God Bless hair salon, nestled deep in the urban sprawl of Peckham, or as the Guardian reading, fine art painting, latte drinking, south London gallery going newest wave of residents to the area would have you believe; located on the cusp of East Dulwich.
God Bless is the place where the down and out, the on their way up and the damn I finally made it descend to have their hair done. Why? Because Keesha, the enigmatic virtuoso stylist (adds more pazzaz than simply saying hairdresser) is amazing!
The problem…. In order to get the haircut that leaves you looking edgier than Rihanna (hopefully a little more considerate of any large forehead issues), or the weave that’s blows further and longer than Beyonce’s (lace front is expensive so ladies bear this in mind when you want to emulate Mrs Knowles Carter. Glue is not the answer) or the braids that put Brandy’s (think the Moesha era) to bed, we must endure what Dante’s Divine Comedy so aptly described as the circles of hell. If Dante thought he had it bad, bopping (pre-Timberlands, but you know the sort) around the Inferno with his homeboy Virgil, chasing after some chick, Beatrice, I challenge him to a day in our world - Peckham, Brixton, Stratford, New Cross or any of the plethora of non gentrified locations we embrace for the sake of hair.
First Circle of hell (Limbo)
I have heard it said before…. probably on Sex And The City which I’ve watched so often it’s blurred my reality and I have started describing people as the characters in the show not only to convey superficial traits such as style or size or hair colour, but actual defining characteristics…. As though every woman in the world is either a Samantha ‘sex crazed, ambitious, diva’ Jones or Miranda ‘cynical and perpetually troubled’ Hobbs or Carrie ‘self interested, self important pain in the arse’ Bradshaw or Charlotte ‘prudish, but ended up with the best man’ York….
Where was I? That’s right, I’m plagiarising Candace Bushnell… I have heard it said before that a New York woman is always searching for three things; The perfect job (who isn’t?); The perfect apartment (ain’t that the truth. I’ve lived in enough rat infested shoe boxes in this fair city to know landlords have the audacity to charge you £120 a week for the ‘privilege’ of over looking the DLR) and the perfect relationship (call me Miranda… but does such a thing exist?). Well I know any black New Yorker, Londoner, Parisian or indeed a black woman living anywhere on the globe, would add hair dresser to that list.
A hair dresser to black women is what a tanning salon has become for white women (since they caught their men downloaded images of Beyonce and Eva Mendes as their screen savers). Both are equally capable of making the best and the worst of us. Superficial perhaps, but unequivocally essential.
Like most women I’m always in search of a good hair dresser; My definition of which is, someone who uses the best products (KeraCare, Organics, Wave Nouveux – Yes ladies the 80s are back and curly perm is making a rampant come back), knows how to cut (into a style and not just trim the edges of that circa 1985 bob) and is affordable (£30 for a relaxer, £20 for a steam, £40 for a weave, £10 for a cut). I need someone who is capable of delivering my experimental looks, who can cut and weave and glue whatever is necessary to deliver that style. I’m not of the pretentious ilk who pays the earth for a mediocre haircut in Knightsbridge, because white people recognise the name of the salon, so it must be good. Nor do I wish for a weave that looks like it was done by a visually impaired, bald Norwegian monk, who has never come across scissors, let alone human hair, glue and a skull cap (Naomi take note – you can take the girl out of South London, but sometimes you need to keep a little bit of the South London in the girl – In particular the hair region). A hair dresser is like a doctor, there to pick you up when you are low and help you recover from the abuses life has thrown at you and return the spring to your high heeled step.
My former hair dresser (the ultimate fashionista whose afro weave attracted me and every Jon B looking man in the room) was moving back to Holland and I was at odds with how next to do my hair and most significantly where to go to find that trusted stylist. Limbo doesn’t describe my sense of loss, especially as a woman who so frequently changes her hair style, I needed someone fast – It was week five and the current weave had to go.
My soirée with the God Bless hair salon was not a singular steadfast decision spurred on by a self-deprecating advert (an oxymoron I know) in a glossy magazine, but rather the kind of relationship spawned from habit and a certain unhealthy addiction to cheapness. Besides you’re more likely to hear God Bless being advertised on one of south east London’s finest pirate radio stations. Metro Loves Radio aka MLR is my personal favourite and the ad about the big bootie Giarrl clothing range cracks me up every time.
I stumbled upon a client of Keesha’s (I later discovered all her clients were her friends, so her professional manner, which had never been honed, left much to be desired) one summers afternoon strolling through the fume packed aisles of Morrison’s in Peckham, where on a Saturday you are sure to experience the great spectrum of humanity scoping the aisles for a bargain or at the very least crack. Always feeling the need to pay a compliment when it is so clearly due (women don’t do that enough to one another), I dodged the missile throwing army of children (all with a Mohawk – it was the summer of 2008 and Pharrell Williams had a lot to answer for), approached the lady with the sharp crop and asked where she had gotten her hair done. From that day forth a relationship was born. A relationship which took me from a ramshackle barbers in Peckham where the men leer, the stylists fight (normally over who has used whose products and who slept with whose man – the anger is always in equal measure) and the DVDs are all copies, where she was first based, to a shed next to a bike shop in Camberwell and finally to my spiritual home, God Bless.
SEE you next week for more frolics at God Bless.
I should say that, I have changed any of the names of the people in this blog, although God Bless Salon really does exist, however it has been taken over by new management and Keesha no longer works there. Good luck tracking her down, it’s a feet which has thus far evaded me.
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