Keepin’ it real on 9th Ave.

Since mov­ing to NYC, my pri­or­i­ties have been as follows:

1. Find some­where to sleep.
2. Find some­where (hope­fully more than once a day) to eat.
3. Find a damn good barber.

The lat­ter of that list has proved itself most dif­fi­cult. Sure — I haven’t walked around the streets of NYC look­ing like a wilde­beest (yes, that’s how it’s spelled — weird, right?), but I’ve not been to the same bar­ber twice. After 6 years with the same bar­ber in Dal­las — I was hard-pressed to find the same unre­quited love in New York City…that is…until today.

Today, June 28th 2011, marks the tri­umphant dis­cov­ery of New Bar­ber Shop.

I’d like to thank Google for this dis­cov­ery. The past few bar­bers and hair­styl­ists that I have been to were pure recommendation…so I decided to turn to the trusty interwebs.

I took my boy PK along for the ride — just in case it ended up to be a hor­ri­ble haircut…I wouldn’t be the only guy with a bad ‘do. It’s unre­quited love…you know the deal.

Rem­i­nis­cent of Cuba — or lit­er­ally picked out of Havana and trans­ported to West Chelsea — the news plays on the 14″ tele­vi­sion (in Span­ish) while Manolo and Pedro ban­ter back and forth in grumpy old man Span­ish that I can barely under­stand. The walls are plas­tered with pho­tos, posters, old clients, new clients, babies — appar­ently my bar­ber, Manolo, has been cut­ting hair for awhile (some Google review read 60+ years) and there are “thank you’s” and “we love you’s” and signed head­shots and a giant photo of Mar­i­lyn Monroe…because really…what’s a bar­ber­shop with­out a hot babe on the wall?

PK and I took a photo in (yeah — we were those guys) and Manolo and Pedro went to work. Hair (and Span­ish slang) started fly­ing while these guys took us from ruf­fi­ans to well-groomed gents in under 30 min­utes. Manolo shot quick ques­tions at me, “Is that short enough?”, “Square on your neck? Or Round?”, “Short side­burns?” thru his ban­ter with Pedro and some other patrons in the shop, clearly dis­cussing the news and a girl named Mar­i­anna who he seemed to have an opin­ion about.

In the end — Manolo was metic­u­lous about my quaff and on top of it all — the cut only cost me $14. (Yeah — that’s right…no typo there). Four­teen big ones.

Hats off to New Bar­ber Shop. Drop by and tell them Will sent you.

New Bar­ber Shop on:

FourSquare

Google Reviews

Yelp

The fel­las over at The Shav­ing Shack sent some of this my way a few months ago to try out.  I must say, Blue­beards Revenge gives me one of the best shaves over and over again.

I’ll be post­ing a full review soon — so stay tuned.  Until then, enjoy this lit­tle com­mer­cial and demo from The Valet (a great trad gent’s bar­ber­shop in Croy­don, Surrey).

Hey gents — ever wanted to grow a ’stache to rival the long, flow­ing fol­li­cles of such lumi­nar­ies as Sal­vador Dali, Hulk Hogan and the Biker from the Vil­lage People?

Well, this Movem­ber — a month-long char­ity event rais­ing money for men’s health — you can not only bust out with your best must(ache), you can also cre­ate a viral-worthy web video to raise aware­ness for prostate cancer.

Every Novem­ber for the past three years, men have been urged to cul­ti­vate their upper lips to raise money for prostate can­cer research. So far, the char­ity has raised $100 mil­lion. This year —  Movem­ber is launch­ing a con­test called The Moscars.

Basi­cally men can sub­mit their mo’-inspired videos on a ded­i­cated site to help raise aware­ness for the cause and win prizes. The con­test started this week and lasts until Decem­ber 10.

We’re pretty impressed with the premise of this con­test. As if grow­ing a mus­tache wasn’t eye-catching enough (the trick is to get peo­ple talk­ing about can­cer when they ask about your ’stache), cre­at­ing a video — which could pos­si­bly go viral — is sure to spread the mes­sage even further.

The Casual Gent has started grow­ing his mous­tache out and will be keep­ing a daily photo log of the growth progress posted via Twit­ter (@thecasualgent).

So, I implore you, grow it out — make a video — and do me proud.

As every man knows, or should know, you’ve got to have a few go-to fra­grances for all sorts of occa­sions.  The first date fra­grance, the busi­ness lunch, the happy hour, the day-to-day…the list goes on.  When I caught a whiff of the new CREED fra­grance, aptly named Aven­tus (an archaic word mean­ing suc­cess), I had to add it to my cologne cabinet.

All the top notes are fruits; black­cur­rant, berg­amot, Calville Blanc apples, Royal pineapple…whatever that means. How­ever, it doesn’t give off a sum­mery, day­time scent.  Its def­i­nitely going into my smell like a king and get laid, ehh, have a great evening out reper­toire. Base note is oak moss, amber­gris, and Gour­mand vanilla.  Oak is one of the most mas­cu­line base notes you can have in a scent — always gets my approval.

Its exclu­sively at Neiman Mar­cus in stores & online, and, of course, the CREED bou­tique on Madi­son.  So go and grab a sam­ple, wear it around — you will…I repeat…YOU WILL fall for it.  Mark. My. Word.

In Novem­ber it’ll go national at Saks, select Nordstrom’s, Bloomingdale’s, Von Maur, and Halls…but why wait, really?

Sur­vey says, “Well-groomed men are much more attrac­tive.”  Could this be true?

A recent sur­vey by Amer­i­can razor maker Schick found that well-groomed men have twice as much sex than the unshaven.

Men who shave at least five times a week are hav­ing sex a whop­ping 15.5 times per month (let your mind wan­der on the .5 there), com­pared to just 7.8 times for their unshaven com­pa­tri­ots (again…).

The report also shows that well-groomed males are much more con­tent with life and are far more out­go­ing and friendly and males who shave at least five times a week are twice as likely to be in full-time employ­ment than men who shave just twice a week.

Accord­ing to the sur­vey, well-groomed men earn on aver­age $15,100 more per year than infre­quent shavers and are also far less likely to live with their parents.

The poll, con­ducted for Schick by mar­ket research firm Strat­e­gy­One, fur­ther reveals that 75% of those ques­tioned feel that a cleanly-shaven man is a turn-on because they see such men as hav­ing a higher self-awareness, deeper com­mit­ment lev­els and supe­rior com­fort with themselves.

Dan Hil­drew, from UK-based wet shav­ing retailer the Shav­ing Shack, said the find­ings showed that women were becom­ing more inter­ested in how their man looked.

“Mod­ern women want their man to be well-groomed as it shows greater self-awareness and a much higher sense of pride and commitment.”

Here at The Casual Gent, I know that more and more men are tak­ing notice of them­selves and how they are per­ceived.  This study just adds fuel to the fire.  More sex. More money. Self-awareness. All from just car­ing about yourself.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

If you don’t fol­low @thecasualgent on Twit­ter — you might have missed a few things this week.

Includ­ing this lit­tle num­ber that got more atten­tion than I bar­gained for…

I <3 @reneer­ouleau Triple Berry Smooth­ing Peel http://twitpic.com/29luzo

with a reply from Renée Rouleau herself

Hot body + hot guy + my Triple Berry Smooth­ing Peel = the fab­u­lous @thecasualgent See pic! >http://twitpic.com/29luzo (Love it, Will!)

So — come on over to Twit­ter — we’ve got the goods.

Perus­ing the aisles of peri­od­i­cals at Bor­ders today — the new Menswear mag­a­zine caught my eye. I thought my eyes were play­ing tricks on me as I recall Menswear mag­a­zine went out of print a cou­ple of years ago. Regard­less, I dropped 6 bones on this trea­sure — I’ve spent $6 on worse…

The dos and don’ts of dress­ing for dudes are laid OUT in the Fall 2010/Spring 2011 inau­gural issue of Menswear mag­a­zine, fea­tur­ing cover guy Jeremy Ren­ner look­ing like a dap­per “do” in a gray Dior Homme wool suit, an Armani cot­ton shirt, and a Thom Browne pocket square.

Dis­tri­b­u­tion will be newsstand-only at $6 an issue. As with the old for­mat, menswear is a quar­terly pub­li­ca­tion, so that trans­lates to four issues per year. The inau­gural issue is on sale right now and the fall issue is sched­uled to drop on Octo­ber 18. In 2011 the stan­dard quar­terly cycle kicks in to full production.

Have any of you seen it? Do you like it?

Shav­ing, for some, can be one of the most dreaded task of the day (or the week if you’re a scruff like me).

And let’s face it, more than any­thing else in the world, razor bumps can be a man’s worst enemy — they’re painful, unsightly, and completely unnecessary.

We all know the bat­tle signs:  you’ve tried switch­ing your razor from 5-blades to 3-blades to even the 2-blades with no luck.  Then you’ve prob­a­bly run the gamut on shav­ing creams…canned cream, gels, gels that turn into foam before your very eyes (I don’t trust any­thing that mutates on my face) and maybe you’ve even gone organic…and still no luck with the irritation.

Enter “The Knight in Shin­ing Armor” or some other mas­cu­line equiv­a­lent of a dude sav­ing a dude.  I dis­cov­ered Billy Jealousy’s Hydroplane about 4 years ago and never looked back.  Whether you’re shav­ing above the neck or below the belt — this stuff will make you oh so baby smooth with ZERO irritation.

Lucky for you, I got to sit down with Pat Parsi, the founder of Billy Jeal­ousy, for a lit­tle Q&A:

Why should I switch from my can of shave cream foam to Hydroplane Shave Cream?
Tra­di­tional foam shave creams are com­prised mainly of air and tiny bub­bles. These tiny bub­bles pro­vide the cush­ion between your face and a razor. Unfor­tu­nately, they don’t pro­vide much cush­ion or lubri­ca­tion which often results in razor drag, nicks and ingrown hairs. Hydroplane Shave Cream, on the other hand, is com­prised of mil­lions of beads of water-soluble, micro-silicone. This ingre­di­ent pro­vides much more lubri­ca­tion which results in greater razor glide. The water-soluble part means that the prod­uct does not break down when it comes into con­tact with water. Instead, it becomes slicker and slicker, ensur­ing a close but com­fort­able shave.  It also does not stain clothes.

How much prod­uct should I use?
Apply a quarter-sized amount to wet face.  Add water con­tin­u­ously to face to slicken for­mula. Add more prod­uct too if you like.

Does it have a fra­grance?
There is no added fra­grance in Hydroplane Shave Cream. It does have a nat­ural fra­grance due to the orange, grape­fruit, lime and berg­amot oils in the product.

Hydroplane Shave Cream is pricier than some of the other shave creams I’ve seen. Is it still a good value?
Yes, it is an excel­lent value because you need very lit­tle prod­uct in order to expe­ri­ence a great shave. An 8oz bot­tle can last for sev­eral months.

Does it con­tain any alco­hol?
There is no alco­hol in Hydroplane.

Does it con­tain Men­thol?
No Men­thol was left out of this prod­uct. While Men­thol trig­gers a nice cool­ing effect, we believe it over stim­u­lates skin dur­ing the shav­ing process, when the skin is most vulnerable.

I’ve seen Ben­zo­caine in some com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts. Does your shave cream con­tain this ingre­di­ent?
No we left out Ben­zo­caine as well. Ben­zo­caine is a numb­ing agent. We feel that our shave cream is such a supe­rior prod­uct that we don’t need to include a numb­ing agent in it. Shav­ing with a prod­uct that includes Ben­zo­caine may also result in apply­ing too much razor pres­sure while you shave which may be harm­ful to your skin.

Any last words about Hydroplane?

“Our hero prod­uct.  It’s by far our #1 seller: a unique pre-shave oil and shave cream in one. Shav­ing irri­ta­tion affected me all through high school, col­lege and grad school.  I later found out that about 80% of men and women expe­ri­ence shav­ing irri­ta­tion, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Der­ma­to­log­i­cal Asso­ca­tion.  Hydroplane is the per­fect rem­edy for all the clas­sic prob­lems asso­ci­ated with shav­ing.  I think prod­ucts like this along with improve­ments in razor tech­nol­ogy have encour­aged a lot more men to switch back to razor blades over elec­tric razors.”

–Pat Parsi, Founder, Billy Jealousy

So there you have it guys — pos­si­bly the best shave prod­uct to hit planet Earth.  And no, I’m not get­ting paid to say that!

Hydroplane is avail­able at Nord­stroms, Bar­neys NY, on the Billy Jeal­ousy web­site, and in other select stores and spas.

Happy shav­ing.