THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9410050041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 162 lines
BEACH BARBER Shop is different from other barber shops in several ways, all interesting.
One difference appears on the list of services and prices hung on a wall near a large copper sun.
After ALL HAIRCUTS $8 and BEARD TRIM $6 comes this odd item: SELF SERVICE SHAVE $4.
This might be the first barber shop where a person pays to shave himself.
Owner and barber Thom Parton, 46, figures in the age of AIDS, some customers might prefer a self-shave. Modern teflon-coated, flexible double-blades are superior to the barber's blade, he says, so you can shave you better than he can shave you.
He provides a restroom and necessities for a shave, including towels, apron, new blades, shaving cream and after shave. Parton, who often speaks in a formal manner, said, ``I have created a service for the man who might be in town on business but does not have a motel room.''
Also different about Beach Barber Shop are the four 1-year-old bonsai plants that Parton is just beginning to train. He would like the small trees to outlive him by many generations, even centuries.
Parton has given his barber shop, a block from the ocean, what he calls a ``Gilligan's Island look,'' with palm trees, the beaming copper sun, rattan chairs, wicker table, cocoa fiber rug, lazy overhead fan, bamboo curtains. The glass front looks out on the many plants in Barracuda Bob's miniature golf course.
The bright barber pole out front is unique: Parton carved and painted it himself, after studying the history of barbering.
But a clue to what's really unique about Beach Barber Shop is the row
of books by mystic writer Carlos Castaneda on a shelf near the lone barber chair.
Often in the past two months, Parton has run classified ads in Port Folio; The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star; and the Beacon, the community news section for Virginia Beach readers of this paper, inviting Carlos Castaneda readers to come discuss the author.
A typical ad read: ``FRIENDS OF CARLOS CASTANEDA Meet at Beach Barber Shop, 3007 Pacific Ave.''
As Parton put it, ``I am not a sports-minded person. I sort of think sports are somewhat a waste of time and money, when you think how much mankind devotes to his sports activity and think what he could accomplish with that effort. . . . I lean more towards philosophical things these days.''
His dream, then, is to have a kind of intellectual salon, where customers would inquire not about the weather or sports scores - not about things ``of a superficial nature'' - but about the potential of man, or the meaning of life, or Castaneda's new directions in later books.
``I have learned,'' he said, ``you can't get a hell of a lot done politically, so you might as well philosophize about the world.''
If he could cut hair and philosophize all day long, sharing metaphysical thoughts with customers, he would be a contented man, or as contented as a philosopher gets.
``I like questions about, and people that are interested in, dreaming,'' he said. He would like it if a customer asked, for example, ``Have you ever had any dreams when you realized in the dream that you were dreaming?''
Parton is a handsome guy with a neat haircut and trim beard and dark eyes that beam when he smiles or philosophizes. His black hair is thinning slightly on top, but he could pass for many years younger than his 46.
He grew up outside Miami, the son of an electrician.
He went directly from high school to a four-year stint in the Navy, including time in Vietnam.
When he was discharged in 1970, he said, he was one more troubled young man who thought about a war nobody wanted to discuss.
He tried an electronics school, on the GI Bill, but didn't take to it. In 1972, he visited a friend in Hampton Roads and stayed, liking the laid-back atmosphere.
``I relaxed,'' he said, ``and embraced the concept: If there were any troubles within oneself, they would follow you wherever you went. This was the area I would face myself.''
He was an electrician's helper for a while, till he rewired the house of a woman who owned a beauty school. It was a hot day, and she brought him lemonade. He recalled her telling him, ``You obviously are a person that can do things with your hands. You should consider getting into the world of hair cutting.''
So he enrolled in the Portsmouth School of Beauty Culture, his tuition paid by the GI Bill.
``It didn't take long,'' he said, ``before I realized hair cutting captured my imagination. I was a creative person. I could satisfy that creativity through cutting.''
He worked in a series of beauty salons, always seeking bosses who knew more than he did. After he felt he knew what one boss knew, he'd move on to another.
``I got to the point,'' he said, ``I wasn't learning that much. I felt I had reached the point my creative aspect was not being satisfied as much as it had in the past.''
So in the early 1980s, he began studying solar energy installation and maintenance at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach. He did more and more barbering, which was easy to find part-time while in school, and he discovered he liked cutting men's hair better than women's.
The atmosphere in barber shops was laid back, he said, with men less demanding than women.
He got a two-year certificate in solar energy installation and maintenance just as prices for traditional forms of energy were dropping. Interest in solar energy diminished, and jobs in the field grew scarce.
He remained a barber, and finally bought his present shop, his first venture as an owner, last June.
He's in the shop 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days a week, much of the time waiting for customers, gradually building up a clientele.
So far, only two customers have come in response to the Carlos Castaneda ads, he said, though others called to chat, which was fine with him.
Parton's interest in the author dates to the early '70s, when a friend lent him a Castaneda book titled ``A Separate Reality.''
Castaneda's first book, ``The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,'' had been published by the University of California Press in 1968. Castaneda initially had intended it to be a doctoral dissertation in anthropology.
In the '70s, Castaneda's books sold in the millions.
They spoke of layers of reality, magical happenings, mind-bending mushrooms and ways to obtain power. There was the reality that is predictable and solid and understood by reason, the reality taught in school. Then there were other layers in which humans were luminous beings unrestrained by time and space, governed only by their awareness. Don Juan, the author's instructor and sorcerer, demonstrated flying, produced a squirrel out of midair. The author walked through a door and emerged a mile and a half away in a market.
Modern physics has demonstrated, Parton noted, that the world is far more complex, more mystical, trickier than once thought.
Parton acknowledge that Castaneda has many critics. A former wife of Castaneda's said she had never met the mysterious sorcerer Don Juan and doubted he existed.
A New York Times Book Review article dated March 5, 1978, stated, ``Mr. Castaneda has changed his story and his age several times. Sometimes he says he was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1931. . . . Sometimes the story goes that he is a Peruvian born in 1925. There is some evidence that he is older than he acknowledges. No one knows whether his Yaqui Indian source is alive, dead, a composite, or a product of Mr. Castaneda's imagination.''
Parton believes, however, that Don Juan passed on to Castaneda information from a lost civilization.
Many people say the books concern the supernatural, Parton said, but to him, they concern different aspects of the natural.
``If there's any truth to it at all,'' Parton said, ``it brings out the question that perhaps mankind is capable of a lot more than he ever dreamed he was. Maybe this knowledge has been brought to the fore in other civilizations and we have lost it. I personally don't believe Carlos Castaneda is a charlatan.
``What is relevant is the knowledge to be gained from studying past civilizations. There are layers of reality within layers of reality, like an onion, that we have not penetrated.
``The possibility exists that we are greater than we have given ourselves credit for.''
And he would love to talk with you about it.
Parton doesn't force himself upon customers. If they want to chat about the weather or his plants or whatever, he chats back about the weather or his plants or whatever.
Two subjects besides Castaneda that he hopes customers will bring up are Star Trek - he's a fan - and science fiction.
Women are welcome too, he said. Anyone with an open mind and a will to discuss - customer or visitor. ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff color photos
Thom Parton gives a haircut to Beach Barber Shop regular Ron Hyman.
Parton's shop is filled with bonsai plants and Carlos Castaneda
books, below.
by CNB