The Pun Also Rises(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"Hair Apparent"So the other day I noticed a new hair salon had recently opened across from Mass MoCA, next to the Mohawk Bar. And this surprised me a little bit, because if I was going to pick a type of business that that area of North Adams really needs, hair salon would not be in the top million. For example, were you to jog at seven miles an hour toward Main Street from the new hair salon, then you would reach another haircut shop in less than five seconds. Because just a few doors down is a men's barbershop, the one with the big glass front window next to Brew HaHa. While pondering this coincidence and walking up Main Street, if you closed your eyes you could avoid any haircut shops until the movie theater, when you'd have to make a decision which way to turn. If you turned right toward MCLA, you'd pass multiple haircutteries on Ashland Street just after crossing the road, some right next to each other. Conversely, if you had turned left at the movie theater toward the Big Y, you'd still pass a few hair salons. There's really no avoiding it; even if you passed the Big Y and went all the way down to the next street, once you turned left on River Street you'd find another hair salon. But River Street is hundreds of yards away, and so is hardly worth considering when examining this bizarre mass of mane-mangling emporiums off of Main Street. In fact, the sheer number of hair salons can lead to only one conclusion: There are yetis living in North Adams. There is simply no other explanation for the number of haircut shops in the vicinity of Main Street. And to think, all this time, people have been looking for them in the Himalayas and various other exotic locations. But no, here in North Adams is where they can get constant haircuts, so here in North Adams is where they reside. They probably live near the intersection of Main Street and Ashland Street. I imagine that the yetis, having escaped photographs for centuries, are eager not to have their images captured in an un-shorn state. They probably leave their apartment early each morning and walk directly into the hair salon next door, where the barber ushers them into a back room and proceeds to give them the daily haircut. Perhaps it started with just one barbershop on the part of Ashland Street closer to Mass MoCA, frequented by the yeti community. And then yeti on the other part of Ashland feared that to walk a whole block while unshorn would result in discovery. So another barbershop opened up. But then the non-yeti residents of North Adams began getting haircuts too. And the yeti soon realized that they couldn't enter a barbershop already occupied, for fear of being seen in their full hairy garb. Hence, more barbershops opened up. This brought more residents in to get haircuts, and the yetis still struggled to find abandoned shops, so they pressured locals to open more and more haircutteries until Ashland Street was so filled with them that the yetis could always find an empty shop for their morning trim. This may sound far-fetched, but I believe that it is nonetheless much more plausible than the alternative explanation. If there were no yetis, that means we would have to imagine that each new barber or salon owner came along and decided it was a good business plan to build a haircut shop in a small town where there were already half a dozen haircut shops. Can you imagine someone using this reasoning? "Well, there are only seven hair salons within 100 yards of here, and that clearly isn't enough to meet the demands of the vast population of North Adams, so I'd better open a barbershop off of Main Street." "Oh, that's a great idea. I notice that there's a really big barbershop next door, why don't I open one right here?" Clearly, such statements are preposterous. The only logical conclusion is that yetis truly do exist in North Adams. I'm fairly confident of this, and would even be glad to discuss it with you some afternoon -- just don't expect to catch me in the mornings.
Seth Brown is a local abominable humor writer who thinks that
people should let their hair down more often. He is a frequent contributor
to the Washington Post's Style Invitational, and his first book
"Think You're The Only One?" was recently published by
Barnes & Noble. His Web site is www.RisingPun.com All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown. If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint it, please contact me first. |