Gen­tle­men, for style advice, tips, and ques­tions you don’t want to ask your friends…I give you Jack.

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

Today thru Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 20th Stan­ley Kor­shak is host­ing their Men’s Trade-In Event ben­e­fit­ting The Sal­va­tion Army.

What you do: Trade in any suit or sport coat you no longer wear for a brand new one from the Men’s Collection.

What you get: $400 off the price of any new suit or $300 off any new sport coat. Choose from suits by Kiton, Zegna, Isaia, Belvest, Oxxford, Brioni, and more.

What they do: Donate any cloth­ing you trade in to The Sal­va­tion Army

For more infor­ma­tion or a per­sonal appoint­ment, call Greg at 214.871.3610

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.

Ever since I can remem­ber, any­thing involv­ing the red-blooded, all-American lifestyle and the fash­ion that sur­rounds it has always inter­ested me.

And now, sud­denly, a list of Old School must-haves have hit the scene; Ray-Bans, Red Wing boots, Alden loafers, wool vests from Fil­son, Sperry Top-Siders, and every­thing from the J.Crew catalog.

Design­ers like Thom Browne, Billy Reid, Scott Stern­berg of Band of Out­siders, and, of course, good ol’ Frank Muyt­jens have taken on the con­ser­v­a­tive clas­sics and made their mark with them.  Michael Bas­t­ian was quoted in the Times “The whole preppy machine requires a recal­i­bra­tion.” And it couldn’t be more true.

It has become “a ref­er­ence to a ref­er­ence,” Mr. Bas­t­ian added.  But a ref­er­ence to what, exactly?

Take Ivy, a slen­der vol­ume of pho­tographs com­mis­sioned by Ken­suke Ishizu, the founder of an Ivy League-inspired cloth­ing line called Van Jacket.  It was first pub­lished in 1965 and went on to become, in the decades since pub­li­ca­tion, the nearly unat­tain­able cen­ter of a pas­sion­ate cult.

Peo­ple spent years hunt­ing down rare copies. They traded them online for prices that reached into the thou­sands. They pho­to­copied and dis­trib­uted them in design stu­dios like fash­ion samizdat.

Take Ivy, with its guile­less snap­shots of hand­some, fit and pre­sum­ably bright young lugs dis­port­ing them­selves in din­ing halls, on the Col­lege Green at Dart­mouth, along Nas­sau Street in Prince­ton and in Har­vard Yard.

So — to the point — the book is being reprinted (pow­er­House Books) with an Eng­lish lan­guage text. Not sur­pris­ingly that text, inde­ci­pher­able to any reader except the Japan­ese read­ers all these years, is equally awed and bemused by the folk­ways of ide­al­ized Ivy Lea­guers with “their sound minds and bod­ies,” their letter-clad sweaters and their leafy cam­puses still dom­i­nated in those chummy sex-segregated days by men.

The book is teem­ing with hand­some young Ivy League men in slim-fitting flat front khakis, madras Bermuda shorts, anoraks, blue button-down Oxford cloth shirts and — well — essen­tially all the stuff you’d see in a cur­rent J. Crew catalog…which is alright by me.

Pre-order your copy on Ama­zon — it’s almost $9 off the cover price. ($24.95 nor­mally, but $16.47 on pre-order).

We’ve all got our lit­tle nuggets of wis­dom and encour­age­ment, how­ever, when I read the lat­est issue of MensFit­ness Mag­a­zine (cover to cover as always), Roy S. Johnson’s Editor’s Note, if you will, really put a spring in my step, a fire under my ass, and added a lit­tle umph in how I see the world.

Here is part of it — take some­thing from it:

Get excited about where life is tak­ing you, through the incre­men­tal gains you make every day-in your career, in your rela­tion­ship, and in the gym. You love work­ing out because it’s going to make you look and feel bet­ter. You’re smarter than you’ve ever been, and you’re prob­a­bly eat­ing bet­ter than you did years ago. You’re going to be stronger, fit­ter, and health­ier, even if you think you don’t look as good as you once did.

For­get that guy. He got lucky, maybe ben­e­fited from being at the right end of the gene pool. The guy you’re going to be will be even bet­ter, no luck involved.

Tackle today with the zeal you dis­play in your work­outs. Imag­ine if you pushed as hard at work as you did on that last rep of dur­ing that last mile on the treadmill.

Imag­ine if you were as metic­u­lous about your career as you are about your regimin, which you chron­i­cle and track like a mad scientist.

Imag­ine if you were as curi­ous and dili­gent in your rela­tion­ship as you are about the food you eat.
Yes, the old job was great. The old girl­friend was hot. Sure, you were once the hottest hunk on the beach.

But if you attack today with the enthu­si­asm, pas­sion, and com­mit­ment, those old yous-as cool as they were-will quake in the shadow of the you you’ll surely become.

This is the out­come I invi­sion for this blog and what­ever it morphs into. Become the bet­ter and best ver­sions of your­self in every facet of life: my wish to you…whoever you are.

You can fol­low Roy S. John­son on Twit­ter here. He’s also got a sports blog, Ballers, Gamers, and Scoundrels.

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?

As part of my day job as the social media coor­di­na­tor at the W Hotel in Dal­las, I’m in charge of stir­ring local inter­est for the hotel, craft | DALLAS restau­rant, Liv­ing Room Bar, WET, and (occa­sion­ally) Ghost Bar.

While most of my work is on the back-end, a lit­tle self-promotion doesn’t hurt. I wasn’t expect­ing it, but Elaine Liner gave The Casual Gent a lit­tle plug in her arti­cle.

That’s how we roll.

“Man will occa­sion­ally stum­ble over the truth, but most times he will pick him­self up and carry on.”

Win­ston Churchill

Ask any woman around what her biggest com­plaint is about men and more than likely she’ll give you some vari­a­tion of “there aren’t any real men left.”  What they see are a bunch of kids walk­ing around in men’s bod­ies.  But deep down, they’re look­ing for a man who will take care of them — a man who knows how to treat his lady.  They want a man who can take ini­tia­tive in a rela­tion­ship and be will­ing to…commit.

Sadly, nowa­days, these qual­i­ties in men are slim to none.  Have guys for­got­ten the art of romance and the respon­si­bil­i­ties that go along with being in love?  Most guys today want the ben­e­fits of a rela­tion­ship with­out any of the responsibilities.

Rela­tion­ships should still involve affec­tion­ate court­ing, romance, and always a lit­tle mys­tery.  Yeah yeah yeah — old fash­ioned — I get it, but with all that plagues the mod­ern rela­tion­ships, may­haps we should look to our gen­tle­manly fore­fa­thers.  Before I turn into a com­plete cheese­ball — I remem­ber read­ing the let­ters and hear­ing the sto­ries of my grand­par­ents that revealed how happy they were together and how much affec­tion they had for one another (save the snor­ing in the lat­ter years of my grand­fa­thers life which my grand­mother would never let him live down).  So per­haps we, too, can expe­ri­ence this rush of adren­a­line that comes with being that guy — with­out being THAT guy.

Here are a few roman­tic (and inex­pen­sive) things you can do to woo your lover and keep the fire going.

1. The Post-It Note: This is by far the eas­i­est and the most bang for your buck, hands down.  Leave sweet notes on Post-Its around the house in incon­spic­u­ous places; in a drawer, in a daily plan­ner, in the mailbox…pretty much any­where you know your love will visit through­out the day.
2. A Mixed Tape: Maybe not an actual cas­sette — but you get the point.  One of the best gifts I ever received was a birth­day CD with some of my favorite songs.  I still have it and lis­ten to it — and that was years ago.
3. Take a Day Trip: This one takes a lit­tle more plan­ning but can def­i­nitely lead to a closer bond and great mem­o­ries.  Pick a des­ti­na­tion an hour or so away and make a day out of it.  Be the tourists that every­one loves.  Take your cam­era.  Take some cash.  And live for the day.
4. Flower Deliv­ery: Now — I know you’re think­ing “thats not very orig­i­nal.”  And, tra­di­tion­ally, its not.  The trick is to be the deliv­ery guy.  Go get some amaz­ing flow­ers, or if you’re so skilled, make your own bou­quet, dress in some stan­dard deliv­ery garb and deliver the flow­ers your­self to the office.

Try these out and leave com­ments on the ways you woo your roman­tic interest…