Tye is a freelance barber that has been evicted from every chair he’s rented in the past 6 months. His hair styling abilities are sub-standard and his personality clears more floors than a Kuta shart in Sky Garden.
Each morning he carefully curates his image. It can best be described as the love child of Ned Kelly and an Orangutan that was forced to grow up in a Melbourne alleyway.
He has prominent “penentrate-me” stretched lobes and his tattoo collection is a ture testament to the banality of his superficial interests. Interests that you will hear about in great detail if you end up in his chair.
Before work he swings by another local barbershop to dish out some unsolicited banter. He flicks the 8-ball while telling the busy barbers about how many drugs he took the night before and how sick his night was hanging with a band they hadn’t heard of.
Thankfully, he can’t go into too much more detail because he’s late for his own shift across town. He finishes a glass of scotch he’s pretending to enjoy and gets going. His first customer has already been waiting 10 minutes, so what’s another 15?
His first customer is a walking beard that has let the overgrown follicles do the heavy lifting for his self-identity since beards became popular. He’s after a fade, a trim and a cold beer.
Tye has had 4 coffees, a scotch and a beer. He’s feeling chattier than a snitch in a holding cell. After subjecting the customer to 10 gruelling minutes of the latest Joe Rogan podcast, he detects something is wrong, “what’s up, bro?”
Nothing is “up” perse – the man has just had a front row seat to a train wreck of a cut unfolding. Tye has been talking so much shit that he’s butchered this man’s hair so badly a vegan protest might break out.
Despite the customer looking like he just headbutt a whipper snipper, Tye has the audacity to ask him if it’s cool if he uploads a picture of the cut to his Instagram. He then asks for $70 in cash, “on the Jobseeker still, bro”.
If things weren’t tense enough, Tye tries to upsell a bottle of beard oil, telling the man his beard wouldn’t look so ratty if he looked after it properly. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
An argument breaks out but Tye manages to snap a photo before the customer storms out in a state of rage. Naturally, Tye is incapable of accepting fault and chalks the outburst up to the man not appreciating his fine barber skills.
He is told to find a new place to cut hair and spends the remainder of his day talking shit about the shop on its socials. It’s an ugly spat but compared to his haircuts, it’s the roof of the Sistine Chapel.
Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?