Black Men Are Going Retro With The 80's Hairstyles!

Rico London is a stylist at Levels Unisex in East Harlem. More Photos »

By Guy Trebay (NY Times)

IN the evolution of black barbering according to Kamal Nuru, the list of begats begins with the Fade (which some folks refer to as the Jersey).

The era would have been around 1982. The Fade was a popular haircut dating to the golden age of hip-hop, one in which the sides were cropped close and the puffy hair on top was kept low, an effect achieved using clippers fitted with No. 1 and No. 2 blades.

“A No. 1 is pretty close, so you can still see the scalp,” Mr. Nuru said last week from behind the Dutch doors to an office that also serves as the coat closet at Levels Unisex, his bustling barbershop on Lexington Avenue in East Harlem.

“A zero,” Mr. Nuru added, referring to clipper gauge, “would be bald.”

Stepped up and set back from the street, Levels is an oasis of calm and tonsorial focus in a part of the city where an awful lot of agitated people can be seen bustling around. There is a homeless shelter across Lexington Avenue. There is a drug treatment facility around the corner. A more-or-less permanent cluster of transvestite prostitutes plies the corners of nearby 125th Street, clad in summery ensembles of Daisy Dukes and tube tops, accessorized with clutch purses that seem awfully tiny until one considers the modest dimensions of the tools of their trade.

The Fade cut eventually begat the Hi-Top Fade, as popularized by rappers like Doug E. Fresh and Schoolly D. When an angled cut was worked into the longer hair at the top of the head, the Flat-Top (a k a the Box) became the Slope (a k a the Gumby), and then the Slope or the Gumby, or whatever you called it, eventually begat another ridged haircut named for a math geek character played by the actor Kadeem Hardison in the “Cosby” spinoff, “A Different World.”

The Dwayne Wayne, Mr. Nuru explained, “had a little swoop-up like a ramp” and was immensely popular at about the time that Mr. Nuru got into the barbering game in 1987. By lucky chance, that happened to be at the precise moment when many African-Americans fastened onto the idea of having their coiffures shaved into complex patterns and topiary designs.

“The late ’80s and early ’90s were a really great time” for African-American hairstyling, said Mr. Nuru, who is 39. Gazing around at the 11 chairs in the shop, one of three he owns in as many boroughs, he remarked with satisfaction that, like much else from the ’80s, the glorious hairstyles of that long ago era had cycled around again.

“The Mohawk came back heavy in the last year,” he said. “And people started playing with their hair again.”

They started having their hair shaped and shaved and cut into fanciful patterns. They began adding Chinese-made black coloring to already dark hair to achieve a blue-black “Beijing” dye job, an effect that lends the wearer a curious resemblance to an action figurine.

They resumed — and with greater brio than was ever seen in the 1980s, when the rigid machismo of early hip-hop culture put a crimp in playfulness — having fun with how they look.

“I used to cut Mickey Mouse into people’s hair, Yankees symbols, any logo or abstract symbol or caricature they could think of,” said Mr. Nuru, whose Islamicized name, he claimed, means “perfecting God’s light.”

Lately, he said, the so-called retro kids are going back to the styles of the ’80s, this time adding more intricate patterns than were ever seen then, more startling neon colors and patterns that are limited only by the imagination of barbers like Rico London, who commands the first chair at Levels, the one by the window, and who is without any question the star of the show.

“Rico is an artist, straight up,” Gonzalo Venegas, one of the three members of the rap group Rebel Diaz, said one recent Friday as Mr. London shaved an asymmetrical pattern of what he referred to as “futuristic arrows” into one side of Mr. Venegas’s scalp.

Roughly once every 10 days when he is not touring, Mr. Venegas, known as G1, stops into Levels to have a new motif styled into his hair. The cuts are a fraction of the cost of an average styling at Frédéric Fekkai SoHo, depending on the level of complexity involved. Mr. Venegas never knows and seldom even inquires in advance what Mr. London has planned.

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No More London, No More France, You Could Get Fined With Those Down-Low Pants!

Momma always told you “pull your pants up, you look like a bum. So you pull up your oversized Girbauds and walk out the door, letting them drop stylishly back into place just under your butt.

Those were the good old days, but now in some cities in America, Momma could be down the street, ready to get on your back about those pants again. Well, not Momma, but Sergeant Friday might soon be on the case.

City Councils in several southern cities have voted for creating an ordinance to ban sagging pants that expose underwear and skin. Two cities that have approved this are Shreveport and Alexandria, Louisiana. In Alexandria, violators showing more 3 inches of booty could be fined $25 to $200 and ordered to perform community service and counseling. "I'm tired (of) looking at behinds," said Councilwoman Joyce Bowman, in Shreveport's 4-3 majority Tuesday.

The idea to outlaw this trend has also reached cities as large as Atlanta, where the debate has heated up. Critics have said that Atlanta's measure is a form of racial profiling that would allow police to target some young black males who wear their pants below the belt line. Similar initiatives in other states have spurred complaints from civil liberties groups.

It’s been known that this style of sagging has been prevalent in the Black community for years. Young Black men have been hearing, “pull your pants up, tie your shoes, turn your hat around” from their mothers and grandmothers forever. Some of my favorites were, “Who’s gonna respect you if all they can see is your ass?

And while watching COPS, “Look at him; trying to run away, he can’t get away from the police running in those pants down around his ankles.” So despite the possibility that these new laws could give some police officers one more thing to bother a young Black man about, the sponsors of the proposals are older Black people fed up with the unsightly appearance.

Although the older citizens of these cities have good intentions in mind, the fact is that no one should be able to make others wear their clothes the way they want them to. Indecent exposure is one thing, but disagreement with this sloppy style is another that deals strictly with opinion. The attention of our law enforcement should be focused on real issues that actually affect our communities, like theft, shootings, and drug dealing.

This isn’t the Red Carpet in L.A., and I don’t see Joan Rivers anywhere, so the fine people of Louisiana should let the fashion police do their job on E! If you don’t like the look, then look away, all it takes is a simple twist of the neck.

Now that sagging has been forbidden, I’m proposing that the opposing “Waistline up to your chest” look be next on the chopping block. It makes me shudder every time I have to wonder exactly where someone’s waist really is.

Keep talking, it’s the only way they’ll ever hear you.--JJJ