I went into Manhattan today, to SoHo, to get my (basically) annual haircut. It’s a well-documented truth that haircuts freak me out, and I tend to put them off until my hair is so unruly I have no choice but to become Det. Tutuola’s doppelganger. It can be hard to tell exactly when my hair crosses that line, but it’s basically cleaning it up from this:

To this:

It’s hard to tell, but it really is a lot shorter, which I love. AND I had a color consultation and am debating whether or not to get highlights. What do you think, should I do it?

The best part about it, though, was that I met the Original Curly Girl of Devachan Salon, Lorraine Massey! She came over while I was at the sink to play with my hair and demonstrate how to work with “dense curls” to the staff, who were apparently making it too hard for themselves. I swear, even at curly girl salons my hair sparks controversy. But it was great, she loved my hair.

Then while I was getting snipped here and there under the dryer, she came over to see how my hair looked and to take a few of my curls that had been cut. My stylist, Jackie (love her!), took me to this corner of the salon where Lorraine works, and she has this museum of curls that she uses for research. It was wild, she even makes art with the curls! She has then all categorized by type (mine were in a zigzag category). It was the coolest thing, she really researches the texture and plays with what works, and she’s working on a book about curly hair. It was awesome, she was great and chatty and gushed over my historically difficult curls.

So the rest of the day I wandered through SoHo and down into Chinatown. I went to the new Purl store, which is so adorable. But I couldn’t make up my mind what to buy, so I didn’t buy anything. I saw the throngs of people camped out to get the new iPhone (Adam was part of that throng, but he didn’t make it down until several hours after this photo).

I didn’t think this looked so bad, even with all the bouncers in blue, but it as still a 2 hour wait for people who had reserved the phone and a 1 hour wait for anyone who just wanted to get into the Apple store to look around. Crazy.

I wandered around The Scholastic Store.

Wandered through Pearl River Mart.

And finally, I had a late lunch at Big Wong King, a Chinatown institution on Mott St.

Not a bad way to kick off summer vacation.