Girl Hair

For nearly twenty years, I practiced law in the state and federal courts of California, representing some of the largest, most conservative corporations in the world before judges and juries not-quite-of-their-peers. My coif was of-the-order, even if I was not Order of the Coif.

My last full-on hair cut was on 22 December 2004, a week before I retired. Since then, I’ve had the ends trimmed a couple times; but essentially, I have hippie-hair. Or girl-hair, if you will.

Most people agree: it’s not a great look for me. My mother laments, “You used to be such a cute kid!” But the long hair is, in some ironically conventional way, a nod to quirkiness. It also serves-up a somewhat light-hearted decoy –- and somewhat belligerent challenge –- for the world to underestimate me, a dynamic I have always tactically relished.

Last month, while I was in the Bay Area, I stopped on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue for an hour to up the ante.

I sought-out a guy named Twig, who works the corner of Telegraph and Durant “toward the end of the week,” selling his beads and bead-jewelry and wrapping hair. I had seen his handiwork in the long, silky tress of my friend Loveleen Dhillon and thought I ought to give it a try.

For the uninitiated, hair wrapping involves binding a lock within a weave of yarn or fabric. Himba women, in Namibia, use leather wraps. This article, which explains the how-tos of hair wrapping, breathlessly reports: “If you have a tween daughter, you know that hair wraps are, like, sooo popular right now!”

Well, like, count me in!

Detail of my new hair wrap. (Click for larger image.)

Finding Twig on Telegraph Avenue isn’t a problem, assuming he’s actually working that day. He is one of the deans of this famous street scene; everyone knows him and can point you in the right direction. He is a grizzled old veteran of the Sixties, not some hippie-come-lately. “I had always been into macramé,” says Twig. “Then, one day I was in the parking lot of a [Grateful] Dead show and someone showed me how to do hair wrapping, and I was really good at it. I’ve never had difficulty making a living since then.”

Twig invites me to select four colors from a large bag of dyed cotton yarns. He refuses to involve himself, explaining that color selection is not only a matter of individual aesthetics and self-expression, but that “the process of choosing is about taking personal responsibility.” I haven’t paid close-enough attention to the instructions and choose five colors: navy blue, pastel blue, deep red, pink, and yellow. I am about to jettison the light blue, but Twig sees a pleasing balance in the mix and says that he’ll work with all five.

“You also get a bead,” he instructs. So I select a small ceramic bead, which Twig pronounces “a very tasteful choice.”

It’s hard to say exactly how long the process of wrapping takes. Twig stops from time to time to help people browsing his jewelry. At one point, he abandons my wrap when he hears opening riff of “Mind Games” on his radio, and goes over to turn-up the volume. He pauses to listen for a bit before resuming his work. It’s no problem as far as I am concerned. I would never go to a hair wrap artist who didn’t love John Lennon. Or Hannah Montana.

Lawyer Hair and Girl Hair

Twig at Work