By Richard C. Morais
Penta tirelessly hunts for value. It is for this reason we sent out waves of intrepid male reporters, with marching orders fair but firm – “Find the best value men’s haircut in Manhattan.”
Haircuts in New York range in price from $4 at DaZhong Barber Shop in Chinatown, to $1,200 or so at New York stylists like Ted Gibson, explaining why such intelligence is needed. Pay too little for a buzz-cut with clippers, and your head looks like a mauled hedge just a week after its initial shearing. Conversely, find a fairly priced haircut executed by a well-trained barber working with scissors, and the haircut’s cost can be amortized over a much longer period, your locks, as they grow in, retaining their essential shape weeks after the original cut.
At the other end of the grooming experience, there’s the problem of diminishing returns. In fancy salons, you often wind up paying for exotic pomades and vases filled with orchids and espressos in demitasse delivered to your elbow. That’s all pleasant, of course, but none of those costly additions improve on a technically well-executed haircut that can be found at lower price points.
After countless hours with our heads tipped, sprayed, massaged, buzzed, soaked, and snipped, we found the hairdresser where all the fees wound up where they counted – on our head. Penta’s best-value haircut winner was Esquires, an esteemed establishment with shops both down in the Financial District (14 Wall Street) and in Midtown (805 Third Avenue), and where a fine men’s haircut will set you back just $28.
Watch our video from the barber frontlines – filed by Barron’s Managing Editor Phil Roosevelt and videographer Joseph Lingad – and you’ll discover why J.P. Morgan’s spectral presence hovers over every snip of the Esquires ‘do.