring the time and effort we've been putting into Overgrowth.

The shaving occurred at the 1512 Barber Shop. The place had been highly recommended to me by several friends and I managed to schedule an appointment with Salvatore, the shop's owner and master barber. Sal has been a barber for 25 years having been formally trained by his farther who was trained by his father and their family has carefully preserved the authentic art of the straight-razor shave.

If you watched the live stream, you probably noticed that we had a pretty decent circus going on in Sal's shop. We had multiple cameras running and I took it upon myself to talk, gesture, answer phone calls and check text messages in the middle of his delicate surgery. Despite all the commotion, Sal cleaned me up with amazing speed and dexterity, even creating a mullet look for me in the middle of my haircut (a reminder for me to be thankful we didn't break 10,000 YouTube subscribers in the past two weeks).

None of the beard's remains have been preserved. I'm pretty sure Sal managed to dispose of it like the level 6 biohazard contaminated waste that it was. But although its time on this earth was cut short, perhaps its spirit will grow on in our memories...

Needless to say if you're anywhere near San Francisco and are looking for a luxurious way to debeardificate, I highly recommend Sal's 1512 Barber Shop. If he was able to clean up my ugly mug, he can handle anyone.

I want to thank everyone (the Wolfire team, the awesome Wolfire community, Sal, the homeless stranger who looked at my beard earlier today and accused me of "living a lie" and the whale man) for making the beard shaving milestone such a fun memory for me.

So far the immediate post beard side effects include but are not limited to: light-headedness (must have been 5 pounds of hair removed at least), greater ease of eating soup without accidentally saving some for later, a strange guy looking back at me in mirrors and other reflective surfaces.